#MeToo - What of Forgiveness?

Source:hellogiggles.com

The easiest way to deal with the wounds of abuse – any abuse – is to think nothing, (never mind say nothing), either of the past or of the present. You just ‘deal with it’, a very apt expression, but one which, if acted upon, can be toxic. For one thing, it is a lie. You never ‘deal with it’, so why, at any point in history, do we pretend that this is possible? 

The #MeToo movement is epoch changing, not only because it goes some way towards validating the suffering of the victims of abuse, but because it gives us all permission to re-connect with and, in some measure, own, our pain. We do this privately, in our own dark corridors of remembrance, and in solidarity with others in the #MeToo movement. We also do it in solidarity with other generations.

Abuse, as we well know, is not an emerging phenomenon. It has been around for centuries, so it helps, I find, to try to place one’s own pain in the continuum of the abuse suffered by the perpetrators and by those who preceded them. This does not exonerate the abusers. Neither does it oblige, still less enable, me to forgive them. As if forgiveness was purely a matter of understanding contextuality, cause and effect, and thereby accepting the abuse as inevitable. But this is how women, and I think many men who may have been physically abused in childhood, try to come to terms with what a generally abusive childhood or youth still does to them.

There are two serious flaws in thinking that we can ‘deal with’ abuse and the effects of abuse. First, it tends to ignore the fact that abuse is not limited to the sexual and physical. Sexual abuse, for women, is more often reinforced by what seems at the time a natural and ‘deserved’ shaming of the person concerned. Perhaps it is the same for men. If an adult implies that we are ugly, stupid and to be laughed at rather than with, we accept it as a given. ‘Put downs’, the many chance remarks deemed as OK, but deeply wounding, enforced compliance with how we should look or behave, all in the context of dishonest and manipulative relationships, build a toxic mix of shame, anger, fear and self-loathing.

Very few sexual predators will genuinely want their victim to feel that they are beautiful, intelligent, unique and loved. On the whole, they will either intuit, or possibly know, that their victim has been conditioned to believe none of these things. This makes them fair game. It gives the abuser ‘permission’ to behave as he or she does towards them. Furthermore, and as we all know, abuse is not limited to the sexual. Emotional abuse will, often as not, occur between members of the same sex, first in family contexts and later in social and professional life. By then, it is more commonly known as bullying.

As Christians, each time we say the Lord’s Prayer, we ask to be forgiven as we forgive those who have sinned against us. To be honest, I find it almost impossible to pray these words when I think of my own abusers, as well as of the hundreds of women coming forward in the #MeToo solidarity movement. What does forgiving actually entail for us? As I have never really found an answer to this question, I tend to mentally ‘bracket’ the words Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us as I am saying them, and hope God understands, but I don’t just leave the people concerned in a kind of limbo. Later, I ask God what he thinks those of us who have been sinned against are supposed to do with our recurring memories, with our feelings about these people, and with our own anger and shame.

There seems to be no answer to such questions. But I do believe that we pray to a God who not only understands but shares the feelings which prompt them. There are many ways we could visualise this sharing. Being present to the words Why have you abandoned me? spoken from the Cross is one of the most obvious, although not always the most efficacious when it comes to having our negative feelings about forgiveness validated in the moment.

Perhaps a better way is to see the wounds we still carry, because they are far from healed, as part of our transfigured inheritance. They become what makes us worthy of honour in the presence of the Lamb (Rev.14:1). In them we share in Christ’s glory, beginning with the shame and agony of his dying and death, but moving with him to his embracing of us in his risen life. This is not a pious metaphor, or some kind of mental cop-out. It is something which can take a life-time to learn, or it can be learned in a single revelatory moment of understanding.

Such an understanding gives us the greatest freedom. This does not mean that we are given permission to indulge, even momentarily, in gratuitous hatred and desire for revenge. It means that we too are forgiven for finding it impossible to ‘forgive’. But such freedom brings responsibility. We are now ‘responsible’ for our abusers, lest they fall into the abyss. This means that we must be willing to receive what is needed for us to have a transfigured way of seeing them, so that we can ‘hold’ them. It does not mean persevering with, or reviving, destructive relationships. It means allowing ourselves to have deep compassion for those who abuse us, or for their memory. We ‘hold’ what we know of them, as best we can, in the ‘safe space’ of the mercy and forgiveness of God, a space which we ourselves are also occupying. Even if the feeling of compassion only lasts for a moment, it will never completely go away, for His mercy endureth for ever.

