On forgiveness. (Part 1)

(A theological reflection in 9 (rather long) parts)

On forgiveness

Part 1: True righteousness is complementary with forgiveness; self-righteousness is the opposite of forgiveness

In my recent thoughts on the inadequacies of secularism, particularly in comparison to religion, I touched on the importance of forgiveness, and I would like to now explore this more.

Firstly, we must face the reality of religion’s failure to offer forgiveness throughout much of history. This seems to be because of the conflict between forgiveness and righteousness. (There is no conflict really, but we get even this wrong.) Human beings have a deep desire to be righteous, and this must be reckoned to us as a remarkable achievement. Given our immense ability at self-serving lies and injustice, it is a truly wonderful thing that we appear to have an innate desire to be righteous. This is largely the same as a desire to “be in the right”, but I think there is more to it than even that. Wanting to “be in the right” is, of course, also a good thing, but we can see that it can easily tip over into an arrogant, aggressive and self-centred attitude. In other words, our natural human nature keeps reasserting itself, even when we are trying hard to do the right thing. And yet, we must not be too hard on ourselves, because we truly do want to do the right thing.

However, for me, “righteousness” has all the good connotations of “being in the right”, but with none of the negatives. Righteousness can tip over into “self-righteousness”, and this is the negative version of the desire, but the very terminology has separated itself from true righteousness by indicating that your desire is to “show yourself” as righteous, whereas true righteousness is a self-effacing quality of surrender to what is true and right and good, regardless of whether it serves your own interests or not. Righteousness has a clean, fresh, purity to it, whereby you put yourself to one side because in the goodness of God you have discovered a wonderful life-giving quality of living life well, in tune with God’s own spirit of goodness, truth and love. When we are caught up into this spirit, righteousness goes hand in hand with forgiveness, for our desire – in righteousness – is to make all things whole, and forgiveness is an absolutely fundamental means of achieving that. However, when our righteousness has tipped over into self-righteousness, then that is in direct conflict with forgiveness, for the aim of the self-righteous person is to assert themselves, and their own goodness, and there is no better way to do this than by condemning others- the exact opposite of forgiveness.