How can we not forgive our enemies? If we cannot forgive, we are locked into an endless cycle of retribution. As Martin Luther King, Jr. put it, “Those who live by ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’ will one day become a blind and toothless generation.” The consequences of not forgiving are amply evident. Just look at Palestine and Israel, Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, the Sunnis and Shias in Iraq, and Northern Ireland. Division, recrimination, and violence haunt every corner of the globe. In fact, it looks as if the central question of the 21st century will be, “Can we human beings learn to let go of the burdens of the past and in doing so create a more hopeful future?”
We at Washington National Cathedral have put reconciliation at the center of our centennial year celebrations out of the conviction that there is nothing more urgent for the survival of the human race. We welcomed Archbishop Desmond Tutu for a public lecture on “The Spirituality of Reconciliation,” and awarded him the first Cathedral Prize for Advancement in Religious Understanding. His leadership of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a landmark historical event. A nation torn apart by apartheid and the worst brutality imaginable emerged with the black majority at last in power and a civil society and economy intact. The cycle of revenge had been broken. Tutu’s great insight: “There is no future without forgiveness.”
We are a flawed, fearful, violent species, and without learning to release one another from the prison of a vengeful past we will never experience a more harmonious world. What might it mean for the U.S. and other nations to practice forgiveness? We did it once in a massive way when, after World War II, we undertook through the Marshall Plan to rebuild those nations who had been our bitter enemies. In the even more dangerous world of today, can’t we make a similar commitment to forgiveness? Yet the complexities inherent in such a commitment are immense: How does the U.S. find the balance between ensuring the safety of our citizens and serving as a force for the peaceful working out of grievances?
The Amish community of Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, not long ago showed us the way. They responded with forgiveness to the widow of the man who had murdered five young girls in their local school. They invited her to stay with their community, invited her to funerals of their children, and shared with her the monetary gifts that had poured in from around the country. Their resolve to forgive in the face of such wrenching pain signals a new possibility – in communities, within families, in broken marriages.
The road of forgiveness calls for courage, wisdom, and patience. But we have now seen that it is possible. Forgiveness can’t be written off as merely a nice idea. What if we actually began to live that way?
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