Judith Shaw-McKnight, forgiveness was a matter of life and death. Without a moment of hesitation she is convinced that forgiving the man who infected her with AIDS saved her life: “When I hold on to unforgiveness it just makes me bitter. If I hadn’t forgiven him then I’d still be out there on the streets abusing myself. I would probably have died by now.”
This also applied to Abraham Eiboszycz, a Holocaust survivor, who faced an extreme choice when he returned to his hometown in Germany after the war. He was surrounded by people who had looked away as he was being transported to the nearby camp and continued to make the same hate-filled, hurtful remarks about Jews. Decades had passed before he accepted that he could not change them and made a decision: “Either I was going to kill myself and let the neighbors finish off what the Nazis could not do or I was going to forgive them.” Forgiveness, he realized, “was not granted out of graciousness, or altruism, but to retain my sanity.”
But some wonder whether it might be better to retain our anger and rage as a source of inner strength. Father Michael Lapsley, who was a bombing victim of the apartheid regime when he lost both his hands and an eye, admits that sometimes he feels angry towards the political leaders of the apartheid state and their denial of responsibility for what they did. “And that anger is appropriate. But I am too well aware of the danger of preferring unforgiveness and the negative power this gives us over another human being.”
This holds true for Terri Jentz, the victim of an unprovoked and savage axe attack, who refuses to forgive the man for what he did to her. “Unconditional forgiveness,” she asks. “No, there are conditions: repentance, contrition, reparations, and ultimately justice.” For Terri, forgiveness is inseparable from the reality of evil. “I think we can only talk about forgiveness if we also talk about the existence of evil.” She believes that to forgive her perpetrator, who has neither admitted nor atoned for his crime, would just be continuing the violence against herself.
Forgiveness can be an urgent question for those who have already suffered greatly. In South Africa, for instance, years of apartheid have left wounds that may never heal. Gideon Nieuwoudt was a member of South Africa’s security forces during that time and established a horrific record of abductions, killings, and torture of activists. While in prison he applied to South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission for amnesty in exchange for telling the truth about his killings. He claimed to have had a religious conversion and was experiencing remorse. Nieuwoudt then asked to meet the family of one of the young men he had murdered. For more than fifteen years he had rebuffed attempts by them to learn of their son’s fate. He had tormented the mother, calling her in for questioning and claiming she was hiding her son, knowing all the while that the young man was dead. Now he was seeking their forgiveness.
For the family it was fifteen years too late. During a strained and awkward meeting they rejected his apology and even doubted his conversion to Christianity. Their other son erupted with anger at the audacity to ask for forgiveness and hit Nieuwoudt over the head with a vase, splattering him with blood. This incident illustrates how, if the request for forgiveness comes too late, if it is felt to be false or violates our sense of justice then it can provoke outrage and even violence.
These differences can be raw and unsettling and never more so than when we struggle with the unforgivable. Gary Ridgway admitted killing more than ninety women over a period of twenty years. He pled guilty and received life imprisonment without parole. At the sentence hearing, in a courtroom crowded with the dead women’s families who individually rose to speak, he listened to their heart-broken rage and enduring loss and, in rare instances, to their reluctant forgiveness. “I don’t know how to describe the pain,” said the relative of one of the dead women. “It’s inside, there are no words for it, there is no closure, it goes on forever. I can’t forgive this man. It is not within my power, that I have to leave up to God.”
In contrast, another relative spoke directly to Ridgway: “There are people here who hate you. I’m not one of them. I forgive you for what you’ve done. God says to forgive you, and so you are forgiven.” Ridgway had remained impassive throughout the day’s hearing as one bereaved relative after another had confronted him. But at that moment of kindness he broke down and wept. Forgiveness can penetrate the darkest souls, if only for a moment.
There are those who believe that the most important forgiveness has to be for oneself first, before it can be offered to anyone else. This is true for Liesbeth Gerritsen, who left her two young children with their father to create a separate life for herself: “If I can’t forgive or atone for the things I’ve done that were wrong, then how can I expect anybody else in the world to do that for me? I know that the moment I can completely forgive myself is when I will be able to truly ask for their forgiveness.”
For others, forgiveness primarily means making amends and repairing relationships, essential for our well-being. “We are made for relationships. The search for forgiveness is the search for the healing of an ache of the human heart,” believes Monsignor Albacete. “What is the religious notion of Hell? It is absolute loneliness. It means the incapacity to establish a relationship, or to have anyone establish a relationship with you. So the search for forgiveness is that fundamental, it is an expression of the fear of nothingness.” Now in his seventies, his voice is deep and thoughtful as he ponders, “this primordial ache, an ache that precedes religion, is what makes us human and forgiveness is our attempt to be fully human.”
But relationships consist of two people and often the other is not always so ready to participate. For Don Robeson, whose honor and pride were destroyed when he was fired from his job, forgiveness, whether for those who fired him or for himself has proven elusive and impossible, particularly as the other party has yet to acknowledge any wrongdoing. “Do I go to the person who fired me and tell him I’m sorry, you fired me and I’m very happy over the mess you put my life in? Do I get down on my knees to God and say I’ve had all the crap I can take?”
For Dan Glick, when his wife showed little remorse after leaving him to raise their two children alone, forgiveness appeared to lie somewhere in the future. “If I’m waiting for my wife to apologize, I actually think I would be waiting the rest of my life.” But Dan found a measure of reconciliation by recognizing his own part in what happened, and by understanding that forgiveness is not an instant cure but something that grows over time. “I’m as flawed as the next person. Relationships don’t happen in a vacuum, I had a role in this. I believe forgiveness is not something one achieves and then that’s it, but is continually changing and unfolding.”
Merle Long
Forgiveness or its absence is often most acutely felt in our very last hours. Then the need to be forgiven or to forgive urgently presses in on us and can be a source of either comfort or anguish. For over a year, Merle Long lived in a hospice, unwilling to die. He had a secret hidden from his family that tormented him and that he longed to reveal: At the end of an exemplary life, he felt unforgiven, but he believed that if people knew about this they would think he was a terrible person and would judge him harshly. Or, worse, they would find some dark truth hidden even from himself.
“I was in the Infantry during World War II,” Merle finally admits. ”I was an executive officer. At the time we were deep in Germany, close to a little town called Nordhausen. It was a concentration camp with hundreds of rotting bodies; I can still smell them. We had a bunch of German prisoners that we wanted to get back to our camp when someone came up to me and told me that one of the prisoners had killed my lieutenant with a pitchfork. The prisoner was unarmed but I was so outraged that I shot him. Everyday I ask God to forgive me. It hurts so much. It’s not right to kill a fellow man, but I did. God forgive me, God forgive me…” Merle’s torment is in his tortured voice and his expression, his face contorted with long-held pain.
Long’s
