Great interview, great questions. Playing catch-up today on the responses you received to Part 1 of your treatise on pandemic forgiveness. OUCH. Forgiveness is a perennially provocative subject, but I’m struck by the way these kinds of conversations unfold online apart from relationship and life context--as if they’re just untethered ideas in cyberspace. For example, you recently wrote about your own family’s internment during WW II. Despite that grave injustice, you’re able to write about personal and political forgiveness. There’s real weight behind your words on this. Yet all those hostile responses you got take none of that important background into consideration. Their reference point is self. It shows how much pain people are still in. Rage is much more accessible than the grief or pain that animates it. Also, when people are unable to face/talk about the harm or suffering inflicted by those closest to them (family, friends) because it’s so deep, they deflect by taking aim instead at policy makers, thought leaders, and those outside their immediate sphere. That’s not something logic can address. You wouldn’t think gospel-believing Christians would be so divided on the subject of forgiveness, but man, we are. Years ago, I wrote an article that touched on forgiveness (for publication in a Christian magazine). In an attempt to illustrate the true power of Christian forgiveness in the face of even the most unrepentant evil, I included the following quote by Corrie Ten Boom: “Those who were able to forgive their former enemies were able also to return to the outside world and rebuild their lives, no matter what the physical scars. Those who nursed their bitterness remained invalids. It was as simple and as horrible as that.” The editor removed it.
Great interview, great questions. Playing catch-up today on the responses you received to Part 1 of your treatise on pandemic forgiveness. OUCH. Forgiveness is a perennially provocative subject, but I’m struck by the way these kinds of conversations unfold online apart from relationship and life context--as if they’re just untethered ideas in cyberspace. For example, you recently wrote about your own family’s internment during WW II. Despite that grave injustice, you’re able to write about personal and political forgiveness. There’s real weight behind your words on this. Yet all those hostile responses you got take none of that important background into consideration. Their reference point is self. It shows how much pain people are still in. Rage is much more accessible than the grief or pain that animates it. Also, when people are unable to face/talk about the harm or suffering inflicted by those closest to them (family, friends) because it’s so deep, they deflect by taking aim instead at policy makers, thought leaders, and those outside their immediate sphere. That’s not something logic can address. You wouldn’t think gospel-believing Christians would be so divided on the subject of forgiveness, but man, we are. Years ago, I wrote an article that touched on forgiveness (for publication in a Christian magazine). In an attempt to illustrate the true power of Christian forgiveness in the face of even the most unrepentant evil, I included the following quote by Corrie Ten Boom: “Those who were able to forgive their former enemies were able also to return to the outside world and rebuild their lives, no matter what the physical scars. Those who nursed their bitterness remained invalids. It was as simple and as horrible as that.” The editor removed it.