Should Societal Judgment Be Time Limited?
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The impetus for this post was a most unlikely subject. I've been recently deconstructing my own uneasy feelings towards disgraced NFL Quarterback Michael Vick. My partner, a native of Philadelphia, is a huge fan of the Eagles professional football team and is thrilled at the its recent success with Vick at the helm. When the dog fighting revelations surfaced, I admit that I wanted to see him banned from the league for life. Instead, Vick served nearly two years in jail, filed for bankruptcy, missed two full seasons, and was blackballed from his original team. His stunning return to form was highly unexpected. And as much I try to be a forgiving person, I simply cannot extend it to a player who is nonetheless a strong candidate to be eventually awarded the National Football League's Most Valuable Player for a most impressive season.
My partner's response is calm, but firmly adamant. How long should we continue to punish anyone for past sins, particularly after they have done their time and suffered for it? I do see her point, though I still retain my skepticism. She frequently and adamantly encourages me to reevaluate my initial viewpoint, with limited success. So it is that on this same basic subject, a fellow Quaker, Betsy Cazden, recently invoked a thought-provoking, and highly controversial query for us all to ponder. Adapted from the theologian and philosopher Miroslav Volf, Cazden poses, “In heaven are there permanent memorials to Auschwitz, to Hiroshima, to the Middle Passage, to the Quaker martyrs?”
Or, to put it another way, can the atrocities humans have committed against each other be rightly let go after a time? Visitors to Holocaust concentration camps and memorials to those killed by Nazi atrocities are implored to "never forget." Is it healthy to eventually forgive and forget? Is it even possible to keep its memory alive beyond a certain time? Eventually, everyone negatively influenced by these infamous crimes against humanity committed in the name of the Fatherland will pass on to the next life. When they do, will wave after wave of museums, memorials, films, literature, and personal anecdotes suffice to serve as the supreme deterrent? Seemingly in in opposition to them is the radical forgiveness espoused by Jesus, commandments unwavering and undeniable.
"If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins." "Stop judging, so that you won't be judged, because the way that you judge others will be the way that you will be judged, and you will be evaluated by the standard with which you evaluate others."
We are reflections of the way we react to other people, particularly in how we respond to those who break the rules, for any reason, and at any time. Putting ourselves in the place of those we criticize will be sure to create discomfort. If we are honest enough with ourselves, we can see how our judgments evolved and grew throughout the course of our lives. Every human develops differently based on specific environmental factors combined with the complex biology of how we came to be in the womb. This is not to excuse offhand anyone's bad behavior or poor decision making, but rather to note the complicated series of events that goes into the formation of each and every human life. Without contemplating the entire picture, our instant, summary judgments are based on incomplete and inadequate information.
Since I became a Friend, I have been called to avoid absolute words like "evil", in that they provide no possible way to see the Divine within the mortal. Even so, I find it a severe challenge not to see historical figures like Adolf Hitler in such blanket terms. The best I can manage is a weak, strained kind of halfhearted concession which states that der Führer certainly must have loved dogs. Which is more than we can say for Michael Vick. Hitler may have loved canines, but he certainly didn't love many of his fellow human beings. It is an extraction of the scriptural passages above that forms Quaker theology and I concede that as a spiritual discipline, I need to work on myself to not fall into the habit of making self-righteous pronouncements of any sort. Still, when one considers genocides, regardless of who is involved, I seek not to dishonor the memory of those who perished. With this ambivalence, a column I began with open-ended questions I conclude the same way.
Is it finally time to forgive, even if we do not forget? Would forgiveness facilitate healing? What is the ultimate and lasting value of maintaining an open sore? For all our striving, are we fighting a losing battle with time? If we are religious or spiritual people, do we trust in the guidance of God to open hearts and close wounds, or is this our responsibility, first and foremost?
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Wow. Thank you both for your kind words, Joyce and Elese :)
Elese, you've said a mouthful with your comment, and you, too, have much wisdom to share. I will certainly check out your radio show.
