It is hard to remain indifferent to a life story like that of Terri Roberts, the mother of a young man who, in a still-unexplained moment of madness, stormed into an all-girls Amish school and began shooting, killing five of the students before killing himself.
The woman recounted how, from the very first evening after the tragedy, the victims’ loved ones, and then even the bereaved parents, showed not the slightest desire to exact revenge on the attacker’s relatives, but treated them with incredible compassion and dignity, healing their hearts and helping them in turn to heal others.
“Forgiveness is not an emotion,” said one Amish believer, explaining his community’s response. The words lingered in my mind as an echo of a supernatural message, literally an attitude that is above human nature, enslaved to selfishness and the obsession of self-preservation. And if it is in any way my business to judge how such a thing was possible, it is only in the sense that I would like to know how they could forgive in this way, so that I might learn to forgive in the same way, and to accept being forgiven in this way. Perhaps this second lesson sounds strange, but it immediately makes sense when we realise how many people cannot forgive themselves for certain mistakes, certain bad or even malicious decisions that have had more or less serious consequences for others.
And how could you accept that your very self, the person from whom you surely had high expectations, the one you still struggle to believe could be good, were it not for those inexplicable and irresistible impulses to do the opposite of what you know to be right, could deliberately harm an innocent person? Such a thing is inconceivable to our minds. The idea is so disturbing that we either deny it altogether, stubbornly believing ourselves to be essentially good people[1], or we resign ourselves to it, convinced that there is no chance of rehabilitation for someone whose soul is as corrupt as ours. Neither attitude is compatible with a healthy life and, more importantly, neither is compatible with a healthy faith.
Forgiveness is central to Christianity. In fact, the whole edifice of the Christian faith is built on the most unlikely monument of forgiveness: the cross. Yet so many people feel that there is an impenetrable glass wall between them and this forgiveness! “Forgiveness is not an emotion.” But at the Cross, emotions swept over everyone present: the disciples were overwhelmed with despair at the shattering of their hopes that the one they were following was the Messiah (how could the Messiah allow himself to be killed by the Romans whom He had come to destroy? ); the mob was possessed by an irrational thirst for violence; the soldiers were seized with an astounding zeal to beat and execute murderers; and Christ Himself, as He faced death, cried out to God: “Why have You forsaken Me?”
I don’t need to convince God of anything. I have to convince myself that if I am alive today, it means that He is willing to invest life in me. And forgiveness is life.
And yet, although it manifests itself in the midst of an impossible seething of emotion, “forgiveness is not an emotion.” Based on what emotions could the God of the universe have forgiven the atrocities committed by the human race? Could Christ have been fascinated by the idea of dying on the cross? Could He have given in and forgiven, knowing that in the centuries to come something as terrible as the Holocaust would happen, that the people He died for would tear each other apart like animals in the wars of greed? What feeling in this world, or out of it, could produce such forgiveness, when every emotional fibre screams that the forgiven one does not deserve forgiveness—in fact, that he will trample it underfoot at the first opportunity?
“Forgiveness is not an emotion.” It isn’t. It is a mystery. It’s that inexplicable decision where you decide to try to repair what the other person has broken in you, in others and in each other, even though he/she may not have the slightest interest in doing so.
This is how I see God’s forgiveness. Not mathematically balanced, but complete. Mysterious. And even though it would take forever to fathom that mystery, the idea that “forgiveness is not an emotion” now helps me not to grovel on my knees before God, hoping that my humility (often beyond the bounds of authenticity) will convince Him that I’m sorry enough to deserve forgiveness. I don’t need to convince God of anything. I have to convince myself that if I am alive today, it means that He is willing to invest life in me. And forgiveness is life.