Lent 2016 - Not in control

As I walk the fields around my house on this clear, cold and stunningly beautiful afternoon, I am reminded that God promises to those who love him something like the joy I am experiencing. I also know, as I watch the doggish joy of our Labradoodle who is hurtling towards the bushes at the far end of the field, where squirrels are bound to be, that this joy is universal. Somehow, the dog, in his doggishness, experiences the joy implicit in the promise made to those who love God; ‘what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived’ (1Cor.2:9)

I also know that others walking these fields may have quite different feelings, feelings which have nothing to do with joy. This knowledge concerns me, because the situation seems unfair. Loving God is, after all, a gift in itself, and God, we are told, does not have favourites. So how is it that some can soar to such heights of joy in the seeming ordinariness of walking a dog while others may remain indifferent to the moment, or are simply burdened by sadness? I have known such sadness myself when walking the fields, sadness attributable to life, the state of the world, or to nothing in particular. I have tried to be joyful in these moments and failed. Mindful of the suffering of millions, I have also tried to be less joyful in those other moments. Again, I have failed.

All of this pertains to the way we think about Lent. Is Lent a season which permits joy? Or is it one for moderating our response to the blessings of life? Many of us tend to do the latter for much of the time, because we like to be taken seriously and serious people do not run down hills exulting in the joy of the moment.

I think there is something almost blasphemous in refusing joy, and in the idea that joy is somehow unseemly in Lent, because joy is of God himself. To be joyful is to allow ourselves to be taken out of the emotional straight jacket we wear for much of the time so that our constricted selves can be blessed by the love of God. To refuse such moments amounts to telling God that we know what is best for us better than God does.  Such knowledge, and the will to implement it, amounts to what used to be known as pride, another of the cardinal sins, for which see a previous blog post.

Pride is about control, the control of other people or animals, and the unforgiving self control which tells us that we can manage our own salvation. The salvation offered to us by God in Christ consists in the freedom to be joyful. It is almost a condition for salvation itself. We are to ‘rejoice in the Lord always’ (Phil.4:4). Rejoicing in the Lord will inevitably involve loss of control, or the surrendering of what we think will make others, including God, take us seriously.

Here, there is a paradox. It lies in the Cross, which was the most serious event in all time but which consisted in God allowing himself to be shamed, to be not taken seriously. In the Cross and in its shame, we are taken seriously as the flawed and fragile human beings that we really are, human beings who believe that their fragility and imperfection can be strengthened or remedied through the kind of self control which makes us resistant to forgiveness.

The need to control stems from the fear of being forgiven. Forgiveness brings freedom from old ways of thinking about life, about other human beings and about God. It frees us into new and wide open spaces, in which we see the world and creation in a new way. It is a cause for joy. 

Colouring in reality

Source: youtube.com

After thirty three years of unremitting pain, Kim Phuc’s scars and nerve endings are being treated by a leading scar tissue expert who specialises in the effects of napalm. Many of us know Kim Phuc. We met her when she was just eleven years old, fleeing naked from her village on June 8^th, 1972, caught up in a South Vietnamese bombing raid.

We are entering the season of remembrance, a time when we remember not only those who have died, but also the living. We are remembering those whose lives have been so traumatised by conflict or abuse that they are alive in a quite different sense to that which most of us take for granted. Kim Phuc, having defected to Canada, made a new life out of the scars left on her mind and body by the Vietnamese war. Since then, millions of others have had their lives shaped, and distorted, by their memories of conflict.

The traumatised Syrian family landing on the Greek island of Kos will eventually make a new life in Munich. They will live that life in, and because of, their memories, memories which will also shape their identities as victims of humanity’s inhumanity. Unless they experience the kind of joy which precedes healing at the deepest level, these memories will destroy their future. But the father of the Kos family is beginning to smile again, and his children are laughing for the first time in months. Their laughter makes them instruments of healing for all of us.

The remembrance season is a good time to reflect on the fact that the victims of war are also the means of our own healing. They are to us the suffering Christ whose ‘stripes heal our wounds’. They show us not only how to survive but, more importantly, how we are meant to really live in these inchoate times. We live not by turning away from reality, but by embracing it and allowing ourselves to be forgiven, rather than seeking a way out  via some form of infantile escapism.

