Forgiveness

11 May 2008

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

PRAYER:

Let us not be so filled with ourselves that we cannot forgive others their sins and foibles when we knew they meant better. And let us not be so empty of ourselves that we let others use our forgiveness as a license to behave badly.

The balance between justice and mercy is always a dynamic balance, meant to empower the best kind of life within and around us. If our sense of justice is no more than punishment, it is a poor justice. And if our sense of forgiveness does no more than enable bad behavior, it is a poor forgiveness.

Let us try to balance a rich sense of justice and an empowering kind of forgiveness, as though the quality of life both within and among us were shaped by them.

Amen.

SERMON: Forgiveness

This is the third sermon I’ve done on a one-word theme. I’m planning to do one a month, and am developing a list of 36 themes, so we’ll revisit each theme once every three years. The themes may be only one word, but they don’t seem to be simple. Forgiveness – perhaps especially within Western religions – is very complicated. In fact, I’d start by saying that “Forgiveness isn’t always a good thing.” And the reason is that forgiveness suffers from a deep imbalance in Western religions, and when it’s unbalanced, it can be a very dangerous and bad thing.

The best-known story about forgiveness in the Bible is probably the Prodigal Son story. You know the story. A father had two sons – their mother is never mentioned – and one of them demanded his full inheritance in advance. That was permitted within Jewish law at the time, but if a son did it, he had no more claims on his family, ever. The father had to come up with cash for half of all his property was worth. It probably meant he would have had to sell things, and it also meant that after the younger brother left with the money, both the father and the older brother would have had to work much harder to get the work done. The young brother squandered all the money on wine, women and song, and returned home to ask if his father would take him back – this time, just as a servant, since he had forfeited all right to be taken back as a son. To the older brother’s disgust, the father welcomed him home and threw a great feast to celebrate.

Most adults who hear the story side with the older brother, and don’t think it was right of the father to forgive the young brother.

To see and feel how sex-linked notions of forgiveness are, all you have to do – especially on Mother’s Day! – is change the story to one about two sons and a mother. Suddenly, it changes everything. We would expect the mother to forgive him!

We expect the father to stand up for justice, but the mother to offer forgiveness, don’t we? Forgiveness seems closer to a feminine trait than a masculine one. It might be interesting to ask trial lawyers whether, if they were defending the younger brother, they’d rather have a jury of men or of women.

Forgiveness does seem to be a feminine trait, especially in our Western religions. In Hinduism, the goddess Kali is a fierce and judging and punishing presence, and in Greek mythology, the goddess Dike is the goddess of justice, and is equally fearsome. So in other religions, goddesses can be fierce. But not in Western religions. It’s hard to think of stories from the Bible or in Christian history of women who are that fearsome, or men who are terribly forgiving. In the Bible, the traits seem deeply sex-linked. It’s worth asking why, and the answer goes all the way back to the birth of the God of the Bible. There is no story of the birth of God in the Bible. I mean the story that biblical scholars have discovered about where the ancient Hebrews got the idea for their God.

The Hebrew tribes were surrounded by people whose gods were nature deities, and almost always that means that the main deities will be female, as it’s females who give birth, nurse and nurture. But the ancient Hebrews’ god wasn’t a nature god. He grew out of the idea of a tribal chief. He didn’t want to put you in touch with nature. He wanted to be obeyed, and could be ferocious when he was disobeyed. Scholars have found that the Biblical covenant between God and his chosen people was modeled on an ancient Hittite sovereignty treaty between a ruler and the people he ruled. If they obey him, he will protect him. If they disobey, he may destroy them. It isn’t about understanding or forgiveness. It’s about obedience. It’s hard to think of many good stories about forgiveness – as opposed to favors shown to obedient believers – because there aren’t many.

Maybe that’s why so many people find it odd or even wrong for the Prodigal Son’s father to forgive him, but would expect his mother to forgive him.

The psychologist Carl Jung talked about the human psyche, or soul, as divided into a masculine style, which he called the animus, and a feminine style, the anima, and that framework seems helpful here.

They act in different ways, and in different directions. The animus, or masculine style, acts outward. It can be a fierce protector of things like duty, obedience and justice, and when it is unbalanced it can be quite dangerous to others, because it will insist on a kind of obedience and justice without any rounded appreciation for our human frailties. Even the word animus is the root of the word animosity.

The anima or feminine style is inward, and seems to be the key in which a forgiving kind of understanding is played. But it also needs to be balanced with a concern for what’s fair: for justice. Unbalanced, it can be dangerous to us, by endorsing abuse without insisting on justice or respect.

