Eyre Lines

There’s a story I’ve heard a few times now, most recently ten days ago, about the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission and a former policeman called Van de Broek. It’s a popular story for sermons and talks, it seems. It’s a very uplifting story about an unnamed woman forgiving the policeman for the murder of her son and husband and wishing to treat him as a replacement son.

I want to make two points here.

The first is that the story probably never happened as it’s been reported to me. I rather suspected that it might not be, as some of the details didn’t fit well with what I knew of the Commission. Here’s an analysis: frankly, I come to the same conclusion as the writer. Neither of us thinks its factual truth matters. It may not be a factually accurate story, but it is in its own way a true story about how Christian forgiveness to the extent of loving one’s enemy should happen. I know of a few other factually correct stories of victims who have bridged that gap and befriended their oppressors, in any case, including one woman whose husband was beaten to death senselessly, and who forgave and visited those responsible in prison.

In discussion after hearing it most recently, people were asking themselves if they could bring themselves to do what the anonymous woman did in the story. Some didn’t think they could, or would even want to, some hoped that they would if they were ever in that kind of position.

I hope I would myself, because I possibly couldn’t afford not to. As you may have gathered if you’ve read earlier posts in this blog, I’m a member of a twelve step fellowship. Several steps of the twelve are very relevant; 4, making a searching and fearless moral inventory; 5, admitting to yourself, God and another human being the exact nature of your wrongs; 6, becoming ready to have God remove your defects of character; 7, humbly asking him to do so, 8, making a list of all persons you have harmed and becoming willing to make amends to them all and 9, making amends except when to do so would injure them or others.

The “searching and fearless moral inventory” in step 4 is commonly done as a list of resentments which you have accumulated over the years, in column form; who against, what the circumstances were and (crucially) what your part in it was. These then later usually feed directly into the making of the list for step 8. The objective is to recognise all resentments (including against yourself – to which I am especially prone), to admit them publicly and to make good the damage caused; at step 9 it is normal to ask the wronged person how you can put right your wrong.

This is, of course, very much similar to what the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was doing in South Africa, a sort of national twelve-step programme. Both are examples of restorative justice. What both realise is that an un-dealt with resentment is poisonous to the person who holds the resentment. For an alcoholic or addict, keeping hold of resentments long term is near to being a guarantee of relapse; I’ve come to the conclusion that it doesn’t do those who are free from addictions any good either.

As I sit here at the moment, I have a clean slate as far as resentments are concerned. I work on this on a continuing basis (through step 10 – continuing to take personal inventory and when wrong promptly admitting it – and, which is not explicit in the wording of the step, trying to restore things to the state they would have been in had I not done something wrong). Could I cope with the resentment which would be produced if someone did to me something similar to what was, in the story, done to this woman? I don’t know, but I would try as hard as I possibly could to admit the resentment, to deal with it and to let it go. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay”: it is not my part to pursue vengeance, I can and must leave that to God.

Of course, the story seems to go a step further, to an act of positive love towards the enemy. This may seem a step too far. It’s marginally further than I’ve been able to go with one or two people who have wronged me in the past, but they are not around me any more (and I do not at the moment harbour any resentments toward them). If they were here with me now, I think it might be necessary to go that step further and act in a positively loving way toward them, as otherwise their mere presence might lead to the resentments of the past being renewed.

For me, this would be not saintly but wise. I cannot afford to have people from my past taking over my thoughts and ruining my present. I need to be free of them, and, one day at a time, today I am.