The Limits of Forgiveness, After Charlottesville
By Ronald W. Pies MD
I’ve been thinking a lot about forgiveness, after Charlottesville — and not just about James Alex Fields Jr., the man charged with second-degree murder after driving a car into a crowd, killing Heather Heyer. I’ve also been thinking about the neo-Nazis and white supremacists, and the wave of hatred and intolerance they have unleashed across parts of the country. I’ve been wondering if I could ever forgive the actions of such people — or if anyone should forgive these heinous acts, absent evidence of contrition and remorse on the part of the evil-doers. I have not been a direct victim of violence or hatred, but I grew up in a small town where anti-Semitism emerged now and then, like some serpent crawling out from under a rock. I still remember a kid in junior high school whose perennial, smirking greeting to me was, “Jews don’t live long!” And my grandfather’s family was nearly wiped out during the Holocaust — so, in a sense, I have a personal stake in the issue of forgiveness.
To be sure, when and how to forgive is no simple matter. Some ethicists and theologians believe that all sins can and should be forgiven. For example, after the horrendous killings of five children in an Amish school house in 2006, some Amish community leaders advocated “forgiveness” of the murderer. We can admire the Amish for their courage and compassion, while disagreeing with their concept of forgiveness. Indeed, in the the Judaic tradition, the Amish community had no right to forgive their children’s murderer. The traditional view of Judaism is that we are prohibited from forgiving on someone else’s behalf. As Rabbi Joseph Telushkin has argued, the only one who (in principle) can forgive a murderer is the person murdered — and since that is impossible, the rest of us cannot act in the victim’s stead.
Of course, we may choose to forgive the “indirect” emotional suffering inflicted on us, as a result of someone’s having harmed a friend or loved one. Similarly, we are all in a position to decide whether or not to forgive white supremacists and neo-Nazis for tearing away at the social and moral fabric of our country. But genuine forgiveness, in the Jewish tradition, requires that wrongdoers must first repent and try to make amends before being entitled to our forgiveness.
Yes, there are some crimes so heinous they may simply be beyond the human capacity to forgive: for example, genocide, murder, and rape. But we must distinguish the limits of forgiveness from the capacity to let go of hatred. We can choose to let go of hatred toward someone who has wronged us without necessarily forgiving that person, if he or she has failed to make even a small gesture toward apology and repentance.
Anybody can say, “I forgive you,” without much soul-searching or reflection. But meaningful forgiveness is not an isolated, unilateral act. It’s an ongoing process between the aggrieved party and the offender. Often, the victim of wrongdoing must undertake a long spiritual journey before forgiveness is emotionally or psychologically possible — or healthy. This is especially true for victims of rape or other forms of physical abuse. We should always be skeptical of “instant forgiveness” in the face of a horrific act. As the theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it, “Cheap grace is preaching forgiveness without requiring repentance.”
Hatred is another matter. Hanging on to hatred of those who have wronged us — even those who have not earned our forgiveness — is almost always self-defeating. As the German-Jewish writer, Ludwig Börne, put it: “If you must hate… then hate what should be hated: falsehood, violence, selfishness.”
Ronald W. Pies MD
The writer is a psychiatrist and ethicist affiliated with SUNY Upstate Medical University and Tufts University. He is the author of “Becoming a Mensch,” and “Don’t Worry — Nothing Will Turn Out All Right.”
For further reading: Telushkin J, The Book of Jewish Values.Harmony Books, 2000