When forgiveness is too simplistic a response to evil

Forgiveness, it turns out, is a many-nuanced thing. And a well-argued new book, Not So Sorry: Abusers, False Apologies and the Limits of Forgiveness, by Kaya Oakes, helps readers understand how difficult the subject can be.

"For better or worse," she writes, "(the) notion that failing to grant forgiveness is spiritually damning has led to centuries of people being forced to turn forgiveness publicly and privately into a performance."

In other words, there may well be times when forgiveness is inappropriate, phony or just plain wrong.

One of the problems with getting this matter right is that religious teachings from around the world seem to emphasize how important forgiveness is -- as, in fact, it is. Even Jesus on the cross asked God to forgive the Romans who murdered him -- and if he can do that, the natural follow-up question is why the rest of us shouldn't forgive almost anyone anything.

Well, one obvious reason not to do that is that the person offering forgiveness may not have standing to do that. For instance, do children or grandchildren of people who perished in the Holocaust have any right to forgive the Nazis for their crimes of murder? Many would argue that such an offer of forgiveness can come only from the victims -- and they're dead.

Another obvious time to withhold forgiveness is when it results in more domestic violence, say, or more criminal activity by the one being forgiven too easily.

"As a feminist," writes Oakes, a Catholic journalist and author, "I. . .have concerns that women in particular are increasingly asked to perform their trauma, sometimes in ways that feel queasily exploitative. . .And women are often asked to do this so that a man can be forgiven."

Oakes' central argument is that "forgiveness has limits, that it can become a form of spiritual abuse and that we need to move to a victim-centered approach in our understanding of it." To which she adds this: "Jesus asked us to forgive those who know not what they do. But what do we do about the people who knew exactly what they were doing?"

Good question.

Because ideas about forgiveness often are rooted in religion and because Christianity has been the dominant religion in the U.S. (still is, though that role is slipping), gospel stories often are the basis for the idea that forgiveness is almost always necessary.

But, Oakes writes, those stories "are not that simplistic. They are complicated, they must be framed by historical context to make sense and they are often oversimplified and distorted by millennia of mistranslations and poor theological thinking. . .(E)xpecting universal forgiveness can also enable abuse. It can cause self-harm. It can also lead to suicide and addiction. It can drive people away from religion when religion makes them feel like failures for being unable to forgive."

Another aspect of forgiveness that people often overlook is the duty of the perpetrator to repent and seek forgiveness. She notes, for example, that "because neither Judas nor Jesus's Roman killers repent, he actually can't forgive them. When he says, 'father, forgive them,' he's making clear that only God can do that. It might not be a sentimental picture of forgiveness, but it's the one he left us with."

There is much to be said for forgiveness, including the reality that it often frees the person harmed to begin life afresh, moving beyond the injury. In many religions, God is said to be the great source of forgiveness and a model for how we should treat the subject.

But Oakes is right that this is a complicated subject and no simple answer will suffice. 

For instance, as a Catholic she notes that the "Protestant emphasis on forgiveness without the mediation of clergy has meant that Americans see forgiveness as a more individualistic process than the idea in the Hebrew Bible that it is meant to bring a person back into a community." One flipside of that, of course, is that at one point in history the Catholic Church sold forgiveness through the "indulgences" that Martin Luther objected to so strongly -- strongly enough that his protests against the practice helped to launch the 16th Century Protestant Reformation.

So, yes. Forgiveness is complicated.

Oakes' words are particularly strong when it comes to the priest abuse scandal in the Catholic Church:

"The church can write checks to its heart's content, bankrupt dioceses, stage Reparation Masses, build 'healing gardens' and beg for forgiveness. But until it owns up to the fact that it has not allowed adequate space for victims to express themselves, confront their abusers and thus begin to heal, no true acts of atonement have been performed. As of today, there is still no evidence that victims owe the church any forgiveness."

Read this book and you will never think about forgiveness in quite the same way ever again. And that will be a good thing.

(P.S.: A correction -- In this recent blog post, I misspelled the last name of author Adriana Carranca. It's now fixed.)

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KAMALA HARRIS' VARIED RELIGIOUS BACKGROUND

In a nation with an increasingly diverse religious landscape, Vice President (and now presidential candidate) Kamala Harris is quite representative of that variety of religious expressions, this RNS story reports. For example: "Raised Hindu by her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, a native of Chennai, India, she was often taken as a girl to 23rd Avenue Church of God in Oakland, California, by her neighbor, Regina Shelton, along with Harris’ sister, Maya. As an adult, Harris joined a Black Baptist church — Third Baptist Church of San Francisco, led by the Rev. Amos Brown. Meanwhile, the man who would become Harris’ husband, Los Angeles lawyer Douglas Emhoff,  grew up in New Jersey attending a Reform (Jewish) synagogue."

All of which may not mean much, given the reality that there can be no religious test for elected office in the U.S. In fact, as I've said before, the only legitimate question about any candidate's religion is how that affects his or her decisions about what public policy he or she supports. But I find it interesting, though not surprising, that we now have a presidential candidate whose religious background reflects the changes in America's religious landscape.