Forgiveness

[undyingking]

Interesting (I thought) story recently about Julie Nicholson, a vicar who has resigned from her post because she's found herself unable to forgive the London bomber who killed her daughter.
Probably anyone who's not a Christian is thinking "and why should she forgive the bastard?", but I suppose this is about as close as you can get to the central mystery of Christianity -- what makes it different to other religions. There's loads of stuff in the Bible making it very clear that Jesus thought forgiving those who'd done you harm, however difficult, was of fundamental importance. Of course he wouldn't have condemned this poor woman who's suffering dreadfully, but he would understand her wanting to step down from her pastoral role if she feels it not sustainable with integrity. (Of course, Jesus didn't agree with the idea of a priesthood at all, as far as we can make out, but that's a different story.)
The obvious parallel is with Anthony Walker's mother, also a Christian, who has been able to forgive her son's murderers. I guess a lot of people will think that's weird, unnatural, or that there must be some unacknowledged level at which she doesn't really forgive them. But it seems to me from what she's said that she has made the leap to empathize with them, with where they're coming from and why they might have acted as they did.
Could I forgive my child's killers? To be honest it's difficult to see how I might be able to. (It's also rather hypothetical, as I don't have any children.) But Jesus didn't urge this just because he thought we should all be fluffy bunnies -- but because it's not possible to be a whole functional person while you're carrying that sort of hatred aroud with you. Julie Nicholson says "for the time being, that wound in me is having to heal", and I guess we can all hope that eventually it will.

Comments

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't call that a message of denial, quite the contrary -- it's the hope that whatever misfortunes you've suffered need not leave permanent scars on you.

Hmm... then perhaps I could less cynically word it as: hope in cases where the odds are stacked most unfavourably against you. (By which I mean "against one", but that looked silly when I wrote it.)

Not that I don't like the idea of people bouncing back from things, but that hasn't been my experience of the way people work. We're fragile things. Hit us with something bad enough and our mental state is damaged, never to be fully restored.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Hit us with something bad enough and our mental state is damaged, never to be fully restored

Sure, but some people observably have better resilience than others, or may draw the 'unrecoverably bad' line in a different place -- and faith can be one of the factors affecting that. At least, that's the theory.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

In the case of a person who really believes, I think it makes a lot of sense. I'm sure I'd feel better about a child's death if I believed death wasn't final.