Forgiveness is a word I struggle with. Jesus uses it a number of times. In the Lord’s prayer, he tells us to forgive those who have sinned against us. Even if your brother or sister sins against you repeatedly and they repeatedly repent, you are to forgive, says Jesus. From the cross, Jesus forgives his murderers.
And I heard it being used again yesterday. Parents, Daniel and Leila Abdallah, used it in relation to their 3 children, who had been killed by an alcohol and drug affected man driving at high speed and crashing into the foot path where their children were innocently walking to the shops to by ice cream. They said they forgave the driver because of their Christian faith. There has been no outrage or anger from them reported, just forgiveness. On hearing this story on the news yesterday, I pondered on how I would respond and what does this forgiveness mean.
Then today as I was continuing to read the autobiography1 of Father Rod Bower, Anglican Priest from the Gosford parish, the next chapter I came to, was on forgiveness. In it he says: ‘Forgiveness is the essence of a just society, so it is no surprise that in Jesus’ prayer for such a society, forgiveness ranks just after our need for food. “Give us our daily bread and forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us”’ and a paragraph later…’Let me say that there are some things that forgiveness is not. It is not about letting people get away with unjust or damaging acts. I like to think about forgiveness in this way: when we are harmed by another it is as if they shoot an arrow into our psyche, into our soul, and it is deeply wounding. It is as if there is a rope attached to that arrow, and the person who has harmed us continues to move it. And because that arrow is deep within our psyche it causes us continual pain. It keeps the wound open. It keeps it fresh.
Forgiveness is about cutting that rope. It is about taking away the power that the person who has caused the harm has over us. It doesn’t necessarily initially remove the arrow or heal the wounds or take away the pain, but it stops that event controlling us. That is what forgiveness is about. And when that event no longer controls us, we can set about the process of removing that arrow, that painful operation of taking that out of our lives and allowing the wound to eventually heal.’
The parents were not at the court yesterday to hear the continuing court case of the driver as they wanted to spend time with their children who were alive. They said their trust is in the Australian judicial system and they could not hate the driver. During the media reporting of this tragedy, there seems to me to be a calmness, a respectfulness and an elevation of our frail humanness rarely seen in news reports. It is as if we as a society are humbled and silenced by faith and forgiveness.
In these Christian parents, I see forgiveness in action.
1Father Rod Bower, ‘Outspoken’, Ebury Press, 2018, pp 274,275.
by Loraine Holley
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