5 questions on forgiveness

Earlier this week, someone asked me, “So, do you believe that there are bad people or not?”

This question came on the heels of my talking about our collective loss of nuance, extending benefit of the doubt, and the virtue of looking for the good in each other over the bad.

I tend to respond to questions with more questions, because I love dialogue and debate and I think there is more to be learned in sustained disagreement than there is in forced compliance.

But in our current Age of Rage, questioning the question can be an infuriating habit to some. My “toxic trait”. Still, It depends… and How do you define… and many other similar responses interest me more than zero-sum replies that shut down relationship and herd people into camps.

So, it’s not that I want for a POV on whether there are “bad people” in the world… it’s just that I think it’s more interesting that anyone would respond like that to a statement about forgiveness.

Today, I want to be very practical and offer 5 questions I use to question the questions that often come up in pursuit of peace.

5 Questions on Forgiveness

1. What is your understanding of forgiveness?

2. What is your biggest fear related to forgiveness?

3. Have you ever needed forgiveness?

4. What are the potential consequences of not forgiving?

5. Can you envision a scenario where forgiveness leads to a better outcome?

Let’s take them one at a time…

1. What is your understanding of forgiveness?

The words we use most are often the most misunderstood. If we don’t have alignment on what we each mean, we can end up missing each other for no good reason. Some people think “forgiveness” equals dishonor to victims, real or alleged. Some think it means “getting off the hook”. Some think it is a mental or spiritual exercise. Do you mean personal or institutional? Legal? Regardless, it’s important to pursue a common understanding so that everything else takes place within a common framework.

2. What is your biggest fear related to forgiveness?

In the context of genocide or war, “forgiveness” can feel like a license for the aggressors to attack again. And in all cases, forgiveness can be humbling, even humiliating, if we have to walk back our promises to “destroy” or “avenge”. Leaving ego- and justice-oriented promises unfulfilled can feel like weakness or self/community-betrayal. Still, it’s helpful to get these explicit concerns on the table so we can address them and see if they hold up under scrutiny.

3. Have you ever needed forgiveness?

Ah, now we’re cooking! “Sure, but what I did was nothing like what they did!” Often, these claims are clear cut—genocide and accidentally hurting your co-worker’s feelings are not the same. But other times, who did what, whose was worse, and who started it are revisionist, or simply a matter of opinion. But if we can each admit that we’ve all needed a do-over at some point, we can at least establish a framework that allows the timeless wisdom of love to have a seat at the table.

4. What are the potential consequences of not forgiving?

If we’re honest, we’re not very good at questioning our assumptions. And inasmuch as we assume it is our right to withhold forgiveness, we are likely to think that asserting that right merely extends the status quo. We don’t think about withholding forgiveness as an act of compounding someone’s pain. We don’t think about it as engaging in generational alienation. We don’t think about the way exile and exclusion reshape the identities and experiences of all who get cut off from one another. It’s easy to think of non-forgiveness as a non-action and, therefore, a non-issue. But nothing could be further from the truth.

5. Can you envision a scenario where forgiveness leads to a better outcome?

People find it very easy to throw up roadblocks to questions like this. They would never accept- and You don’t know them like I do-type stuff. But that’s not actually the question.

“You might be right,” I say. “I’m not asking how likely you think a better outcome is right now. I’m just asking if you have the creativity and vision to even articulate how forgiveness could theoretically lead to a better outcome.”

If someone can at least acknowledge that preemptive love, forgiveness, etc could lead to better outcomes, you can always have a follow-up conversation about the likelihood itself and whether anything could be done to increase the odds. The key is opening the mind to the possibility that forgiveness could be better.

So, are there bad people?

I find that “bad people” language and labels are often a way of giving ourselves license to do what we already want to do. We don’t want to reengage. We don’t want to risk. We don’t want to eat humble pie. And sometimes we do want to disparage and destroy. “Bad people” deserve all that and more.

That’s why I think there’s a better framing. What if we could just all agree that there’s bad in people? And also good.

Now we’re out of the zero-sum mentality and opening our minds toward nuance. We can come to different conclusions about whether you’re 99% good or I’m 55% bad based on any number of known and unknown values and biases. But as long as we continue to contend with the fact that there is a flame of goodness in everyone, we can be encouraged to fan it, rather than snuff it out.

Some final thoughts

As a struggling peacemaker, everything for me boils down to outcomes. What will make more peace—in me, in the community, and in the world?

I’ve never seen sustained shame and bitterness create real, lasting heart change. I have seen shame force ideas underground for a while. I’ve seen people conform publicly. Shame can even drive policy, both positive and negative. But I’ve never seen name-calling, character assault, or exile bring about the world we say we want.

Here’s how I issued the warning in 2019 at the end of my last book, Love Anyway:

What I have seen work is engagement, dialogue, cease-fires, negotiation, forgiveness, restitution, and reconciliation. This is how we stop passing on our pain and break the cycle.

If our goal is real change and not just destruction, I don’t think we will ever beat the timeless wisdom of love. It may cost us tremendously and look like naïveté in the short term, but its Light and warmth can bring far more good than a flood of sustained bitterness.

Still, these are just my field notes as we work across multiple communities grappling with genocide, war, and more.

Do you see it differently? What do you think I’m getting wrong here?

Jeremy
Cofounder
HUMANITE

@thejcourt