PERHAPS THE MOST fundamental law of the universe is that everything that exists seeks to perpetuate itself. An organism survives by defending itself and eating other things and producing offspring. So, too, do good and evil seek to perpetuate themselves. In the moral dimension, this is known as the law of karma, which stipulates that good begets good, and evil, evil. Since none of us is perfect, this law says, we can expect to have to settle our accounts sooner or later. Even if our wrongs amount to no more than the petty slanders and spite of day-to-day life, the tally can still end up quite large. And there is no escaping it.
Nevertheless, Christianity does offer a way out of the inexorable chain of karma. It must be accounted as the unique contribution of Jesus Christ to the spiritual life of humanity, since no teacher before him seems to have given this idea much attention. It is most succinctly expressed by a line of the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors” (Matthew 6:12).
While this is usually taken as merely a high-minded sentiment, closer examination reveals how it can turn the law of karma upon its head. We sow as we reap; thus if we forgive, we are entitled to forgiveness in turn. We will be acquitted of our shortcomings to the precise degree that we acquit others of theirs. Hence Christ instructs Peter to forgive not “until seven times, but until seventy times seven” (Matthew 18:22).
Of course, the whole point is that it is impossible for anyone to keep count to “seventy times seven.” Forgiveness offers an escape from the monstrous quid pro quo that is the essence of the world. It frees us from the karmic ledger books entirely, since, if we extend forgiveness infinitely and unconditionally, we will receive it to the same degree. Forgiveness is a steadfast refusal to see wrongs, or, if they are seen, to remember them. It is the ultimate act of generosity, since it gives without keeping count, and it is the ultimate act of freedom, since it liberates those who practice it from bondage to past hurts or losses: by refusing to care about any supposed damage, we proclaim our immunity to it.
True forgiveness, though often praised, is rarely practiced in the world. What we generally experience in its place is the subtle hypocrisy that the Course in Miracles material calls “forgiveness to destroy.” In its most blatant form, an individual uses forgiveness to put himself or herself on a higher moral plane; it is a gift condescendingly given by a superior to an inferior. An even more sanctimonious version takes the form of “we are all to blame,” in which culpability is not released but allocated to everyone equally. Still another offers forgiveness only as a way of meeting one’s own unwholesome needs. Codependency is full of such transactions: someone “forgives” an abusive family member as a way of perpetuating her or his own self-image as a martyr or feeding an unconscious desire for mistreatment.
Possibly the principal reason true forgiveness is so difficult is that it is seen as unjustified. People often believe that in forgiving, they are overlooking genuine wrongs and sacrificing justice to mercy. But this is not true. The human ego is not constructed so as to cast a fair light on a situation. The ego wishes to exonerate itself at all costs, frequently by casting blame upon someone else, and it minimizes its own shortcomings while exaggerating others’. As Christ says, “Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?” (Matthew 7:3). He makes a similar point in the parable about a wicked servant who is forgiven a debt of ten thousand talents by a king, then turns around and has another servant, who owes him “a few pence,” cast into debtor’s prison (Matthew 18: 23-25). Like the wicked servant, we tend to ask the widest latitude for ourselves while refusing to grant any to others. In this light, forgiveness is not so much an act of magnanimity as a way of compensating for our own distortions of reality.
Furthermore, exactly whom are we forgiving? Obviously, other people. But if we were to see truly, we would recognize that other people are in essence the same as ourselves. We are all part of the one, single, undivided Son of God; the chief consequence of the Fall is that the cosmic Adam perceives himself as fragmented into billions of separate and isolated specimens. To dwell upon the wrongs of others is to reinforce this fragmented state. Indeed, one could even say that the refusal to forgive is the linchpin of the fallen state, perpetuating the human condition of conflict and suffering.
Although it may be easy to embrace forgiveness in the abstract, we often forget it as soon as someone fails to return a greeting or cuts in front of us in line. At such moments the old defenses reassert themselves, and a minor slight suddenly takes the guise of an unpardonable crime. Or, with relationships that are overgrown with years of grief and vexation, we may be all too eager to forgive, but find that our deeper emotions will not go along, obstinately bearing a grudge even when we can see the complete futility of it.
Forgiveness is an art. Like all arts, it requires a subtle discrimination, a precise understanding of one’s material, and a light touch that strikes a balance between inadequacy and excess. There will be times when forgiveness does not seem possible, when the pain felt exceeds our capacity to let it go, and our visceral impulses all strive toward fury. This does not always happen in proportion to the offense. Sometimes we discover that a powerful blow glances easily off our backs, while some small and all but unnoticeable grievance nags at us without end. The emotions have their reasons, which the conscious mind does not always see, and these reasons have to be respected — at least up to a point. Forgiveness often requires steering a narrow course between nursing a grudge and pretending we have pardoned someone when we have done nothing of the kind. The chief tool for the task is a rigorous inner sincerity, since the grossest forms of hypocrisy are those we practice in front of ourselves.
