The healing power of forgiveness

From Parliamentary Prayer Breakfasts to post-apartheid South Africa and fourth-century desert monks, Julie Canlis explores the benefits of relentlessly pursuing forgiveness.

Julie Canlis

Julie connects Christian spirituality with ordinary life in Wenatchee, Washington State, where she teaches and writes.

Eastern Orthodox icon depict the Prodigal Son displayed on Forgiveness Sunday

Last week, the National Parliamentary Prayer Breakfast convened with a focus on the power of the F-word in public life. In our cultural moment, we prefer score settling and retribution to what was once a cherished value: Forgiveness. Can the Christian story offer anything to an era which is caught in endless cycles of violence, conflict, injustice, and vengeance?

In our lifetime, we have seen the experiment of what happens when a whole country dedicates itself to forgiveness. In South Africa, overcoming the trauma of apartheid did not mean forgetting but choosing to remember collectively. Evil was named. But could this kind of truth set one free? There were no shortcuts to forgiveness. There was no quick wiping the slate clean that avoided the truth. Instead, perpetrators were faced with real people and stories of what they had done. Victims recounted their trauma, but in a new way that enabled them to stop being the victim of what had happened to them. In South Africa, forgiveness was not religiously sanctioned denial. It offered the victims agency, and release from the cycle of vengeance.

From South Africa, we learned the power in sharing trauma stories. We discovered the importance of looking for underlying causes and ideologies that are contributing factors. But that was not the end. We also watched the power of restorative narratives, testifying to the beautiful fragility and hope of reconciliation. Without forgiveness, no relationship on a personal or national scale can be sustained. What would it look like to begin to create a forgiveness culture amid a culture of hate?

In the fourth century, there were communities of Christians who fled the Roman empire and set up shop in the desert. They gave their life to prayer and forgiveness because they found that despite fleeing from the “sins” of Rome, they could not escape themselves. They were in the desert with a handful of other people, and yet their hearts still contained hatred. They did not have muscle memory oriented toward forgiveness.

For others, hearing that they are forgiven forty times finally cracks through a self-defeating wall.

And so, they relentlessly practiced forgiveness. They practiced it by stopping the incessant outward glance at other peoples’ faults. They asked forgiveness constantly, in a bold attempt to own their own culpability and blindness. And they ritualized this practice in a once-yearly “Forgiveness Sunday” which makes many of us squirm just to think of it. The Sunday before Lent, everyone in the community would extend a word of forgiveness to each person, and beg their forgiveness in turn.

Forgiveness Sunday is still practiced annually in Eastern Christian churches (often Greek or Russian) where you can still wander in on the Sunday before Lent, and work on your F-word muscle memory. In case you find yourself in one of these churches, the script goes something like this:

Person 1: Forgive me, sister.

Person 2: God forgives you. And so do I. Forgive me brother.

Person 1: God forgives you. And I forgive you.

Of course, this exchange can be rote. But for some for whom there has been anything amiss, eyes well up with tears. Perhaps it is the letting go of an exhausting grudge. For others, hearing that they are forgiven forty times finally cracks through a self-defeating wall. And for everyone, it is a commitment to not constantly ruminate on the wrongs of others, reliving incidents to keep the anger going. If done rightly, it allows for the recognition of wrong, while not allowing it to perpetuate itself in you. In essence, it is the cheapest mental health shortcut, available at a church near you.

Back in the fourth century, Forgiveness Sunday arose as a circumstantial necessity because these desert dwellers would retreat even further into the desert for Lent. Call it a detox camp. Call it a therapeutic immersion. Call it a technology fast. Regardless, due to the dangers of the desert (wild animals and a hostile environment), these Christians wanted to receive the forgiveness of their brothers and sisters (and offer it) in case they did not return to the community to celebrate Easter. For us, a modern equivalent might be simply to enter the liturgical time of confession and forgiveness on a regular Sunday. And to lean more deeply into the well-worn phrase to “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who have trespassed against us.” Would it be possible to treat these words with a whole new level of personal responsibility and vulnerability?

Forgiveness Sunday is the humble declaration that we are both victims and perpetrators.

Forgiveness, when taken seriously, is a process that takes time. Forgiveness involves great courage, but also the great humble realisation that we could have just as easily done the very act that needed forgiving, under different circumstances. Forgiveness involves neither appeasement nor grovelling. For the church, the ritualised understanding of Forgiveness Sunday is the humble declaration that we are both victims and perpetrators. And that, somehow, Christ accompanies us in the grief of both.

In the Christian tradition, Jesus founded his new order upon forgiveness. Jesus knew that the unforgiving heart is closed to not just giving forgiveness but to receiving it – it is sealed up like a tomb. That those who are least forgiving also live daily with the fiercest critic – themselves. In other sayings, Jesus highlights that forgiveness is not merely an interior disposition, but also one honours the integrity of the process of working through an injury. And finally, Christians believe that Jesus practiced what he preached: he forgave his enemies (and died for them) to secure divine forgiveness for everyone. For his followers, they had no choice but to forgive – and many of them ended up founding communities of forgiveness.

Article

Creed

Economics

Seven Deadly Sins

Sin

24 July 2023

6 min read

Greed: “No, I’ll never have enough”

In the third of a series on the Seven Deadly Sins, Jane Williams highlights how Greed destroys both individuals and societies.

Jane Williams

Jane Williams is the McDonald Professor in Christian Theology at St Mellitus College.

In the old Humphrey Bogart film, Key Largo, the villain, played with a vicious childishness by Edward G. Robinson, is asked by Bogie what he wants. Rocco, Robinson’s character, thinks for a bit and then says that what Rocco wants is MORE! ‘Will you ever have enough?’, Bogie asks, and Robinson thinks about it for a moment before replying, ‘I never have so far. No, I’ll never have enough’.