I’d say that great religions are all trying to develop our animus for its sensitivity to justice, and our anima for its sensitivity to forgiveness and mercy. Justice and mercy. The conflict is between “mercy that negates justice” and “justice that negates mercy.” For either of them to be humane and safe, they have to be balanced. And in Western religions, because of the nature of their God who evolved from, and in most ways has remained, a tribal chief, we are raised with both justice and forgiveness out of balance.

Now many Christian scholars like to jump on this and say “Oh yes, the Jewish God was a God of judgment, but you see that’s what Jesus brought: a god of forgiveness rather than judgment.”

For example, whereas it’s hard to find clear stories teaching forgiveness in the Hebrew scriptures, Jesus once told people that he didn’t expect them to forgive just seven times, but seventy times seven. He also said you shouldn’t judge, so you won’t be judged. So it sounds like he is emphasizing forgiveness over judgment. But now it is an unbalanced kind of forgiveness. In Christianity, forgiveness too often has no component of justice in it, no holding others accountable to a social contract. And without that balance, forgiveness can be dangerous to us, just as an unbalanced sense of justice can be dangerous to others.

Jesus’ saying we should forgive seventy times seven has inspired at least one book by that name, with hundreds of short tales of people who forgave all manner of things, with no concern for justice at all. There’s even the story of a man who had been badly physically abused by his father – sometimes beaten unconscious – until he finally ran away from home in his teens. A few years later when he joined a church and told his story to the minister, the minister insisted that he write his father and beg his forgiveness for running away! That’s as unbalanced and dangerous as the passages in the Hebrew scriptures listing all the disobediences for which your children, wives and neighbors should be stoned to death. This is the kind of forgiveness that can be demanded by a tribal chief who can do what he likes without accountability. It’s unhealthy and wrong. And it’s not rare in Christian history. We have been taught to transfer the obedience owed to the tribal-chief-god to those who dress up in his clothes, or just those with money and power, however obtained.

Mother Teresa provided a memorable example of an unbalanced and dangerous forgiveness, when Union Carbide essentially hired her to do their PR after their chemical spill in Bhopal, India which killed 3,800 people. They made a donation to her Sisters of Mercy charity, then flew her to Bhopal. When she landed, the media were there, wanting to know what she advised following this horrible tragedy. She said, “Just forgive, forgive, forgive.” That’s not enough. This is a forgiveness that becomes an accomplice to corporate irresponsibility, a forgiveness that is the active enemy of justice – especially when the company had hired her. I think Mother Teresa only meant the inward kind of forgiveness, but she had been bribed by a large corporation, and her message suited their non-religious agenda perfectly. Nor do I think she was unaware of this.

Other examples of forgiveness so unbalanced that it becomes dangerous to the ones doing the forgiving are the many battered women’s shelters in our country. A majority of the battered women return to the men who beat them – probably not for the first time, nor for the last. This license to abuse seems granted only to husbands, not wives, as St. Paul taught the early Christians that men are made in the image of God, while women are made in the image of men. (As ridiculous as this sounds, it comes from a literal reading of one of the two creation stories in Genesis, where the male God first created the male – in his image – then created the female to be like the male, as his helpmate.) Once again, these are the ethics of deference to a powerful male tribal chief. The biblical God’s birth story has colored almost all the ethics of Western religion.

My dictionary offers two definitions of forgiveness that might be helpful ways to understand it. American Heritage Dictionary (1969) defines forgiveness:

1. To excuse for a fault or offense; to pardon.

2. To renounce anger or resentment against [someone].

The first definition is forgiveness that goes outward, pardoning someone for their behavior. The second goes inward, releasing their psychological hold on you so you can move on. Ideally, both kinds are possible. But they often aren’t.

The first kind of forgiveness is only safe if the other person is in a mutually respectful relationship with you. If an abuser can’t or won’t come into respectful relationship, it’s unwise and probably unsafe to forgive them, because it won’t be much more than permission for them to do it again, as tens of thousands of battered women have discovered the hard way.

There has to be a social contract in order to forgive someone for bad behavior against you. Then it’s a restorative kind of forgiveness, meant to restore a good relationship. There is a Proverb from the Hebrew scriptures that shows how important the social contract is. It’s one of my favorite Proverbs from the Bible – and on the surface, one of the strangest.

Proverbs 25:21-22 – “If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink; so you will heap glowing coals on his head, and the Lord will reward you.” Now there is something weirdly delicious about this image of being kind to those who have abused you because it dumps hot coals on their head as God applauds, but the real meaning is less bizarre. A note says that these “hot coals” really mean deep shame and remorse. So acting in a forgiving way will shame them back into behaving well. This is restorative forgiveness, meant to restore a respectful and healthy social contract. If they can’t or won’t feel shame, however, forgiving them will only give them permission to abuse you again, because you’re an easy mark.

