08/21/08
The Pain of Forgiveness
Rachel Tulloch
I was recently captured by a story told by Wendell Berry about two friends
who lived in a small community in Kentucky in the year 1912. Ben Feltner
and Thad Coulter were part of a close-knit agrarian community with strong
ties to each other, to the land, and to hard work. Yet tragedy ensued
when Thad invested in a risky business deal with his son and lost out.
Humiliated and falling into despair, Thad drank himself into a stupor and
then headed over to ask his friend Ben for help. Ben did not want to
discuss options with Thad in his condition, and so refused to talk with
him until the next day when he was sober. However, Thad succumbed to the
darkness creeping over him and returned home to get his gun, which he then
used to shoot Ben Feltner in a drunken rage. The rest of the story was a
beautiful tale of forgiveness and mercy offered by Ben's family and the
community. Yet sadly, Thad himself was unable to experience that
forgiveness because he could not bear to live knowing he had killed his
best friend, and so ended his own life.
The narrator then makes this profound comment: "People sometimes talk of
God's love as if it's a pleasant thing. But it is terrible, in a way.
Think of all it includes. It included Thad Coulter, drunk and mean and
foolish, before he killed Mr. Feltner, and it included him
afterwards."(1)
"God's love is terrible, in a way. Think of all it includes." I have
often been asked, "Could not God have forgiven people without going
through the pain and the violence of the cross?" As nice as that sounds,
reality forces me to ask: When is forgiveness not painful? True
forgiveness cannot occur unless the hurt is acknowledged and called for
what it is. When you look a wrong full in the face but choose to accept
the hurt instead of returning it on the one who did it, that is always
painful.
Jesus illustrates forgiveness by telling the story of a servant who owes
his master more money than he could possibly repay (See Matthew 18:21-35).
The master originally threatens to sell the servant's family and
possessions to get some return for the debt, but when the servant begs for
mercy, the master is gracious and forgives the debt. Yet the same servant
not only refuses to forgive the debt of his fellow servant, but also has
him thrown in prison as punishment.
Sometimes we treat forgiveness and justice as though they are mutually
exclusive. If we choose the way of justice, we think the options are
reparations or retribution--either the guilty person makes up for a wrong
or is punished for it. These are the only options the servant offered his
debtor. Since the second servant could not repay, he was then
punished. However, the master chose the way of mercy when he
forgave the debt, neither requiring reparation nor inflicting retribution.
If God has really forgiven us like the master forgave the servant, we ask,
then why all the pain and death of the Cross? Does the Cross undermine
God's mercy? Is it merely an underhanded way for God to force repayment
from humanity or exact punishment on us?
In asking these questions, we betray a misunderstanding of both justice
and forgiveness. Justice can never be achieved by reparation or
retribution alone, because like the servants' debts, true wrongs can never
be repaid. The hurt and pain caused are not reversible. Punishing the
guilty person does not undo the hurt either, even if it brings brief
satisfaction to the victim, just as the first servant did not get his
money back simply because the other man was in jail. Justice must be
about much more than balancing out the wrongs of the world. It must be
about making things right, about the kind of restoration that does
not reverse the pain, but moves beyond it toward something new.
And just as wrongs cannot be erased by punishment or repayment, they
cannot really be erased by simple forgiveness either. When the master
forgives the servant's debt, the debt does not simply disappear. The
master takes the loss! He accepts the full brunt of the debt himself.
Similarly, when a person forgives, he or she accepts the full brunt of the
hurt or injustice rather than returning it on the one who caused it.
Although it is painful, this is the way that healing and restoration
begin. This is why there is no way to avoid the bloody Cross. And this
is why God's love is terrible. Think of what it includes: us, with
our best and our worst, with our failed attempts and outright cruelty, with
our wrong motives for right actions and our right motives for wrong
actions... us, with the mess we have made of the world, with our
brokenness and despair, with our rebellions and inadequacies. We
are the ones included in and redeemed by the deep and wide love of God.
Paul is astonished by this reality when he emphasizes that Christ died for
us while we were still sinners! (Romans 5:8).
Instead of demanding that we pay what we cannot, instead of punishing us
for not paying what we cannot, the God we see in Jesus Christ accepts the
loss himself and opens his arms even to those who would murder him. The
Cross does not represent God's mercy being tamed by his anger; rather, it
demonstrates that God's mercy is much bigger than we think. The Cross is
a graphic picture of God's terrible love. Think of all it includes.
Rachel Tulloch is associate apologist at Ravi Zacharias International
Ministries in Toronto, Canada.
(1) Wendell Berry, "Pray Without Ceasing," in That Distant Land,
(Washington DC: Shoemaker Hoard, 2004), 69.
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