Candle Not a Torch: Forgiveness
In the first post for this blog, I identified the work of identifying a spiritual discipline that both discovers and disempowers the voice that urges despair. This is the voice that makes accusations, cites evidence, details your victimization, and condemns those who you perceive to be a threat, or have wronged you.
If a spouse or trusted partner cheats, for example, the betrayed can easily lose a grip on long-held beliefs that gave life stability. Into the vacuum rushes fear, anger and shock. Emotions may urge confrontation and condemnation. That voice may encourage fear, or argue this is all your fault as you failed to be attractive in some way. It may do both randomly, and even simultaneously.
So long as the absence of discipline puts these emotions in charge, spiritual freedom is hampered. Here are 3 steps to “being a candle, not a torch” that illustrate the type of discipline I mean:
1) Break the cycle of trauma and retribution. Trauma and injustice breed a rationale for retribution, a rationalization the human mind is adept at making. Decline to take up this suggestion. This is even more so for instances of injustice or disagreement that fall well short of traumatic, and/or where the “trauma” is more a product of our perceptions. Seeking retribution for being cut off in traffic or having one’s facts questioned should prompt some reflection whether one has fallen into the idolatry of the ego.
2) Don’t look at the darkness. Dr. Martin Luther King wrote “darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that.”[1] Wrongs exist and should be acknowledged. And yet there is always a reason to believe that — with action, not just with time — the arc will bend towards justice.
3) Forgiveness is given, but trust is earned. Forgiveness is, in my view, unconditional. That is, it cannot depend on the actions of others, but is a unilateral act. Were it otherwise, spiritual discipline, and hence joy, would remain in the control of those others.
In this regard, it’s helpful to distinguish forgiveness from “trust” — you need not trust people in order to forgive them. More on that in a moment.
Breaking the Cycle
Olga Botcharova, a psychologist working on international peacekeeping in the Balkans, developed a useful illustration of the cycle of violence and retribution, as compared against a pattern that breaks the cycle. The emotional markers here are key, for they reveal the weapons commonly used by authoritarians, extremists, and domestic abusers: a sense of victimhood, a sense of entitlement to retaliate, and a dehumanization of the “other.” In the diagram below, these weapons are neutralized by breaking the cycle.[2]
Dwelling on the Darkness
If “breaking the cycle” is the primary “do,” then to stop dwelling on the darkness is the first “don’t.” Dwelling on the darkness is a behavior that will keep one locked in the cycle, self-identifying as a victim. Amela Puljek-Shank writes, again referring to the cycles that drive political violence, “[When] we cannot see anything else but injury and loss, [we] get stuck in “egoism of victimization.” [3]
In other words, dwelling on the darkness (our pain, our suffering, the injury, the loss, the wrongdoing), locks in the cycle of trauma and retribution (which can be particularly limiting when there is no extant party who inflicted the trauma, and thus no logical object of retribution).
From “Strength to Love,”[4] to “Star Wars,” essays and stories remind you cannot destroy darkness by being against it. You can weaken it with indifference, you can manage it with acceptance, and in some cases, it is conquered with sacrifice. So instead of dwelling on the darkness, adopt a perspective on it. For example, one can feel anger as an attempt to take external control of the mind, and decline to give it that control.
There is a common saying in public policy: “never let a good crisis go to waste.”[5] The Red Cross and the Geneva Convention arose out of the horrors of war in 19th century Europe (and were imported into the US by Clara Barton as a response to the US Civil War). Modern ethics laws can trace roots to the crimes of the Nixon Administration. Good can come even from things we rightly wish had never happened. And the meaning of events may become larger over the fullness of time.
Consider forgiveness as distinct from trust
Too many times, forgiveness is within easy reach, but yet not grasped. This may well be the result of a mistaken belief that withholding forgiveness (i.e., holding on to suffering) is needed to hold another accountable. As I envision forgiveness, though, it is hard to imagine something more completely self-assertive than to choose to put your own spiritual well-being first.
Tim Keller emphasizes the voluntary nature of forgiveness. He observes that, “when speaking of forgiveness, Jesus uses the image of debts to describe the nature of sins.” (Matt. 6:12; 18:21–35). “When someone seriously wrongs you, there is an absolutely unavoidable sense that the wrongdoer owes you… Forgiveness means giving up the right to seek repayment from the one who harmed you.”[6]
This form of forgiveness is by no means to mean passivity or indifference. Keller notes that, as Christians are called to “speak the truth in love” (Eph. 4:15),” they are called to “pursue justice gently and humbly, in order to redress wrongs and yet maintain or restore the relationship (Gal. 6:1–5).” In other words, forgiveness continues to see wrong things as wrong. It simply acknowledges that wishing they were otherwise will not make it so.
Which is why forgiveness is different from trust. Trust is, per one dictionary, “a belief that someone or something is reliable, good, honest, [and] effective.”[7] Whether to trust depends on whether you can form a rational belief someone or something reliable holds these qualities. Which is to say that an ethics based on virtue — one that leads towards spiritual development — has a role for rational thinking.
There is clearly a role for faith, for revelation, for intuition in spirituality. At the same time, spiritual development is not well achieved through irrational thinking, which instead creates obstacles to spiritual growth through the unease of knowing that the gift of one’s healthy mind is being misused.
Indeed, quite often the person in need of forgiveness is our self, including forgiveness for moments one allowed the mind to be fooled or bullied or persuaded by rationalizations. Reason, like honor, is a gift you give to yourself. The discipline, then, is to learn which voice to trust, which voice to not trust, to develop the capability to forgive those who show they are untrustworthy, and experience joy in the power of a rational mind to choose ways that break cycles of retribution.
[1]Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “A Gift of Love,” collected sermons — online at: http://www.scribd.com/doc/111708889/A-selection-from-A-Gift-of-Love-Sermons-from-Strength-to-Love-and-Other-Preachings-by-The-Rev-Dr-Martin-Luther-King-Jr
[2]Graphic reprinted in “Forgiveness & Reconciliation: Public Policy & Conflict Transformation,” edited by Raymond G. Helmick, S.J, and Rodney L. Peterson (Templeton Foundation Press, 2001);
[3]Amela Puljek-Shank, “Trauma and Reconciliation,” online at: http://www.nenasilje.org/publikacije/pdf/20poticaja/20pieces-puljek.pdf; citing Mack, E. John. “The Enemy System,” in “The Psychodynamics of International Relationships: Concepts and Theories,” Vol.1. Vamik D. Volkan, Demetrios A. Julius, and Joseph V. Montville eds. Lexington: Lexington Books (1990).
[4]Martin Luther King, Jr., “Strength to Love,” https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/strength-love
[5]See http://freakonomics.com/2009/08/13/quotes-uncovered-who-said-no-crisis-should-go-to-waste/ for a discussion of various theories on the origin of this phrase.
[6]“Serving Each Other Through Forgiveness and Reconciliation,” Dr. Timothy Keller, https://viennapres.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Keller-Forgiveness-and-Reconciliation-2016-5-1-Resource.pdf
