I read an analysis piece by Stan Grant this morning - about Easter, and the questions it throws up about forgiveness.
It was very moving, and very thought-provoking.
Easter is, above all, a celebration of the ultimate sort of forgiveness. The article just struck me as an incredibly appropriate piece at this time, not only because it's Easter, but also in view of the turmoil and atrocities in Ukraine. Of course, Ukraine isn't the only country in which there is unprovoked war and terrible suffering... and it would be naïve of any of us to think that a magic wand could be waved, everyone says Forgive me, and Utopia comes to pass.
What is real is the essential message...
I'll post a bit of the article here, and leave the link to the whole thing at the bottom of this post.
The Native American poet Diane Glancy writes: "It is a fragile gate, the opening of faith."
We enter into it with all our human frailty, our sin, and faith asks of us more than our rationality — it asks us to believe.
In our relationship with God we find a new relationship with each other. Relationship beyond the fixed, bounded identities. As theologian Miroslav Volf would put it, we are asked to embrace what we would exclude.
We become, he says, porous "bounded yet permeable". In letting others in we do not lose ourselves but enrich ourselves.
[...]
While for many Easter is a welcome break from work, a quick trip away and some chocolate eggs, for Christians Easter is when we remember Christ's crucifixion and resurrection and when we are asked the hardest of questions: can we love even those who have wronged us?
If Easter is to retain its full meaning, must we forgive even the most heinous of crimes?
How can we forgive?
Forgiveness is unequivocal. Jesus on the cross cries out: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Jesus would ask for forgiveness even for those who would want him dead.
It is not selective forgiveness, but forgiveness for all.
Miroslav Volf says "Christ justifies the ungodly". We must love our enemies as we love our neighbours.
But how? In a world of such suffering, how can we forgive?
[...]
Volf probes this question in his classic book Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation.
The book has been named one of the 100 most influential religious books of the 20th century and starts with an acceptance that none of us is innocent. We are all with sin. We are, he says, "morally divided".
Sin is "both the rot deep in our souls and a prowling beast of exclusion that holds captive entire societies, cultures and communities".
Sometimes it is the church itself that is the source of exclusion and conflict. Volf says that we "inherit exclusionary forms of faith".
This is faith that hardens identity. "A religion thus configured," he says, "ends up justifying the group's practice of exclusion and its deployment of violence".
[...]
For Volf, it is very personal. He lived through the wars of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. His father had been tortured in a concentration camp, and Miroslav was locked up and interrogated.
As a Croatian, he was once asked: "But can you embrace a Cetnik?"
The Serbian fighters, he writes, were "sowing desolation in my native country, herding people into concentration camps, raping women, burning down churches, destroying cities".
I've just picked a few bits out of the article. There is a lot more to chew on in it; Stan Grant as an indigenous aboriginal talks about forgiveness from that perspective and takes it further still. He asks one of the most difficult questions possible - about whether forgiveness absolves the perpetrator.
I'm glad I read this. It was an unexpected analysis, but I could feel Stan Grant's gut-wrenching honesty and willingness to take on a question that strikes at the heart of who we are.
Easter's hardest question: How can we forgive even the most heinous of crimes? - Stan Grant, ABC News (2022)
