A silly interpretation often leads to the utter rejection of a law.
Sentimentalists have caused men of sense to pronounce Christ's law of
forgiveness an impractical one. Yet we indorse it every time we utter
the Lord's prayer, and still we hope to be forgiven whether we find it
possible to forgive or not. If this law means the mental flabbiness
that sends bouquets to bloody criminals and petitions the pardon of
murderers and the release of the foes of humanity, we must reject it as
the utterance of one unacquainted with the rugged facts of life.
But forgiveness and pardon are two different things; forgiveness is
between man and man; pardon is a matter of executive power. You can
forgive a child and still punish him. The forgiveness that does away
with consequences would make this an immoral world. No greater wrong
can be done to a man than to protect him from the deserts of his evil
deeds. This is as unjust as to withhold the rewards of the right.
The difference between the law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a
tooth and the law of the great Teacher lies largely in the spirit of
dealing with the offenses. The old spirit was that of getting even
with the wrongdoer. His act was largely regarded from the personal
standpoint; a crime was individual and not social. Revenge followed
wrongdoing.
But Jesus says it is better to lift a man up than to get even with him.
It is better to help men to the right than to satisfy your desire for
revenge. Forgiveness is more than saying, "Go without punishment";
rather it says, "Come learn a better way; live without sin."
Forgiveness takes malice from the mind of the offended; it substitutes
for it the motive of friendship for the offender.
Revenge says, "I will make it worse for you than you have made it for
me." Sentimentalism says: "Let the poor victim of circumstances go;
send him a rosewater spray and an embroidered text and he won't do it
again." But love, she of the clear eye and the steady hold, takes him
by the hand in silence, lifts him up, and leads him, perhaps by paths
of pain, to his better self. Love puts his sins behind her back and
teaches him to face her way. Love lets the wrong teach its own lesson,
bear its own fruit. And in her labour for him she forgets her own pain
and loss caused by his offense.
The best way to forgive a burglar would not be to let him out of jail,
but to teach him the laws of property, to train him in the self-respect
that would lead to industry, to make him a brother and a fellow worker
among men instead of an outcast and a social parasite. The test of any
forgiveness is its helpfulness, the manner in which it wipes out the
enmity of the victim and turns the guilty into better ways.
Many say, I can forgive, but I cannot forget. No one asks you to
forget; but you cannot fully forgive unless you will forego the feeling
of enmity and the desire for revenge. You cannot make any one forget
that which he has once known; but you can substitute helpfulness for
hatred and restoration for revenge. True love simply discounts the
past as a ground for present action; it refuses to determine its
personal bearing and deeds in to-day by the other's ill deeds of
yesterday.
All we are asked to do is to forgive as we are forgiven. Our hope is
that when we have fallen our friends will not lose their faith in us
nor entirely forsake us, that they will give us another chance; not
that they will shield us from the fruitage of our follies and our
falseness, but that they will not shut us off forever from their faces.
So far from forgiveness being the weakness of the thoughtless, it is
the helpfulness of the strong and the wise. To forgive a man will not
mean to escape from the trouble of securing his punishment; it will not
mean the weak complaisance of indolent tolerance. It will mean thought
for his weakness, taking up his burden, doing the brother's part for
him, the endeavour to do for him what we would like to have the Father
of us all do for us all.