Without the mutual relationship, the first kind of forgiveness can’t be done. Sometimes, people just aren’t capable of or interested in a mutual relationship. But sometimes, they’re dead or gone, and you have to move on because you can never restore the relationship with them, and so have to settle for resolving it within yourself. Then it’s more of a rejuvenative forgiveness, meant to rejuvenate your spirit, to reconnect you with your life force and your sense of optimism and hope.

I have a story about this that I’ve told before, but is worth telling again. About fifteen years ago, I was the Theme Speaker at a Unitarian summer camp in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. There were about five hundred adults there for the week, and while I didn’t know any of them, I conducted the worship services every morning, so everyone sort of knew who I was, and would come up to talk, or to confess something, during the week. The most memorable was a woman who asked me, after lunch, whether she could talk to me about something very painful and awful she was going through. We sat on a bench under a tree outside, and she told me about what sounded like an absolutely horrible divorce she had been through. It was so painful, it hurt to listen to it. It was like a wound still completely raw. I felt very sorry for her. “When did this happen?” I asked. She looked at me sadly, and said, “Ten years ago.”

Ten years ago, and she was still bleeding from it! Of course, I don’t know any of the facts of the story for sure. Maybe he’s a jerk, maybe he just fell out of love with her, maybe it wasn’t as good a marriage as she thought, maybe she didn’t even notice whether he was happy, maybe she was the jerk. I don’t know. But it really didn’t matter any more. There can be no restorative forgiveness, because the relationship can’t be restored. The only kind of forgiveness she can hope for is the second kind, where she lets go of the hurt and the hate, and moves on with her life. She had a dream for her marriage, and it didn’t come true. Not all dreams come true, but all dreamers deserve the chance to dream again, and they can’t do it if they’re wrapped up in hate and hurt.

This kind of rejuvenating forgiveness, which we do not for others but for ourselves, is a decision to let go of resentments and thoughts of revenge, and to move ahead with our life.

This internal forgiveness takes away the power the other person continues to wield in your life, where your pain and anger have possessed you like demons. Through forgiveness, you choose to no longer define yourself as their victim. Rejuvenating forgiveness is done for yourself, not the person who you think wronged you.

It’s this second meaning that has the most religious and psychological power. The first, the restorative forgiveness, can be powerful within a relationship of trust and respect. Without that trust and respect, it just frees the person to do it again; it rewards abusive and selfish behavior. The second can be powerful within our own psyche, by cutting loose the hold that anger, resentment and hatred can have on our hearts. Be careful confusing the two categories of forgiveness. People don’t have a right to demand forgiveness: that’s a gift only we can give, and we shouldn’t give it if it will be likely to hurt us or be understood as a sanction for abusive behavior.

You don’t have to forgive the person – the person may be long dead. But (like the woman divorced ten years earlier) the anger lives on as though it had happened yesterday, keeping your heart from even being open again, let alone loving again. You can’t dream again when you’re possessed by the demons of hurt and hate. You’re trapped, not your partner or parent. Do yourself the favor, not them.

You can forgive within yourself what you would still hold the abuser responsible for. That inward forgiveness does not necessarily mean you want to be around the person again. It means you relinquish the hold that anger and hatred have on your own heart, so you can move on and dream again.

It seems important to say over again that restorative forgiveness only works within a relationship of mutual respect and trust. Otherwise, it’s enabling the worst behavior in another, and rewarding it. And there must be transparency. A mate who cheats in secret, then tries to rationalize it by demanding his/her privacy is not to be trusted. No one is safe in that relationship. Without honesty and transparency, there will be neither respect nor safety.

Now I want to go back to an earlier point, left over from that version of the Prodigal Son story with a mother rather than a father. It almost sounds like it’s the mother’s job to forgive, while we don’t really expect it from the father. This could sound like it’s the mother’s job, or women’s jobs, to teach men how to forgive – and I don’t want to say that, especially on Mother’s Day, because it’s just assigning women another job. But the other piece from the story is that if women do most of the forgiving, then where do they find forgiveness? Where do they find the understanding and forgiveness they need for their own sense of failure? – which may be that they weren’t able to accomplish a list of tasks not even Wonder Woman could manage. Maybe this is a good hint to the men and the children in their lives on this Mother’s Day. There is a woman living with you who may have been more forgiving of all of you than you’ve been. Now where is she going to find the understanding and forgiveness she needs?

And while the men and children are figuring out just how and where they might be more understanding, a final word to the mothers. If you are good at forgiving, don’t forget to forgive yourselves.

Just like justice needs an element of humanity in order to be a safe thing, so does forgiveness need a sense of justice to be a safe thing.

Let us try to balance a rich sense of justice and an empowering kind of forgiveness, as though the quality of life both within and among us were shaped by them – because they are.