Why Forgive?

One of the major themes of “Bound by an Oath” is the theme of forgiveness.

Blaedswith lived most of her life, unable to forgive her brothers for what they did to her Roman soldier lover, resulting in deep bitterness. Then her brothers refused to forgive her for collaborating with the Romans. The whole family was fractured by vengeful acts of the past.  

Fra Paulos takes a long time to forgive the Pope for imprisoning him in the monastery as punishment for straying from his vows. He takes an even longer time to forgive himself for deserting Aethelreda.

Aethelreda, under the influence of Paulos’s teachings was more successful in forgiving her captives, even though she found the whole concept a foreign one. Both she and Blaedswith  discuss the oddness of this Christian doctrine. (On page 347 Aethelreda recounts having had conversations with Blaedswith about what they called the “weak idea of forgiveness”.)

But though forgiveness appears like a weak idea from the perspective of a warrior culture, like that of the British Celts, it is not. To offer someone who has wronged you, genuine forgiveness is an extremely hard thing. You make yourself vulnerable to their reaction. If they do not accept your apology, and throw it back in your face, it is even harder to continue to hold that forgiveness in your heart.

So why forgive, then?

We should forgive others because it frees us from the bitterness of holding a grudge and allows us to move on in life.   Forgiveness is not really for the person who wronged us, it is for the person who was wronged. The surprising thing is that the person who has wronged us can accept our forgiveness, or reject it, and that does not invalidate the act. In fact, they do not even have to know that they have been forgiven, or care about how they have hurt you, because the spiritual work that takes place is within the heart and soul of the one who forgives! And there is no need to worry about the inner state of the other person. That is their own emotional work, and whether it ever takes place is entirely up to them.

It has been said by someone much wiser than I am that failing to forgive (holding on to grudges) is like taking poison yourself and hoping your enemy dies. That is a powerful image, and a true one.

The point of forgiveness is that it releases the person who has been wronged so that they can go on with their lives unaffected by the poison of holding a grudge.

But one of the objections we can make about forgiving others is that it seems to allow the person who has wronged us to get away with what they did or said, which is not fair. We are primed with the need for justice. Even quite little children pick up the refrain “it’s not fair”. But as adults, we have choices. We can cry about the unfairness of the world, or we can start working to change the unfairness!

I’m preaching to myself, because I admit that I have much to ask for forgiveness for in my own life. Perhaps I should start with apologizing to the woman I was frustrated by in line at the grocery this morning.  First, she had the cashier put each of her groceries in a specific place in the canvas bags she had brought. Then she fiddled with her card for WAY TOO LONG. Then the cashier discovered an item had been missed, which she rang up separately, and which the woman decided she’d pay cash for, penny by laborious penny. Then, as she received her change she announced, “I have to put all the dollars the right way around”, and I said, “Oh for heaven’s sake!” Yes, I know. There was no need for that. Please forgive me, woman in Walmart.    

Of course, it’s a safe bet that the woman will not see this, nor will I ever see her again, but I’m starting with baby steps!