Forgiveness, pardon and reconciliation

This week has brought many deep reflections for me. Like many I was stunned four years ago when I watched what might have been the peaceful transfer of power erupt into violence that threatened the United States’ governance. I have lived much of my life in parts of the world where brawls and physical fights in the national assembly were common. Political rivals would simply “disappear”, the local euphemism for a discreet murder. Then in 1997 when I was working on my PhD dissertation in South Africa I witnessed one of the most amazing sights of my life.

I sat in a hall with several hundred South Africans—white, black and colored—and watched the Truth and Reconciliation Commission carefully question and listen to Winnie Mandela’s testimony as well as counter testimonies of the “accidental” death of a Stompie Seipei. According to the South African press, Winnie was convicted in 1991 of kidnapping Stompie but was acquitted of the murder and her sentence was commuted so that she was never jailed.

At noon that day the proceedings (not a trial) broke for lunch and I returned to the hall early for a better seat. I sat nearly alone in the hall and recognized a familiar profile standing only about 15 feet away from me. As the television cameras trained into the hall, the figure turned and I realized that indeed it was Nelson Mandela himself who had come to the hearing that dealt with the actions of his first, and at that time former wife. His commitment to non-violence and had given him 20 years in prison isolation as result of his political stands, even as violence increased in the country. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was created under his administration as president with the belief that when a person told the truth about what they had done, no matter how horrible, then they could be given amnesty for that act if it had been done for a political end.

Many Christians found the TRC principles to be unacceptable. It did not require a person to have any remorse for what they had done. Acts could have been done without any seeking of repentance. So how could there be reconciliation? Many white South Africans felt coerced into the findings of the TRC. Many black South Africans felt grave injustices had been overlooked.

But that day I watched Nelson Mandela look at a process of national and political forgiveness of which he was a part. He honored the process of a TRC that was composed of those who had been his bitter enemies as well as friends. The country began a route to healing. Nelson was not protected by a squadron of military, or sycophants. He led a deeply divided country in grace, in gentleness, and in grace. Meanwhile his former wife responded to the pleading of Archbishop Tutu that she identify her role the day Stompei had died. “Things just went wrong,” was her simple denial that she was a part of the wrong other than to be a bystander.

We have in this past week been in a virtual hall watching the forces of government grant pardons, commute sentences, and mandate a justice department to bring to investigate and charge any official failing to pursue an agenda of a new president. So we do well to ask what place pardons and commutations have in politics of a divided country. Do they bring reconciliation?

If, on the one hand a president makes a “preemptive pardon” has he in fact passed a personal judgement that the actions taken were indeed wrong and therefore needed pardon? If he pardons because he believed that a political process drove an investigation is it different than what happened with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission? If a president pardons and/or commutes the sentences of those who have had the privilege of a court trial (which was lacking in South Africa) has he undermined justice or has he shown mercy?

I will not attempt to answer the questions, rather I want to draw some principles from political pardon and forgiveness as I witnessed it in South Africa:

1. A political pardon is valid based on the office or position of the one declaring it.

2. A political pardon has value based the declaration being made by a neutral party who has no benefit from the pardon.

3. A political pardon cannot bring reconciliation unless there is recognition by the wrong doer that a wrong was done.

4. A political pardon may invoke revenge and retribution when it mainly validates the pardoner.

5. A political pardon may help in reconciliation of diverse parties to the extent it is seen as position-neutral.

6. A political pardon must be based upon established truth-telling.

7. Truth-telling is established in the hearing of multiple perspectives.

8. Reconciliation is helped by truth-telling, but cannot be guaranteed.

9. Reconciliation requires some compensation for the party wronged.

10. There are different kinds of forgiveness, but the forgiveness that brings reconciliation is one that removes penalty and restores community.

Africa has much to teach America. I encourage you to reflect on the TRC and the USA. Anything less than the spirit of the TRC cannot lead to greatness, but even the spirit of the TRC could not remove flaws that brought later failures in South Africa. Christian forgiveness and reconciliation must be more than the political forgiveness of the TRC, but it cannot be less.

Luke 1:76And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,
77to give knowledge of salvation to his people
in the forgiveness of their sins,
78because of the tender mercy of our God,
whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high
79to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

Several things came to mind as I looked at Mom’s still face. She had experienced more sunrises than most people. At 102 she had seen the impact of over 37,000 sunrises whether or not she watched them.

That was the import of Zechariah’s prophecy. Many people sit in darkness and the shadow of death who have some recognition that the sun rises. Prison cells for centuries have been marked up to show the passing of days, months and years. Some have perished in that darkness and death. Some lived to see the light of a free day.

In these past days the awful rule of President Assad of Syria has ended. Day by day new discoveries are made that reveal his cruelty and the suffering of his people. By contrast, Zechariah’s prophecy was that the mercy of God would guide His people into a way of peace. God’s promise was not just for a single befuddled people in Israel. It was for all the people of the middle east and the world.

So perhaps we can use Zechariah’s words as both gage and gauge for what is happening in the middle east and the world. They are a gauge because only the knowledge and repentance of the sins of greed, power and corruption will show when forgiveness rather than revenge is present. That is true in Assad’s power-vacuum as well as in the Washington DC scramble.

