Dear Lord, Forgive…
by Reinder Bruinsma | 3 April 2024 |
On the 13th of May, 1981, a 23-year old Turkish militant named Mhemet Ali Ağca fired four pistol shots at Pope John Paul II in front of the St. Peter basilica in Rome. His motives have always remained unclear. What is clear is that the pope lost three-quarters of his blood and barely survived.
Mhemet was almost immediately apprehended. Some 18 months after the attack, the pope visited his assailant in his prison cell and told him that he had forgiven him. After the perpetrator was released from his 19-year prison sentence, he laid two bunches of white roses on the pope’s tomb in Saint Peter’s.
John Paul II gave us a beautiful example of forgiveness. And it seems that Mhemet Ali Ağca was willing to accept it.
The core of the faith
However difficult it might be, forgiveness is at the core of the Christian faith.
To forgive is more than saying a superficial “I’m sorry.” Forgiveness presupposes that something wrong was done or said, and that the resulting blockage needs to be removed. Being forgiven implies that a distorted relationship has been restored. What happened is not instantly forgotten, but when it is forgiven it no longer poisons the relationship, and it opens a way of moving forward again.
In Christian language we speak of a sin that has been committed and exonerated. And even though it may concern an act against another person or other persons, it always also involves God. A request for forgiveness will usually be addressed to another human being, but it must always be accompanied by a prayer for divine forgiveness.
In some cases forgiving and accepting forgiveness may not be as straightforward as it seems. Sometimes the misdeed is so major that the threshold for forgiveness seems insurmountable. Can we expect parents to forgive the drunk driver who killed their child? Can we expect a father to forgive the pedophile who raped his little girl? Can a young woman forgive the person who abused her for years on end? Can we expect people to forgive such tyrants as Hitler and Pol Pot, Idi Amin and Joseph Stalin? Will the Ukrainian women who lost their husbands and sons in the bloody war, which has now been going on for more than two years, ever be able to forgive Putin? And will the Palestinians who lost their children in the ferocious attacks by the Israeli forces ever be able to forgive Netanyahu and his generals?
Forgiveness can be a tall order—but there are extraordinary examples of forgiveness: of Tutsis who have forgiven the Hutu murderers of their loved ones—and vice versa; of reconciliation between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland; of healing between black South Africans and white Afrikaners.
But even if there is forgiveness, forgetting what happened may take the passing of generations. I will go further and say that forgiving does not equal forgetting. Forgiveness does not make light of the evil that has been committed. It does not mean that evildoers should not be disciplined or punished. Forgiveness does not run in the face of accountability, and it does not deny that in many cases the wrong that has been done cannot be undone.
All of us need it
Underlying the issue of forgiveness is the fundamental fact that all of us need it. None of us is perfect, or will ever become perfect in this life, in spite of what the so-called perfectionists among us may claim. We all carry more imperfections and moral defects with us than we realize. The words of Christ, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing,” did not only apply to the Roman soldiers but also conveyed a message to all men and women who, ever since, have been involved in wrongdoings without realizing the true scope of their actions.
God’s forgiving of our sins is directly linked to our willingness to forgive the people who mistreated or manipulated us, or who defrauded us, belittled us, or offended us. One of the key phrases in the Lord’s Prayer is the plea that God will forgive our debts “as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matt. 6:12). Our forgiving is not to be an occasional gesture of good will, but must reflect a consistent intent of making things right again.
It is not something that is done once or twice, but it may have to be repeated “up to seventy-seven times” (Matt. 18:22). Yet our way of forgiving will never fully reflect the wonderfully generous manner in which God forgives. He is, according to David, “compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love,” and “as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:8, 12).
Corporate sins demand corporate forgiveness
When a group of people, a segment of society, or a nation is guilty of systemic evil, we speak of a corporate sin. This does not eliminate any personal responsibility of the individuals who participated in it. But the corporate sin is more than the sum-total of all the individual errors. It tends to take on a life of its own and to run out of control.
In these cases, more than individual reactions of regret are called for. When eventually a corporate evil is acknowledged, a corporate plea for forgiveness should follow and, where possible, adequate reparations.
Perhaps the actual perpetrators of the evil that has been committed are no longer alive. Should the descendants then ask for forgiveness for what their parents or grandparents did or failed to do? Should the Germans of 2024 be held accountable for what the Nazis of the Third Reich did in the 1930s and 1940s? Should the Dutch citizens of my generation, and our children, still be held responsible for the hideous acts of the Dutch army during the final period of its colonial rule in Indonesia? And must the citizens of the United States, of Britain, and of a range of other countries make official excuses for the slave trade and the evils associated with it?
