Forgiveness: Conflict Resolution (Wk 2)
Is there any wisdom that is more across-the-board applicable than forgiveness? — to both interpersonal and societal struggles? — to both small slights and major abuse? There might not be! For our part 2 on "conflict resolution", Vince explores Jesus' teaching on forgiveness, as explained by Desmond Tutu and his daughter Mbpo Tutu in "The Book of Forgiving".
Speaker Notes
Forgiveness: Conflict Resolution (Wk 2)
Story
In the story of my life growing up, my older brother was the antagonist
- For a number of reasons, including alcohol and drugs, his teenage and young adult years were chaotic
- And that affected me and our family in big ways
- I grew up with fear about what my brother might do or how his actions might affect my family
- I remember staying at our sister’s friends’ house one evening after the police were called because that felt safer to my parents
- I grew up with anger at my brother for the way that it seemed his needs stole the attention of my parents from me
- I dreamed of getting back at him
- Showing him how much his behavior hurt me and our family
I remember when I was like 19 or 20, I think, a praying friend asking me at one point when we were hanging out talking about life and I brought up some of the ways I’d felt hurt by my brother:
- “Do you want to forgive your brother?”
- I said “no”
- because I didn’t really know what that would entail
- and I definitely didn’t want to initiate a conversation with my brother
- And then my friend asked: Do you want to want to forgive your brother?
- And that seemed like it had less pressure... It hit me different...
- “Yes,” I thought, “I suppose I want to want to”
- And my friend asked to pray for me, and he did while we sat together, and that’s a powerful memory for me
Some years later, I was again with some friends talking about life — I remember we had gotten away from the city all together to a beach house in Indiana
- (this was pre-AirBnb days, so that was pretty cool!)
- And I had an even more powerful experience after talking about hurt from my brother, and a couple friends asking to pray for me
- It felt like God was stirring up in me all of this sadness and broken-hearted-ness for all that was out of my brother’s control
- and all that had happened to him that made it so difficult for him to break out of the chaos he was living
- In that moment I stopped seeing him solely as this villain in my life, and stopped seeing myself as just a victim of his actions
- This was an experience of forgiveness.
- I felt freed from this compulsion to get back at my brother.
- I actually felt tenderness toward him
- And that changed my relationship with him from that day on.
- When he died in 2015, he never knew about those prayer experiences, but I was kinder to him, more open to him,
Context + Jesus on Forgiveness
Conflict resolution is our topic last week and this week.
And today I want to zoom in on pretty much THE lived-wisdom that makes someone a person of conflict resolution:
- Not just a person who has experienced conflict resolution or understands conflict resolution
- But a person of conflict resolution — a person marked by, known for conflict resolution
- That lived-wisdom is: forgiveness.
The freedom of forgiveness is a kind of reality that, I think, reminds people in our Secular age, in which we can feel tempted to believe everything in life can be described on immanent terms — as natural or material — they remind us that there is an unseen, spiritual side to life — a transcendence, a force of love, a “peace that surpasses all understanding", as it is phrased in Philippians 4 in the Bible.
If everything is only immanent — natural, material — and there is no transcendent force of love or connection holding all things together, then forgiveness should feel optional.
Because why go through the trouble? Just take care of number one, secure the resources you need for your thriving, and cut your losses.
In our most hurt, hardened states, we are compelled by that reductive materialist view.
But our connections and relationships, as fraught as they may sometimes feel, always have a way of reminding us they’re not optional — they’re not obstacles in the way of our real life, they are what our real lives are made of, most foundationally.
And this is why such a big part of Jesus’ ministry is about forgiveness, I think. ==scripture==
“Forgive not just seven times, but seventy times seven times” is his famous phrase — which in his Jewish context (where 7 is the number of completion) means forgive unlimited times.
Today, forgiveness is often conflated with reconciliation — we take forgiveness to mean two parties that were in conflict returning to connection, but that’s reconciliation.
Forgiveness is something that happens inside an individual, or inside a group: when we no longer hold someone in contempt for the hurt or pain they caused in us.
It can and hopefully often does lead to reconciliation, when two parties restore a relationship. But not always. And when it doesn’t, that doesn’t lessen or cheapen the experience of forgiveness.
We will not experience reconciliation in every conflict in our lives, because we can’t control others, and sometimes frankly it’s not appropriate, but the opportunity to feel the wonderful freedom of forgiving someone is available to us always — where we no longer feel the drive to hold on to the ammunition of our hurt, no longer are looking for the chance to lob a bomb that explodes to communicate “don’t forget that you hurt me!”
That freedom is a spiritual experience. I’m not sure it can be described on immanent terms. I’m sure neuroscience can maybe show how it lights up our brain activity a certain way when we experience that we’ve forgiven someone, and that’s awesome! But it just can’t fully account for the feeling that you’re participating in something bigger than you when that happens — that it feels like we’re tapping into the Love Of God, all around us, in all things, when we forgive.
Book of Forgiving
I recently was taken through a tour of Desmond Tutu and his daughter Mpho Tutu’s amazing The Book of Forgiving. ==tutus picture==
- I’ll have our moderator drop a link in Discord https://libro.fm/audiobooks/9780062309099-the-book-of-forgiving
Desmond Tutu, who died in 2021, was, you may know, an Anglican Bishop and activist — and most famously was named by Nelson Mandela to chair South Africa’s “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” to investigate human rights abuses during apartheid (the institutionalized white supremacy that ruled South Africa from 1948 to 1990).
