Forgiveness
While agonizing on the cross, Jesus said: “Forgive them father, as they don't know what they do”.
First-degree critical interpretation
Everyone agrees that forgiveness is a very noble act. How so?
If you forgive someone and no one knows that you did, not even the forgiven one, does it really matter that you forgave? Is the great act the forgiveness itself, or is it the declaration of forgiveness that really matters? When Jesus supposedly uttered these famous words, did he need to utter them? Weren’t his thoughts of forgiveness enough? Couldn’t have God received his thoughts and forgave them? Or does God hear only the spoken words? Is Jesus really forgiving them? Or is he forgiving them just because they don’t know what they do? What if they knew, would he still forgive them? Or was Jesus, on the brink of dying, in this late hour, still trying to preach forgiveness to the people around him?
All this is very unclear, unconvincing and intriguing! I am starting to believe that this forgiveness scheme is a big sham. A tooth for a tooth and an eye for an eye seems to me, all of the sudden, a much more logical, consistent and convincing philosophy. When you reclaim the eye you were deprived from, there is not much ambiguity from whom you will reclaim it, how you will reclaim it, or whether the offending person will know about it or not?
Moreover, before the offender tries, or even merely thinks, to harm you again, they will think long and hard. The retaliation message is clear, and clarity creates credibility, which begets belief. Wasn’t that the purpose of it all?
It is easier to forgive people as Jesus did, just before he died. He didn’t have to live with his offenders ever again. He didn’t have to see their ignorant faces smirking at him with the satisfaction of impunity. He didn’t run the risk of being offended again by the same people because his forgiveness gave them the confidence that their offenses will be, once more, forgiven. Jesus forgave without having to suffer the consequences of such an irresponsible act done towards people who don’t know what they are doing, don’t understand what forgiveness means or fathom how it feels like, let alone receiving it. Jesus forgave and died. Is dying the only situation where we can forgive, since we cannot be offended again? Forgive everything to everyone; right before you die… that seems a more convincing slogan! The only caveat here is that many people, not to say most people, don’t really know when they are going to die… We all recall what Jesus did to the merchants in front of the temple; forgiveness is not the first word that comes to our mind to describe it… Back then he was not about to die on a cross!
Jesus, if it were really you who said: “Forgive them father, as they don't know what they do”, and not some over zealous apostle interpreting your thoughts or some enthusiastic Coptic monk transcribing the scriptures, then I am sorry my friend, but on this one, I will disagree with you. If you said it while you were on the cross, wounded, exhausted, tired, feverish, surely you were not in complete control of your mind and you didn’t really know what you were saying. Nevertheless, I will not forgive you for saying it without measuring the consequences it will have on humanity. We cannot forgive any sane person, for a serious offense, just by asserting that they don’t know what they did.
Some people argue that forgiving is a way to liberate yourself from the hold of the offenders. I often hear them say: forgive and forget. Their logical argument states that after you forgive your offenders, you can turn the page and project your thoughts towards a future that doesn’t include them. People who are holding this line of thought are confusing two essentially different things: the need for vengeance and forgiveness. We don’t need to forgive in order to abandon our quest for retaliation. We can simply erase the offenders from our lives without granting them any forgiveness for what they did. By erasing them we decide to let go our need for vengeance, and by doing that we free ourselves from their existence. Instead of “forgive and forget”, I say, “forget”. At the beginning of this text, I questioned the value of forgiveness if the offenders didn’t know that they were forgiven.
Indeed, forgetting without forgiving simply means that the offenders will never get the relief of being forgiven, and if there is, as the Catholic Church believes, a “judgment day”, then God will weigh this offense in the balance and decide to forgive them or not.
Second and third degree critical analysis
If you analyze further this famous quote: “forgive them my father, as they don't know what they do”, you will find two opposing elements: Wisdom (good) and Ignorance (evil)
1. At one level of analysis, wisdom is associated with knowledge (knowing the other and its actions), with intelligence (ability to differentiate between who we are and who the other is), with the critical mind (capacity to assess the others as ignorant), with greatness (willingness to request the forgiveness), with power (ability to request the forgiveness), with dignity (the value that Jesus has of himself), with courage and strength to win over the fear of suffering and dying. By opposition, ignorance is associated with foolishness, inability, smallness, impotence, …
2. At another level of analysis, wisdom shows us another facet, more aggressive and less wary of others. Wisdom in her might despises the “ignorant” others, they don’t know what they do; it crushes them without mercy (ironically the church refers to this quote as the pinnacle of mercy). Wisdom is telling us, through that quote: “ignorant people should be ignored, therefore forgiven, as they don’t really matter”. The only time they matter is when the wise pay attention to them…
3. If we look at this quote from the ignorant point of view. What does forgiveness really mean to them? What importance does it bear for them? What is its usefulness? Since the beginning of times, ignorance continues to devastate humanity, shine with insolence, despise wisdom, and use forgiveness for its permanent rehabilitation.
4. Goodness is dissimulating behind this quote of forgiveness, one of its biggest shortcomings: its helplessness towards evil. The only weapon it can oppose to evil is forgiveness. How weak and lame is that weapon! We all know that, at the end of that famous day, and almost every day before and since, goodness and wisdom have been crucified and slaughtered by evil and ignorance. History is full with such stories from Socrates to Jesus, from Galileo to Martin Luther King and John Lennon, … and all the innocents killed in every war waged, anywhere in the world.
So, what to make of forgiveness?
If we accept that this quote is from Jesus, then it demonstrates his limitations in making human beings evolve. This quote is destined only to those very rare people who were born free, powerful, wise, and above the others, like Jesus. It is clearly emphasizing the difference and widening the gap between them and the others. It is basically saying, the only way to forgive is to re-assert your superiority towards the one you are forgiving; this same one who is using forgiveness as an absolution and a permission to perpetuate their ignorance and its consequences on you. Finally, on a more pragmatic level, forgiveness is just an instrument to soothe tensions, calm anger, recover a superficial peace or try to manipulate evil.
In conclusion, I say to you:
Don’t forgive them* if they don’t know what they do … because they will do it again. Maybe** forgive them once, only if they know what they do, they immediately stop doing it, they honestly regret it, and they are determined, with all their will, to never, ever do it again.
*There is one exception to this: the person who committed the deed is crazy (in the medical sense), in which case they should have been locked up, and the people responsible for locking them up and failed to do so are accountable for the crazy person’s actions.
**Maybe, as some acts cannot be forgiven. For example, you cannot forgive someone who raped or killed someone you love, especially your child!
The above formula is surely longer and less poetic than the one attributed to Jesus, but in my life values there is no place for any formula, no matter how beautiful it is, which leads to the defeat of the good and wise and to the triumph of the evil and ignorant.