I’ve done nothing wrong!
Recently, authorities in the Netherlands, after a long period of going back and forth on the issue, decided to formally ask for forgiveness for the Dutch role in the slave trade and for the use of hundreds of thousands of slaves in the former colonies in the Caribbean.
I must admit that for quite some time I wondered whether this was necessary. Why should the king, or the prime minister, or anyone else, confess any guilt, on my behalf, for the atrocities of human trafficking in past centuries? After all, slavery was abolished in the Dutch colonies in 1863, long before I or my parents or grandparents were born. I had absolutely no part in this, so why should I feel sorry, and should anyone ask for forgiveness in my name?
I changed my mind after I realized that I cannot simply shrug my shoulders at the wrongs that happened in the past. After all, these things were done by people who were linked to me. What they did—good or bad—still has its impact on me. I must look critically at the past, form a moral opinion, and be committed to never repeat the things that we now consider evil.
As individuals we are part of a community, a society, a nation. We have a corporate responsibility. As a member of a western society I have a stake in how we relate to other parts of the world. My way of life—how I live, what I eat, how I travel, etc., etc.—it all impacts on the fate of the people in poorer countries, on the protection of nature, and on the elements that cause climate change.
What we are today as a nation, and what our status is in the world, is directly related to our history, to the good things we did, but also to the things we should not have done. There are, therefore, good reasons to formally acknowledge the sins of the past and to express regret, or (to say it in Christian terms) to confess our corporate failures.
It also strengthens our determination never to repeat our sins of colonialism, racism, sexism, and cultural arrogance.
The church needs forgiveness
Denominations aren’t perfect. That is also true of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, at the local level and at the various other echelons. Churches are composed of fallible human beings who commit individual errors. However, churches also make corporate mistakes, which can have such a serious systemic impact that some form of official plea for forgiveness is demanded. It has been good to see that in the past some denominational entities have had the courage to admit that they were wrong, that they hurt the people who were entrusted to their spiritual care.
I am thinking, for instance, of the German Adventist Church, which on several occasions acknowledged how it made some serious blunders at the time of World War I, and thereby contributed to the origin of the Adventist Reform Movement. Unfortunately, the expressions of regret and the pleas for forgiveness have so far not led to healing the still existing split. But it was a step forwards to clearly acknowledge that the church had been in error, and to ask forgiveness.
What about today?
When I look at our Adventist Church of 2024, I see issues that I would define as systemic sins that need to be confessed, and for which a plea of forgiveness is long overdue. That the church has treated its women as second-class members, in particular with regard to their status as ministers of the gospel, is sinful.
There is no other word for it, for it is contrary to the basic principle of the gospel that in Christ any difference in status between male and female has been eliminated (Gal. 3:28). Putting men above women is a systemic sin that is still being committed on a denomination-wide scale. With many fellow-believers I hope and pray that our leaders will soon realize that, as a church, we must make a corporate confession to our Lord, and must ask our sisters to forgive us.
The time may be still further away when we corporately confess our lack of inclusiveness and our corporate rejection of brothers and sisters with a different sexual disposition. I hope that I will live to see the moment when that happens.
Forgiving church leaders
And I hope to be around to experience the day when the leaders of our denomination will confess that they have failed to inform the membership about the findings of the scholars who researched the person and work of Ellen White. I hope they will decide to ask for forgiveness for keeping the members in the dark about things that should long ago have been brought into the open.
And, yes, the church (that is all of us) owes it to former church employees such as Merikay Silver and Lorna Tobler, and past and present scholars such as Desmond Ford and (more recently) Hanz Gutierrez, to ask for forgiveness for its failure to show the kind of love that Christians ought to have for each other.
Perhaps many of us, myself included, ought to confess our lack of courage, and should ask to be forgiven for the fact that we have not been more vocal in our support for those groups and individuals who have been treated immorally or, at the very least, unfairly. If we do, we may know that our Lord always stands ready to forgive, for He is “compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.”
Reinder Bruinsma lives in the Netherlands with his wife, Aafje. He has served the Seventh-day Adventist Church in various assignments, in publishing, education, and church administration on three continents. He still maintains a busy schedule of preaching, teaching, and writing. He blogs at http://reinderbruinsma.com/.