But it is also a gage, or God’s guarantee given towards His promise. To Zechariah and his wife were given a son John, who proclaimed the Peace-Bringer Jesus. So John as the last of the Old Testament prophets was a peace builder who prepared the way for the Peace Maker. When the Peace Maker blessed His disciples he promised them a Peace Keeper, the Holy Spirit.

The world will now scramble to fit back the pieces in the middle east. The destruction of the Israeli Defense Force bombing has indeed broken down a lot of physical walls even as it has created stronger emotional and social barrier walls. The political forces that rush into the vacuum behind Assad’s departure likewise will stumble over the same basic “peace paradigm” that the UN has been using. For many years the UN has defined peace as a process of peace building, peace making and peace keeping, the very process that God called out so long ago. But the UN has missed a key part.

Zechariah spoke about that key part: day by day people walking in the light of repentance and forgiveness. So, in the midst of pain and destruction, don’t fail to show God’s good news.

This is our “Twisted together with the World” blog site. If you want to share it, please do. You can also choose to follow either this posting or our family posting (Karl and Debbie Twisted together), or both. The content is different.

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A tree grows up into the Light.  It provides a habitat for creatures including people, and it is part of the natural renewing of the earth.  As our regular ministry with MTW comes to a conclusion by December, we are transitioning to a ministry focused on writing and consulting.  Our somewhat regular ministry newsletter of the last 50 years transitions now into a regular family post.  But this global post in intended to let you think through global issues with us. We invite you to invite others to sign up for either of them

as well.  Let us walk together, grow together, remind together of God’s hope for broken people in a broken world.  We need to see the light, share the light, and grow toward the light.  

The goal of our global posts is to help you think about and respond to issues critical to our contemporary world that God loves, grieves for, has redeemed, and has said that He will dwell with, together.  Like the trees of our logo, “together” is not “sameness”.  It is not “easiness”.  Instead, see it as being connected and reaching to the Light”.

Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

Home

We live in an age of massive people movement—refugees, internally displaced peoples, and migrations.  All of these people are actually in transition from one home to another.  One of my PhD students in Australia is doing her research on how the church creates a welcome of shalom for refugees.  Her first attempt to get refugees to fill in a questionnaire on their experience found no one willing to answer.  Why?  It turned out that they did not consider themselves refugees, they had already landed and were being incorporated into a new home.  Once they had left a home, then became homeless, and finally found a new home.  So in their eyes they were not refugees, not migrants, not displaced.  They had become “re-rooted”, and distanced themselves from the moniker “refugee”.

History has always seen people and peoples move around.  The Bible is actually in many ways, a text book on migration and movement.  Adam and Eve…Abraham…Moses…the many captivities…Jesus’ flight to Egypt as a baby, and relocation to a new town…the Jewish diaspora after the Roman/Jewish wars and destruction of the second Temple. It doesn’t just describe the change of location, but more pointedly what God was doing in the midst of the movement.  Always the story is about understanding God’s redemption.

One current people movement in the US is the wave of international students. At the International House, Baltimore, we provide a “home” for the time that international scholars are at their post mostly at Johns Hopkins University, although now we have one scholar from Kenya who is in a program at St Mary’s Seminary.  We now have scholars from China, Palestine, Turkey, Kenya, Brazil, and next month possibly Afghanistan.  We gather with them for a “family meal” every month and now have to travel across the city from our “home for life” as our senior living facility is called.  Our home too has moved.  So what is home?

The important reason that the International House, Baltimore exists, is so that residents from around the world might come to find a home—a place of welcome.  That home needs not just to make them comfortable, but whole.  Shalom-whole.  Several weeks ago a woman came up to me smiling to thank me.  She had lived for several months in the International House.  As a Chinese scholar she studied psychology.  She helped us untangle some deeply-rooted conflicts in the household.  Her point of appreciation was that in coming to receive a PhD, she had actually found her fulfillment of life in knowing Jesus as her redeemer. So, she left a home and came to another home, in order to fully find a home.  Last week she introduced her mother to me—I was part of her new family.

We expected to have been in Beirut for a conference on reconciliation when the current war broke out.  (More on that at another time—we hope to get there still in January).  My colleague there shared that his home, and the seminary compound, has become home to many displaced Shiite Muslims from the southern part of the city.  The bombs not only dropped in the south, but blocks from his house in the “safe zone”.  Several months ago as things were already heating up, his prayer request was, “…don’t pray that we will be safe, but that we will be faithful”.  His heart is to provide a place and be a source of God’s rest.  Shalom-home.

Imagine what would happen in our world today if all God’s people, the people who belong to His family, would have that heart?  What would happen in Europe and Africa and Asia and America? There would not only be a place for scholars and refugees and migrants to find housing, but there would be hearts of reception.  Imagine if we all prayed that we would be faithful rather than worry about what might or might not be safe?  Imagine what would happen if we as God’s people took our fears and sat at the feet of Jesus?  Jesus took His disciples on an outing through Samaria where they stayed for days so that they might know what it meant to be outcasts, travelers, migrants.  There they were received, ate, and believed together with those they had despised. The redemption of their attitudes began at the Sychar well (John 4:1-43).  Jesus brings deeply divided people together.  It starts with me and you.

Perfect Love casts out fear. 

1 John 4:18.19

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Sychar Well