Yesterday, after news of more unrest and violence in Turkey, brought about by the heightening of tensions between the government and Kurdish resistants, and as a prelude to forthcoming elections, we immediately hear of the latest adult colouring-in craze. Apparently, the digital age, and the instantaneous access which it brings to the horrors of conflict, are proving too much for us. We need, it is said, ‘something analogue’ perhaps to soften things a bit, to give our eyes a rest, and possibly our hearts and brains as well, from what we see on our screens. 

But it is not clear what realities colouring-in books are designed to soften. Perhaps they are just supposed to remind us of safe designated areas, so also indicating a tendency to avoid that level of reality which takes us into the unknown, outside the safe designated area when it comes to making sense of human suffering – and to doing the right thing.

At the same time, the blank areas in the colouring books (the safe designated areas) also provide time. They provide a mental space, as they do for children, into which things can fall into place, so allowing questions to surface, as they also sometimes do for children, with respect to the inequality and random injustices which life seems to have dealt to many, while leaving others untouched. These are questions which the person doing the colouring-in would often rather not face.

The moment of truth might come suddenly and unexpectedly. As they inadvertently colour over a line, they get rattled, as we all do when certain lines (especially ones which suit our purposes at the moment) are crossed. The irony of the recent House of Lords rebellion is an interesting case in point. They are unelected. How dare they break out in the cause of justice?  and possibly, one might add, in the longer term healing of deep social divisions within our own nation. They pertain to an outdated system of class and privilege. How dare they cross the line? Colouring-in will reinforce the dubious notion that things need to stay safely in their allotted spaces, especially if the space is a contentious one. The negative implications for human well being are enormous.

Perhaps colouring-in for adults will be the means to finding something more than a coping strategy when it comes to remembering and healing the wounds of nations, and our own as well. Perhaps the blank spaces will oblige us to think of how we could colour-in the bleak lives of those who call on us for relief, asylum or fiscal justice and so begin to heal their memories with the beginnings of a joy which we so badly need ourselves.  

Cross purpose

Coventry Cross
aprilyamasaki.com

As you go down the stairs to the café at Coventry Cathedral, you pass the burned cross which was made of two pieces of wood found in the rubble of the bombed out original building. They were found lying together in the position of a cross. The stone mason, Jock Forbes, who was working on the new building, tied them in that position and there they stand behind a glass panel engraved with the words ‘Father forgive’.

If you are a first time visitor to the cathedral, you might not expect to come across a burned cross on the wall as you hurry downstairs for a cup of coffee. You are surprised by it, as if you were being accosted by a stranger. You are unsettled by the encounter even though it proves, after all, not to be violent or in any way threatening, although you find that the disparate thoughts which are swirling around in your head as you hurry down the stairs, are suddenly interrupted, as if they were being held to account, in a way which is profoundly disturbing.

It is as if this fleeting and seemingly inconsequential moment encompasses the whole of history of which you are an integral part. It questions it. The charred cross is a reminder of the horrors of war and of the violence wrought on the earth by every generation, and you are a part of that too. The moment of ‘encounter’ allows you to see this and to know it at the deepest level of your hidden inner self, as you read the words ‘Father forgive’ etched into the glass in front of the cross. Seen against the charred cross, the delicately wrought words disturb and shock.

There is another cross in Coventry Cathedral, a replica of one made of nails, nails which were also found in the ruins of the old building. The original nail cross was given to the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin as a sign of repentance for the Allied bombing. There have been, and will continue to be, many crosses. But the words ‘Father forgive’ will always remain the same, wherever they are placed and whenever they are said or thought.

Perhaps they will remain because they are not our words. Most of us, if we are honest about it, are not capable of speaking these words for more than a split second before falling back into a place of unforgiveness, hence the continuation of violence at all levels and in every context of human existence. Violence is the only language we really know and feel confident speaking. It is the language of unforgiveness.

Unforgiveness takes many forms. It is not just a perpetuation of hatred. It is more a matter of not being able to let go of fear, something to which we seem to be perversely, if unconsciously,  addicted. So someone else needs to say the words with us and for us, and keep saying them, until we learn not to be afraid of forgiveness and of what it entails. This is the purpose of the cross. It is also what makes an encounter with it both disturbing and life changing.  

Last week I wrote about the politics of hope and one commentator remarked, rightly, that hope, in politics, can be construed in many different ways, depending on individual or collective interests. I think the hope which comes with the forgiveness of the cross takes us beyond these narrow limitations. I also think that faith is sometimes revealed in the way hope is worked out and that, in this respect, it is acceptable for faith to remain undeclared or hidden.

