Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Forgiving the Murderer? I Can't Forgive Joyce Meyer

Billy Hallowell reports on a reality TV series in which people say they forgive those who did horrible things to them and their families:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/would-you-forgive-a-man-who-violently-murdered-your-loved-one-this-woman-did-see-the-incredible-story/

I think the comments on this article reflect an increasing level of confusion about what forgiveness means. I think much of the confusion would be avoided if we'd stick to the distinction some preacher to whom I used to listen used to make, between the Christian concept of forgiveness that begins when an offender sincerely repents of his or her sins, the secular concept of pardon that can be offered whenever we feel sorry for the offender, and the psychological concept of releasing our emotional attachment to anger at the offender. To me these are three completely different things.

Would I forgive the person who murdered my loved one? That would be my first and dearest cat friend, Magic, the real founder of the Cat Sanctuary. I'm fond of animals generally, but most cats don't have the kind of relationships with humans or with other cats that Magic had; what I felt for that cat was closer to what I feel for The Nephews than to what I feel for ordinary cats. Magic was murdered in cold blood by an evildoer from whom she was trying to protect me. The evildoer also tried to cast suspicion on a better man. I loathe him; I think the world would be a better place without him. Would I forgive him? Of course I would...if and whenever he confessed his sin, made serious attempts toward restitution, and begged me (and the better man) to forgive him. I don't expect any of those things to happen in this lifetime.

I've not dedicated my life to revenge. The evildoer was of course sick; he was hospitalized that summer, spent most of the year in the hospital, and hasn't been well since. I'm not going to lie to you, Gentle Readers. I think he's deserved every minute of it. If anybody deserves a slow painful decline, he does. But I don't go around wrapping myself in angry feelings, clutching my grievance to my bosom, telling myself that revenge is my sacred duty--as some of Jesus's audience believed, and some people in the Middle East still believe. I will probably never have the opportunity to forgive this evildoer. What I do have the opportunity to practice, where he's been concerned, is release.

Forgiveness, as I use the word, means that the offense is completely expunged from the record; the offender is completely restored to whatever kind of fellowship he or she formerly had with the person or people offended. The offender is no longer considered to be a murderer, or traitor or thief or whatever he was, because he has changed his ways and become a new man. Only some of the world's religions teach that this is possible, much less that the possibility always needs to be kept in mind, but Christianity is one of the religions that does.

Release is what happens when we know very well that the offender is still a danger to society, and we think he or she needs to be locked up or neutralized in some other way, but we choose (consciously or unconsciously) to move on in life and experience other things besides anger, hate, and vengeance.

Then there's pardon. Suppose that, instead of being deliberately shot, Magic had been accidentally run over by the evildoer's fifteen-year-old the first time the fifteen-year-old was allowed to drive a car. I would have missed the cat just as much, but what good would it have done to take out my emotional feelings on the fifteen-year-old, who would no doubt have been sorry and would obviously have been trying very hard to become a better driver. That is the kind of situation that calls for pardon.

Most of the pardons we grant are routine pardons for trivial offenses--stepping on our toes, saying insensitive things, making mistakes. Few of us have the opportunity to pardon murderers. Some people who have done that have found that it helped everyone involved...but I'd bet that the skeptical (as distinct from trollish) comments on Billy Hallowell's article are coming from people who've been tricked into granting pardon to an offender who wasn't really sorry he'd stolen but was sorry he'd been sent to jail.

I think some of the really nasty trollish comments may be coming from people who've been misled by preachers who blur over the distinctions among these three things and urge everybody to "forgive" everybody for everything. This is not realistic, it is not good for society, and it is definitely not what Jesus taught.

Joyce Meyer is just one source of the pious confusion about "forgiveness," so in some ways it's unfair for me to say this, but it's true: I can't forgive Joyce Meyer. I have no emotional feelings of anger or ill will toward Joyce Meyer. I still read her books, and have still been known to recommend them to other people. But it's not possible for me to forgive her for being confused, and confusing others, about the meaning of Christian forgiveness--not because her confusion has done me any particular harm--but because she's not made Christian forgiveness possible by repenting of what she's done.

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