Introduction:Forgiveness
Derek Poole

Let the church be church
Brian Moore

From the Director - Statement in response to IRA and IICD Announcements
David Porter

Decommissioning - How do I feel?
David Clements

Embodying Forgiveness
Patrick Mitchel

Forgiveness in the New Testament
Bill Addley

Better than Bitterness
David Clements

Necessary Miracles - Thoughts on Forgiveness and Politics
Duncan Morrow

Faith and Practice - Moyna Bill
Ruth Hutchinson

Embodying Forgiveness Project
Stephen Graham

Tutu Book Review
Stephen Graham

Jones Book Review
Alice Swann

Transformation 2002

< Past Issues Archive

RESPONSE TO GREGORY JONES - EMBODYING FORGIVENESS
First I want to thank Dr. Jones for his thoughtful, biblical and inspiring exploration of an issue of profound importance for Christians and the wider society within Northern Ireland. He has reminded us of how desperately forgiveness needs to be embodied in this divided community.

Greg spoke of the ‘burden of memories’. One tongue-in-cheek definition of Irishness (which is just as applicable for ‘Northern Irishness’ as well) is of ‘a people walking backwards into the future.’ In other words, even as we ‘advance’ in this technological postmodern age, the memories of the past, real and imagined, continue to have the power to shape both our present and our future.

In Northern Ireland some use memories as a weapon against their enemy. For others the past is something to be repressed, it is too painful to bear. In either case an unresolved and unredeemed past continues to intrude its malignant presence into the present.

It seems to me that this is a society awash with recent memories of violence and on-going fear of violence.

• Levels of suspicion and perceptions of injustice remain high.

• Amongst the Protestant community especially, there is a deep unease and perhaps even widespread despair about the future.
  

• Out of political necessity, each participant in the conflict appears to be advancing with its own version of history unchallenged and even endorsed - and by participants I mean everyone: individuals, churches, governments, political parties and especially paramilitaries. Joe Liechty and Cecelia Clegg’s recent book on Moving Beyond Sectarianism (Columba, 2001) powerfully demonstrates how all of us, in different ways and to different degrees, have been actively involved in the dynamics of sectarianism.
  

• The sinful actions and attitudes of others remain clearly in focus despite specks and even planks in our own eyes.
  There is little felt need to repent of past actions and to ask one’s enemies’ forgiveness for past wrongs. After all, if I am ‘not to blame’ I don’t need to be ‘forgiven’.
  

• Many traumatised by violence have yet to have their suffering legitimised and their stories heard. Victims’ experiences seem to ‘matter less’ as they appear to be sacrificed at the altar of political progress.

This is a society, therefore, where memories of both victims and perpetrators remain largely unredeemed. Such memories are like slow-burning fuses that may yet explode to threaten hopes of a stable political future.

In this context, Greg demonstrated the inadequacy of just trying to ‘forgive and forget’. He has reminded us that forgiveness is not easy, or cheap, or automatic. He also showed us the inevitable failure of just trying to ‘forget without forgiving’. The past thirty years in Northern Ireland cannot and should not be forgotten.

However, Greg reminded us in his first session of the rich and deep resources within Scripture, and woven into the fabric of the Christian faith, of the transforming and redeeming power of forgiveness. He pointed us to the wonder of God’s grace where reconciliation is made possible only as a result of God’s loving initiative ‘through the death of his son’ to those not only alienated from him but ‘when we were God’s enemies’. No wonder Paul rejoices in God as he reflects on these deep truths (Rom. 5:10-11).

Surely this has profound implications for God’s people, called to reflect his character and mercy in Northern Ireland, a place riven by competing ideologies and long legacies of hatred. Forgiving is different from simply removing responsibility or excusing the sin. It is looking one’s enemy square in the face and taking the risk of offering forgiveness with no guarantee of acceptance.

Perhaps what has struck me most today is the remarkable power of forgiveness to confront and transform evil. In Romans 5 Paul describes Christ as the second Adam. But he writes that ‘the gift is not like the trespass’ and emphasises ‘how much more’ powerful and wonderful is the work of Christ in contrast to Adam’s original sin.

Christian forgiveness has a similar power to transform destructive relationships. It does not ignore evil but has the capacity to redeem the past into something more powerful and wonderful. Forgiveness forms an integral part of the Christian hope of healed past and a redeemed future. Both being forgiven by God and learning to forgive are essential experiences at the heart of the Christian faith.

A powerful example of the transforming power of forgiveness was evident in the experiences of Christians belonging to St. James’ Church, Capetown, South Africa. In July 1993, three Pan African Congress (PAC) terrorists burst into the church and launched a brutal gun and grenade attack on the congregation. Eleven people were killed and many seriously wounded. Many reactions followed; confusion, pain, anger, interpretations of the attack as demonic and some statements of forgiveness. In 1995, under the subsequent Truth and Reconciliation Forum the attackers applied for an amnesty available to those who demonstrated ‘sincere repentance’ for past wrongs. Church members faced the reality of the new emotional upheaval of facing the killers and reliving the traumatic event. As part of this process, church leaders eventually met with the PAC men who expressed contrition and asked for forgiveness. Questions remained. Was the repentance genuine or just a necessary strategy to obtain amnesty? Talking of this meeting afterwards, church leader Bishop Frank Retief said the meeting allowed him to move ‘from an attitude of forgiveness to an actual act of forgiveness’. He took the risky step of embracing the killers as a visible sign of reconciliation. Arriving at that stage had been a long and difficult journey, which neither had overlooked the sin nor minimised the suffering of the victims. Nor was the pain of the past suddenly resolved at this meeting. The killers’ subsequent amnesty in 1998 left many struggling with a sense of injustice and wondering if it is harder to forgive when the safety net of legal punishment by the State has been removed.

One of the attackers later spoke to a Xhosa member of the church and explained his motivation for the attack. He had grown up convinced that Christianity was inextricably linked to white Apartheid power and had hated it with a passion. The church was simply a focus for that hate, its members dehumanised targets in a ‘war’ for ‘liberation’. Now, after meeting his victims who did not hate in return but offered forgiveness, he said, “I want you to know that we were amazed and we understand now that that was not Christianity. This is Christianity.”

What implications this story has for evangelicals in Ulster! Many see evangelicals here as being, if not the main part of the problem, no different to anyone else. Historically, evangelicalism has been so deeply involved in offering political and spiritual support for Unionist power that the Gospel has become inextricably linked to one political ideology. Evangelical faith has all too often been absorbed into the political competition between Unionism and Irish Nationalism.

Today, Dr. Jones has focused our minds on what it means to be followers of Christ faced with the challenge of sharing this small space of Northern Ireland with (former?) enemies responsible for awful and unjustified violence against ‘our’ community. Perhaps it is this issue more than any other that has split Unionism into pro- and anti-Agreement factions. The latter reject the Agreement as morally flawed and refuse to accept unrepentant enemies. This is perfectly understandable on a political level but not, I would suggest, an attitude consistent for Christians called to be ‘Christ’s ambassadors’ who have been given a ‘ministry of reconciliation’ (2 Cor. 5:18-20). Instead, in these post Good Friday Agreement days, a vital challenge for evangelicals is to demonstrate a radical forgiveness that is truly counter-cultural because it is only forgiveness that has the power to transform the ‘burdens of memories’ that continue to weigh this society down. We should be grateful to Greg for provoking us afresh to think how this can be done on the ground.

Patrick Mitchel is Director of Studies at Irish Bible Institute, Dublin. He is author of ‘Evangelicalism and National Identity in Ulster’ 1922-1998 (to be published in 2002 by Oxford University Press).