Forgiveness ? a lifetime?s work

When an Anglican vicar bereaved in the 7 July bombings announced that she was giving up her ministry because she was unable to forgive her daughter’s killer, she started on the first steps to that very reconciliation, says a fellow minister

When the Revd Julie Nicholson, a fellow Anglican priest, revealed this week that she is giving up her position as an inner-city vicar because she no longer feels able to preach forgiveness and reconciliation following the murder of her daughter in London’s 7 July bombings, I could well understand it. Imagine having to cope with such work following the murder of one of your beloved children. Grief needs its own time and space, and carrying the pain of others or celebrating their joys while deeply grieving is not something we should expect of any priest.

Understandably, Julie Nicholson speaks of needing to redefine her priesthood in the light of what has happened. Eight months after her daughter Jenny was killed, she has said: “It’s very difficult for me to stand behind an altar and celebrate the Eucharist, and lead people in words of peace and reconciliation and forgiveness when I feel very far from that myself.” Yet because of her obvious courage and integrity I can’t help thinking that she is more qualified to be a priest now than she was before the tragedy that shattered her life and changed it for ever. Perhaps, in taking the path she has chosen at present, she is being utterly true to her priestly calling: her action challenges all Christians to reflect more deeply and sensitively about those words we repeat every week, often with little thought, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” How much do we increase the pain of people already suffering deeply by preaching the kind of forgiveness that is inhumane in its unrealistic expectations? What does it mean to forgive in the face of senseless violence?

The Forgiveness Project, of which I am a trustee, is a non-partisan charity set up to promote conflict resolution by collecting and sharing the stories of those who have experienced conflict and violence. Writing for the Project, Archbishop Desmond Tutu said: “Forgiveness does not mean condoning what has been done. It means taking what has happened seriously and not minimising it; drawing out the sting in the memory that threatens to poison our entire existence.”

This means that forgiveness requires that we give space to our grief, anger and incomprehension regarding the violence we have experienced, and have our pain recognised and given due regard. Living forgiveness has nothing to do with not feeling hate for the one who has hurt us. It is about acknowledging the validity of our sometimes violent emotions in the face of what has happened.

Some years ago, when someone I loved hurt me badly, my husband recognised my need for the space to rage against the treatment I had experienced, and to own the hatred I sometimes felt for the person who had caused it. I could not have moved on if I hadn’t found a way of accepting the very reactions that some people believe are alien to what it means to live forgiveness. For them forgiveness is perceived as that which we give for the sake of those who have committed violence against us. There is a place for forgiveness of this kind, but it can never be forced. It is always a gift. There are no “oughts” and “shoulds” about it, neither can it be given by anyone but the one who has been wronged, and to no one but the one who has done wrong and is seeking forgiveness.

Such forgiveness cannot happen in the abstract. For this reason it isn’t an option that is open to Julie Nicholson. Mohammad Sidique Khan, her daughter’s murderer, is dead, blown up by the bomb he planted. He died believing what he was doing was right, not wanting to be forgiven any more than Julie feels able to offer this kind of forgiveness.

On the other hand, Julie is already walking the path of forgiveness as it is defined by Tutu. With great honesty she is living the way by which we come to terms with a past experience that cannot be changed, in order to live as fully as possible in the present and, in time, to look with hope to a better future. As such we might define forgiveness as the search for understanding. Understanding doesn’t mean condoning violent acts but if we are not to remain victims, we have to go eventually beyond condemnation to understanding what has happened, why it happened, how it has impacted upon us and what we can do to free ourselves to be someone whose identity is more than that of being the victim of a particular tragedy. When the Jesus of Luke’s gospel cries out on the Cross, “Forgive them for they know not what they do” (23.34), perhaps his words are a profound recognition of the blindness and ignorance that lie at the heart of violence and revenge, not a making out that everything is all right now, when clearly it isn’t.

I know from my work with the Forgiveness Project that forgiving others their trespasses against us is often a lifetime’s work.

I’m reminded of some wisdom passed on to me by my friend Rabbi Professor Jonathan Magonet. When Jethro said farewell to Moses he used the Hebrew phrase, “lech l’shalom”, literally “go to peace” (Exodus 4.18) to which the rabbis added, “and he succeeded”, going on to return to Egypt and liberate his people. When David said goodbye to Absalom for what turned out to be the last time, he said, “lech b’shalom”, literally “go in peace” – “and he died” (II Samuel 15.9). The rabbis explained this difference by saying that since peace means completeness or wholeness it is possible only when we are dead. In life we can only work towards it. With this in mind, forgiveness might be seen as a way of going to peace as opposed to walking the way of repeating cycles of violence and revenge. We may well go to pieces on this way of forgiveness, experience violent responses to what has happened, and move one step forward only to fall back time after time, but we will have made a choice about our direction that can become a source of strength, not guilt, to us.

If Christian tradition has led us to a place where we preach the kind of forgiveness that alienates those who are struggling to find a way forward in the face of great trauma, then we are doing a disservice to humanity. In the process we will also lose the crucial insights of those who are working to live through such anguish with honesty and integrity. Since they are often the greatest teachers we have in this field that is a tragedy indeed.

Ruth Scott is an Anglican minister, writer and broadcaster, and a trustee of the Forgiveness Project. Her first book, Casting Off: Finding Faith for Change, was published last year.