That is Greed, in a vivid nutshell. Rocco doesn’t want anything particular, and he doesn’t value anything in itself; he just has a vast, unspecific, insatiable desire for anything and everything, particularly if it belongs to someone else.

Rapacious greed does not love what it desires; it is driven to possess; it does not value what it has.

Greed, like all the Seven Deadly Sins, is a ‘capital’ or ‘cardinal’ sin, meaning it is a disposition from which destructive, abusive actions flow. Having this over-mastering tendency to Greed makes us act in a whole variety of ways that are damaging and abusive to others and to ourselves. Greed leads to a variety of ‘sins’. Rapacious greed does not love what it desires; it is driven to possess; it does not value what it has, because while there is ‘more’ out there somewhere, greed must have it. It does not care what or whom it attacks or destroys: anything that stands in its way must be obliterated. It does not want to admire or use what it seeks, it merely needs to possess it, and the moment the sought after thing is achieved, all-consuming greed moves onto the next thing, always seeking ‘more’, always despising what it has, as not enough.

Greed is destructive both on the personal front and also as it shapes societies. Individuals ruled by greed cannot maintain love or friendship or loyalty: their eyes are always on the next thing, always hungry for what they have not got. They leave behind them, without a backward glance, hurt and broken friends, family, colleagues, jobs. And if the fallout is clear for all the people around someone driven by greed, it is also obvious that it destroys the greedy, too.

Overpowering greed empties even the greedy of worth; they can never be successful, because they do not have what they want – everything.

Nothing can ever satisfy someone consumed by greed; there is no rest, no peace, no pleasure, because the world is full of things still to be grabbed at. Jesus is quoted as having said, ‘Where your treasure is, that’s where your heart will be’. It’s a warning to beware of what you long for, because we are so powerfully shaped by our desires. But if all Greed longs for is ‘more’, then, in the end, the greedy person or society has no heart at all. It is shaped only by a drive for possession, opening up a vast and echoing emptiness where an actual longed-for being or thing should live. Overpowering greed empties even the greedy of worth; they can never be successful, because they do not have what they want – everything.

It is obvious how Greed is deadly for individuals, but it is also deadly when it becomes a motivating force for society at large. The media have recently been talking again about ‘greedflation’. The theory behind the term is much debated, but the word itself is instantly memorable. Institutions that are governed primarily by the need for ‘more’ drive an insatiable economy, always needing more consumers, more profit, more rewards. Dissatisfaction and envy are the necessary tools of a society, an economy, of Greed. Individuals and groups that try to opt out of this out-of-control consumerism are viewed as a threat, and must be diminished, dismissed, cast out. It is dangerous in such a society ever to ask, ‘Do we really need more?’ That is the Emperor’s New Clothes question, which must be avoided at all costs. Surveys that ask people at different income levels whether they feel that they have enough nearly always find that everyone would like just a little bit more. Everyone would like to be at the next level up of income and possessions; but if they achieve that next level, then, strangely, they find that it is actually the level above that that really want.

Contentment lays an axe to the roots of Greed. It allows us to see what we have and value it.

The World Happiness Report, which has been regularly updated for the last 10 years, works with a complex set of definitions of what makes for happiness, for individuals and for societies. Finland regularly tops the chart of Happiest Countries in the world, which Finns find a bit puzzling, apparently. They don’t see themselves as cheerful, jolly people, but they do speak of a national characteristic that might be described as contentment. Contentment lays an axe to the roots of Greed. It allows us to see what we have and value it, rather than despising it because there are things we do not have.

One of the values that The World Happiness Report notes as making for greater happiness is altruism – doing good and receiving goodness from others makes both parties happier. The Christian tradition has known this for a long time. Cardinal Sins have their opposing Cardinal Virtues, dispositions that we can cultivate to help us to free ourselves from enslaving habits, like Greed. ‘Charity’ is the Cardinal Virtue that undermines the sin of Greed. When we give to others from our own resources, of time, money, attention, care, prayer, help of any kind, we begin to loosen the deadly grip of insatiable Greed upon ourselves and our world. Greed can’t live alongside Charity, or altruism; charity sees real people and situations in need, and supplies what it can from its own resources; Greed sees only more and more objects to be acquired, never able to see what it already has, never able to share or be content.

Deadly Sins lead to behaviour that makes for misery, both for those driven by them, and for those on the receiving end of them. That is why they are called ‘deadly’. They are not just a bit naughty; they are actively destructive of human flourishing, both personal and communal. There is so much in our society that positively encourages Greed, the reckless desire for More, which can never be satisfied. But there are ways of combatting this most pernicious of habits.

One is the practice of gratitude: instead of thinking about what we haven’t got, or would like to have, or what someone else has, we can think of what we have got, and think of it as gift, something to say thank you for. It’s a good habit to build into every day, perhaps as we go to bed, taking just a few minutes to think about the good things that have come to us that day: a child’s smile, a gleam of sunshine, a hug from a friend or partner, a delicious piece of bread; everyday things that we can take for granted, in which case they go unnoticed; or we can see that they are gifts to be grateful for, which enlarge our spirit and our wellbeing. Gratitude is a virtuous circle: it is lovely to be on the receiving end of gratitude, as well as to practice being grateful. And gratitude often leads to another excellent practice for undermining Greed, which is charity, or altruism. If we are learning how to say thank you for what we have, we may also want to share what we now notice that we have. If we’ve given the gift of gratitude, and seen how it makes us and the receiver feel, we may want to extend that further and further. Worth a try?