Great piece. Something I wished I had thought about. Very well written and a powerful point of view that I whole-heartedly concur with. Bravo.
I joined SheWrites today because of your article, and because my boyfriend and I had a similar discussion this week. My boyfriend's view as a huge dog lover (read: whisperer), is that Vick should be banned from football for life - and then some. At least that was his view. So we talked too.
My question was not 'when is it time to forgive?' ...but who really suffers when we don't? As I sat with my boyfriend it was clear to me there was more hate and disgust in him right then than there probably was in Michael Vick at that moment. Who lives with that? I do. And he does. And our nice lunch together becomes less and less pleasant too. It poisons your life. It poisoned mine.
I held a grudge against my father for 15 years. What I learned from that experience was this: I deprived myself of my Dad. No matter who created a war between us; I kept it going.
I needed to end it because I could see my life was a mess. I just wanted to be happy. So, first thing, I stopped trying to change my Dad by punishing him (not speaking to him). Then I looked closely and realized he had always been acting in accordance with his understanding of his life and his needs at the time. He was incapable of doing anything else. We all are the same. We can't act outside of what we believe and what we are thinking in any particular moment. Hitler and Vick are the same that way. I'd say it's not just how we are made, but how we are thinking and what we are believing that creates our actions in the world.
Of course, as you say, that is not an excuse for killing being OK. It's not OK to kill dogs. It's not OK to gas people. We have laws in place, and no one is suggesting you get to do everything you want and not feel the consequences. Actions and non-actions still all have results/consequences - no matter what the reasons. Understanding the reasons doesn't make us pussies in the face of things that are illegal or immoral - it makes us less confused about what's happening.
So there are the facts of what happened and then there are the ways we act, the things we say, and the lives we live based on we see things. Understanding my Dad didn't change anything that happened. I used the 'so called' facts to be outraged for a long time. To who's detriment? Mainly mine. I could only see out of the lense of hatred. That created my life. It didn't really affect his. We are confused when we think we drink the poison and the other person dies (what was I thinking it would do to not speak to him? That the hate in me would change him into a loving Dad? As I modeled hate, I wanted him to love me?).
The holocaust museum doesn't say 'don't forgive' - it says 'don't forget'. I know a holocaust survivor and she has forgiven. She would say, understand: understand that what is in Hitler and what is in Michael VIck is in all of us. We are all capable of killing. You may not kill a dog; you may just kill someone's dream by stomping on their enthusiasm. You may rail against Hitler and then notice you sound just like him when you talk about homeless people. How many avengers of justice for animals have ended up being perpetrators of crimes against other people with families and children?
We all have hate in us and we need to look at how we still think it's OK to hate and maintain there are certain things not to forgive. All discipline, punishment and correction can be delivered without hate. I remember the father of one of the girls killed in the Oklahoma City bombing say he refused to support the death penalty for Timothy McVey, because hating would make him into the same kind of man as McVey.
When I forgave my father, I looked hard at myself and realized, with horror I had parts of me that could behave just like him. I wasn't better, or more spiritual or more evolved. It was not up to me to be his teacher. It was up to me to live my life. That's it. Live in it or die in it. My choice.
There is nothing that any of us aren't capable of - depending on what we are thinking at any given time. When I took a good hard look at the ways I was a perpetrator of hate I found I had plenty to work on. I stopped needing to have someone to hate so that I could feel better about myself.Now I clean up my thinking first. I make me my focus now, rather than finding the bad in others.
Being mad at my father and not speaking to him all those years nearly ruined only one person. Me. I'm so glad it didn't. I didn't just forgive him, I let go of thinking I was better, that I was judge and jury, and I looked for ways to love instead. It's weird at first. You get used to it.
Here's the thing about forgiveness that is so amazing. You get peace even if the other person never changes.
And that's amazing.
Thanks for your post.
And just as a side note, I have a radio show. One of my biggest shows was about forgiveness after 9/11. One of my next most popular - the show with my Dad. I am so lucky I got over myself.