Faith is not invariably a matter of openly declaring oneself to be of any one religion, because true religion does not need to declare itself at all. So it is not for anyone to judge whether another person has faith, or to judge others on the basis of a priori definitions about any one set of religious beliefs. Faith is about faithfulness to ideals, as well as to beliefs, as my commentator pointed out in relation to Jeremy Corbyn’s long years of faithfulness to his vision for a better society. It is also about trusting in a love that has been encountered from outside the limited boundaries of purely human forgiveness. 

On forgiving the dog

Author's photo

This morning I got up to find that our large dog had used my salad bed – the one I keep for newly transplanted seedlings – as a play area. His activities, I realise, have nothing to do with moral decision making, or even with naughtiness. He was simply trying to express the inexpressible – his uncontainable joy. I do not think he knows why he feels as he does, nor does he care. So it is perhaps understandable that he should be puzzled by my somewhat over the top reaction. I am furious with him and tell him so in no uncertain terms. He lopes off, indifferent to my shouting. I have to accept that he will do it again next time the gate is left open.

Acceptance is the essence of forgiveness. Most healthy relationships depend to a certain extent on our acceptance that things happen and will probably happen again, but that does not change the fact that the person or animal is loved. We live, in our dealings with all sentient beings, in an in-between state, between the initial impact of words or actions, both good and bad, and the absorption of that impact into the general stuff of life. Sometimes there has to be an additional outworking, if the damaging word or action is significant enough to merit it. It is a process of acceptance leading to forgiveness.

But in the case of the dog and the lettuce bed, acceptance does not preclude first trying to persuade the animal, by all means possible, short of physical violence, that his action is unacceptable. The difficulty here lies in the fact that he has little sense of rules and boundaries, such things being defined for him almost exclusively by fences and gates. If these are left open, it follows that as far as he is concerned there is no rule preventing him from being where we would rather he didn’t go.

It is also useless to expect him to empathise with one’s emotions. Anger (a rare occurrence) or crossness followed by tactile expressions of love and forgiveness are all that our labradoodle has known when it comes to naughtiness. Love and forgiveness are part of the general stuff of his life which, in relation to us, is either warm, pleasant and well fed, giving rise to a general sense of radiant, and at times over exuberant joy. Or it is ‘not quite right’.

The latter he cannot understand because dogs, no matter how much we anthropomorphise the species, do not have the necessary emotional intelligence to make sense of how they feel, and consequently how they behave, in relation to human beings. In other words, they do not make moral choices, moral choices having to do with the direct impact our words or actions will have on others. Furthermore, and hard as it is for us dog lovers to accept, they probably do not ‘love’ us in quite the way we assume. They are, first and foremost, creatures of habit. Good things should happen at certain times and if they don’t, we are the first to know about it.

 But still we love them as persons in their own right and are grateful to them in ways which are impossible to express, except as a kind of prayer uttered through the tactile affection we have for the dog. Dogs, and all animals whose lot it is to share directly in the lives of human beings, have a particular personhood which is their gift to us. So, given the uncomplicated way we appear to love our dogs, which is in part a projection of their uncomplicated way of expressing their feelings in regard to us, why is it, many would ask, that our relations with human beings cannot be so simple?

Perhaps the answer lies partly in what our expectations are of others and the extent to which we are prepared to give the best of ourselves as human beings (which differs in nature to what animals are able to give) to them irrespective of their words or actions. Giving the best of ourselves consists in being truthful first to ourselves and subsequently in our dealings with others. Again, it is a matter of acceptance, but a far more demanding acceptance than that which we resign ourselves to when it comes to the misdemeanours of dogs, because dogs do not make moral choices.

Human words and actions, even ones which are immature or of which we are only partly aware, involve moral choice. There is always an ‘intent’ of some kind. Conscience, which we all have and which animals do not, although we often relate to them as if they did, ought to tell us the true nature of that intent, including actions and words which may or may not be motivated, in part at least, by what we perceive to be love. We should not limit our love for each other to the way animals ‘love’ us. Our love needs to be worthy of our humanity.

Examining one’s conscience on a daily basis is vital to a healthy emotional life. The purpose of such an exercise is not to induce guilt but to foster wisdom. So it is not just my intent that is being examined. It is also a search for truth and meaning in others. This involves searching for where their intent in any given situation or exchange is really coming from, so that together we can move forward into a new place in our relating with them. In discovering it, and in the movement which follows, lies the forgiveness and the new life which is promised to us in Jesus Christ.