Seeking justice, finding forgiveness

“What are kingdoms without justice? They’re just gangs of bandits.” – St. Augustine, City of God

“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” – Jesus on the cross, Luke 23:34 (NIV)

As I start this post, we are less than 48 hours removed from what is reportedly the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. There are so many things to say about so many aspects of what happened; I can’t possibly cover them adequately here. I will try to get to one cogent conclusion.

I hear and read a lot of outrage, full of points and counterpoints:

• The media is ignoring how this was an anti-gay hate crime.
• The media is ignoring how this was a terrorist attack.
• This wouldn’t have happened if we had stricter gun laws.
• Blaming guns for extremist acts makes no sense.
• The president didn’t mention Islamist violence.
• This has nothing to do with Islam.
• Why didn’t the FBI stop this from happening?
• We can’t arrest every gun owner who says alarming things.

I am upset. I am upset that in this episode and others, hate is winning.[1] The perpetrator hates something or someone and does something terrible to show it. Amidst our grieving, we start analyzing why this happened so that we can take reasonable actions to prevent it from happening again. We disagree on root causes, and we disagree on actions, and we may end up hating those who disagree with us.

I do my best to view it from all sides – to separate the valid concerns from the ridiculous. This is complicated, and it is no cop-out to acknowledge that.

It is a cop-out, however, to do nothing. But I am not a legislator. I am not a member of law enforcement. I am usually not an activist, either. My political worldview is largely colored by my desire to be left alone by the government and by other people, and that approach does not lend itself to agitating, no matter how worthy the cause.

So what am I supposed to do to make things better in the face of these hateful murders in Orlando? I read a Facebook post yesterday that touched on three things that anyone (including me) can do to improve things. It was targeted at hate/fear based on sexual orientation, but the underlying principles apply broadly:

1. Whenever you hear anti-_____ speech that you know is wrong, tell the person to cut it out.
2. Don’t tell someone that their view of an occurrence, or a person, or anything else is invalid just because you haven’t noticed what they’re describing to you.
3. Love people for who they are.

No. 2 is a toughie for me if I’m not intentional about it. I have led a relatively privileged and comfortable existence, and I am in the traditional majority when you look at sex, race, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation. I’ve never been harassed for anything more serious than some hick-ish tendencies, some of which manage to persist today (like pushing my baseball cap way back on my head – yeah, my wife loves that one).

Pretty harmless stuff – a comfortable life, all things considered. So when I read on Facebook where one of my gay friends says he still gets called “faggot” on a regular basis at a particular street intersection in his city … it makes me think. How many times have I missed casual, or even blatant, acts of hatred because I wasn’t paying attention?

Anyway, back to those three things. All of us can do them, and we should do them. I have one other thing to add to the list: “4. Forgive people, no matter how heinous their actions.”

That one isn’t easy for me, either. Often it is not something I can do in my own strength, and it can be helpful to consider examples of extraordinary efforts at forgiveness.

• Last November, the Washington Post featured this article on how Christian ministers were able to fellowship with high-profile Nazis (and why it was the right thing for the ministers to do): The amazing story of U.S. Army chaplains who ministered to Nazi leaders at the Nuremberg trials 70 years ago today.
• For those who are familiar with the movie Hotel Rwanda, this December 2015 piece (Are they forgivable?) focuses on Rwanda’s quest to forgive 30,000 perpetrators of mass ethnic slaughter.

One last example, and it was a memorable one for me. At the first church service I attended after the September 11^th attacks in the U.S., the pastor prayed – and one of the people he prayed for was Osama bin Laden. I understand why now, but it stunned me then. If we can forgive Nazis, Hutus, and Osama bin Laden, maybe we can forgive Omar Mateen.

I wanted justice in 2001 – and I want justice now – but that hardly makes me special. All of us want justice (at least we think we do), but the problem is agreeing on what that means. How do we mete out justice to the Islamic State? Or the Taliban? Or the oppressive regime in North Korea?

Clearly, we have earthly means of achieving justice, such as the rule of law and military force, but those means are imperfect (e.g., the infamous Stanford rape verdict). The only thing that is perfect in this area is God’s forgiveness, and the only way for us to come close to perfection is to try to show that forgiveness to others.

Yesterday the editor of Christianity Today posted these thoughts on the Orlando massacre. The two main takeaways are (1) prayer, and (2) love for our enemies. To put those together, we need to pray to ask God to give us the ability to love our enemies.

And that’s what I’m getting at here. Forgiveness is hard. We want justice, revenge, punishment, retribution, etc. And there is often a time and place for some of those things, but we can’t allow them to swallow up the need to forgive. Therefore, I will pray to God for the ability to forgive others as he forgives me (and as I would want to be forgiven by others).

I feel like my thoughts have been very disjointed in this post because there has been so much more running through my head, but I hope the previous sentence meets my stated goal of one cogent conclusion – at least for me, and hopefully for you, too.

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Postscript: Although he didn’t explicitly mention forgiveness, listen to what Muhammad Ali said about how he would like to be remembered. Or read it here:

I’d like for them to say he took a few cups of love. He took one tablespoon of patience, one tablespoon, teaspoon of generosity, one pint of kindness; he took one quart of laughter, one pinch of concern. And then, he mixed willingness with happiness, he added lots of faith and he stirred it up well. Then he spread it over a span of a life time and he served it to each and every deserving person he met.

[1] According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the number of hate groups in the United States increased 14% from 2014 to 2015.