It was his charge to insure that, post-apartheid, South Africa could heal from its wounds, rather than see them fester and be plunged into a cycle of revenge and yet more violence.
He and his daughter Mpho, a priest and activist for LGBTQ rights within the Anglican church, speak with enormous hard-earned experience and wisdom on forgiveness. ==tutus picture off==
The Book of Forgiving is full of stories about forgiveness, from family conflicts (like I'm familiar with), to war crimes.
My takeaway was:
- Wow, obviously I think forgiveness is important (who doesn’t?) —
- But maybe not as much as I should.
- Is there any wisdom more across-the-board applicable than forgiveness? —
- to both interpersonal and societal struggles — to both small slights and major abuse —
- there might not be!
- This might be number one most applicable wisdom, across the board.
- No wonder it was so core to Jesus’ teaching. Because everyone gets hurt.
The Tutus have this image to tie together their message: ==hand on heart==
- Putting your hand on your heart vs. Shaking your fist in the air
- Forgiveness vs. continuing the cycle of revenge ==hand on heart off==
- Life can be so habitual we don’t realize that we are constantly faced with choices to stop or continue cycles of revenge
- Will we shake our fist, to shame or return hurt to those who have harmed us? Or will we place our hands on our hearts and move through forgiveness?
They offer what they call “ The Four Fold Path of Forgiveness” ==4 fold path==
- Tell the story
- Because forgiveness cannot be experienced unless all is brought into the light
- I think of my conversations with my friends
- Name the hurt
- Feelings crave acknowledgement as we talked about last week
- From God, from other people who can bring us God’s acknowledgement through their own
- I think of my friends asking to pray for me
- Grant forgiveness
- This is recognizing your shared humanity, rather than rejecting shared humanity
- It is not forgetting, or calling cruelty or violence okay, it is a choice to move forward
- Renew or release the relationship
- So important that both are viable options
- I didn’t know what would come next with my brother, but that’s okay.
- Of course reconciliation is desired in as many instances as possible, the Tutus write,
- But sometimes the best final step of forgiveness is releasing the relationship… because that's safest or best
- The important thing whether we renew or release is: we are no longer driven mad by a need to even a score
- And that’s when we find the freedom and contentedness that the Tutu’s demonstrate in their writing
- about having a hand on their heart
- not a fist shaking in the air
I am so helped by this.
- My brother is by no means the only source of challenging interpersonal experiences of feeling hurt, betrayed, forgotten for me.
- I often feel myself needing to spiral around these — to move through these four folds again and again, as new layers in me emerge
- To place my hand on my heart again and again. ==4 fold path off==
Societal Application
A friend of mine, the one who gave me this tour through The Book of Forgiving, told me he visited his daughter on her college campus recently, and because he had been reading The Book of Forgiving, they ended up talking about it a lot
- His daughter related the first two folds to the distinction in conflict resolution work: “intent vs impact”
- (Keziah brought this up last week)
- Regardless of whether your intent was positive or even neutral, if the impact of your actions on someone was harmful, intent doesn’t excuse that,
- we can still take responsibility for that harm and it doesn’t mean we’re a bad person
- This is especially important for dominant culture folks to acknowledge —
- a white person can easily say it wasn’t my intent to be racist and fail to acknowledge their impact on a non-white person
- a man can easily say it wasn’t my intent to be patriarchal and fail to acknowledge their impact on someone who isn’t a man
- an able bodied person can easily say it wasn’t my intent to be prejudiced, and fail to acknowledge their impact on a differently abled person
- this is something that is excellently taught in lots of progressive settings today, like college campuses, that are taking really seriously power dynamics in the modern world
- It’s got the Tutu’s first two folds (“tell the story” and “name the hurt”) all over it
- BUT, my friend and his daughter observed,
- her college campus isn’t exactly filled with the sort of freedom and contented senses of self that Desmond and Mpho Tutu give off
- It seems to give off a vibe of really cynical and bitter people,
- There can even be a twisted self-satisfaction with the public shaming of others, if it’s in the name of a good cause
- They wondered if that setting is REALLY GOOD at the first two folds, but NOT SO GOOD at the second half of the Four Fold path
- I think this is fair to note as a temptation for progressive American spaces in general
- It is tempting to get really good at distinguishing intent vs impact, and pat ourselves on the back for that
- But then miss that that’s only half the work for our souls (and for the soul of our nation)
- Granting forgiveness and renewing or releasing relationships is something we must equally commit to if we long to see the sort of societal steps forward in our political polarization that the Truth & Reconciliation Commission saw in South Africa post-Apartheid.
Ending
In my experience, we all want the freedom of following through to the end the four-fold path.
Cynicism, bitterness, using shame as a weapon — these are no ways to live for the long haul. Those things can supercharge our passion for a time, but eventually they recoil on us, and sap us of our higher values, rather than feed our higher values.
The full Four Fold Path of Forgiveness is hard work, but it is beautiful, freeing work,
- that can make us people of conflict resolution
- Interpersonally
- And societally
Let me pray for us…