In practical terms, this approach may involve fostering a small willingness to forgive while anger and rage burn themselves out inwardly for weeks and months. It may require drawing a line with someone — refusing to take abuse any longer while also refusing to nurture any hatred on account of it. Frequently it necessitates an inner detachment, a freedom from emotional dependence on others. In other instances it may entail looking at the situation from someone else’s viewpoint (which often leads to the conclusion that the person could not have acted other than he or she did). Forgiveness takes forms as diverse and unpredictable as human beings themselves. For some it comes naturally and spontaneously, while others may find that it has to be cultivated with effort in the hard soil of their nature. It is wise to be honest with oneself about such things, but it is also wise to remember that forgiveness is to be bestowed inwardly as well as outwardly and that a little mercy granted to ourselves sometimes makes it easier to extend this kindness to others.
IT’S ALL VERY WELL to speak of forgiveness of petty slights, and even of such personal hurts as we may experience in the course of life, but what about evil on a greater scale? What about the monsters of history — the tyrants and dictators who have butchered millions? Are we to forgive them?
A closer look at this question will reveal its essential pointlessness. To begin with, where are these monsters? Most are dead (generally as the result of their own enormities). Even those who are alive are remote and immune to anything we personally might do. Because we have no contact with them, our hatred only poisons ourselves. By contrast, many who have actually suffered at the hands of such tyrants appear to have found that the only sane recourse is to forgive, or at least to put bitterness aside and get on with their lives.
Seldom do we face evil directly. Far more often we contend with imagined evil: with anger against more or less distant figures, with lofty indignation over injustices half a world away that we cannot remedy and have no intention of remedying. While not all concern for large-scale issues can be dismissed in this way, usually the question of whether “we” can forgive the crimes of the past or present is rooted in the unconscious impulse to take the moral high ground. Yet anyone who has studied the atrocities of history can see that they are mass phenomena that engulf even supposedly decent people. In the same circumstances, would we have acted any better ourselves?
The Gospels are free of such preoccupations. Christ does not launch into denunciations of wicked Roman emperors or ruminate about the evils of the past. Instead, he speaks about showing kindness and compassion to those one meets from day to day: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” (Mark 12:31). Such concern lacks the grandiosity of political slogans and lofty historical judgments, but human life would not be bearable without it.
Perhaps the ultimate issue of forgiveness is outlined in one of the most baffling passages of the New Testament: the parable of the unjust steward (Luke 16:1-9). I quote it in full:
There was a certain rich man, which had a steward; and the same was accused unto him that he had wasted his goods.
And he called him, and said unto him, How is it that I hear this of thee? Give an account of thy stewardship; for thou mayest be no longer steward.
Then the steward said within himself, What shall I do? For my lord taketh away from me the stewardship; I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed.
I am resolved what to do, that, when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses.
So he called every one of his lord’s debtors unto him, and said unto the first, How much owest thou unto my lord?
And he said, A hundred measures of oil. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fifty.
Then said he unto another, And how much owest thou? And he said, A hundred measures of wheat. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and write fourscore.
And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.
On the face of it, the parable does not seem to draw any obvious moral conclusion. Indeed, by most people’s judgment, the steward acts immorally. To me the only explanation that makes sense has to do with forgiveness.
Assume God is the master. Each of us, then, is in the position of the unjust steward. If we were called to make account of ourselves, we would no doubt be found to have wasted the master’s goods. Our fellow humans are also in debt to the master, so the key to this parable has to do with forgiving others’ debts to God. (Recall the reference to forgiveness of our “debts” in the Lord’s Prayer.)
We may be willing to pardon personal offenses to ourselves, even to overlook the crimes of history, but it is very difficult to forgive sins against God. This issue has been the bane of Christianity from its inception. We see it in the New Testament, which begins with the Sermon on the Mount and ends with such writings as the Epistle of Jude, who rails against “murmurers, complainers, walking after their own lusts” (Jude 16). We see it in countless texts and treatises written by the most devout of saints, who harp upon their own humility and meekness but rise in indignant accusation against the slightest hint of treason against the Supreme Being. As the parable indicates, these “children of light” are not even as wise as “the children of this world,” who are willing to put aside their grievances for the sake of self-interest.
Put this way, the folly of such a stance is obvious. Does God have an ego to be offended by our petty failings? Obviously not. Can we really say what is in the hearts of others? We know we cannot. But Christians past and present persist in accusing others of heresy, blasphemy, and other such offenses in the pathetic belief that they are defending God. Of course, we can do no such thing. What we are defending here is the ego’s last resort — itself reified into an image of God. And this is the last and perhaps most difficult lesson to learn: the surrender of one’s own cherished image of God, nurtured and fostered, perhaps, by years of religious education. This sacrifice is typified by the last words of Christ on the cross: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34). The ultimate sacrifice we have to make is that of my God.
“True Forgiveness” is adapted from Inner Christianity, by Richard Smoley. © 2002 by Richard Smoley. It appears here by permission of Shambhala Publications.
