This Thursday in personal adjustment class a student gave a report on a book about a guy who lived in Apartheid South Africa.  He talked about how the book gave a good description of the step by step process in which that system evolved.  I asked him if the book gave a better understanding of how these sorts of atrocious policies evolve and how good people think they are doing good things.  A classmate asked for explanation and I used the example of how the Germans were lured into Nazism little by little, justified by the perceived injustice and suffering of their people.  It didn't seem to be understood and my had to interject and try to explain.  It seemed to validate the reason that I brought this up.  Because I think that people do not try hard enough to understand why people do bad things, they prefer to just think these people are bad.  It is because of this that people and social groups continue to commit injustices.

After the book report our professor then talked about forgiveness.  She first talked about the premise that knowing how to forgive is essential.  That holding on to resentment is like taking a drink of poison and expecting the other person to die.  She went on to say that forgiving is not just to forget.  That one cannot forgive by the will to do so alone.  This resonated strongly with me.   Then she talked about a book called Toxic Parents by Susan Forward.  In it the author discusses the struggles of children with highly abusive parents.  The author expressed some attitudes about forgiveness that I found questionable.  They are as follows from my notes:
People who have been severely hurt by there parents don't have to accept what their parents did to them.
They don't have to understand what they did.
They don't have to be okay with it.
They don't have to forgive like God.
They have to turn loose of the power that person has on them.  <---I agree with this
They shouldn't let them off the hook.

It's possible that I misunderstood part of this.  But in further discussion I realized that I was understanding the dimensions of forgiveness that she was describing.  It seemed very difficult to sustain.  She went on to tell the story of the book the Sun Flower in which Simon Wiesenthal tells the story of the Nazi that admitted his misdeeds to him on his death bed and asked for forgiveness, which he did not give.  She asked the class for their thoughts and the whys.

I had to say that I would have forgiven him, but this was given my understanding of forgiveness now.  I said that I would have thought of all the times in the past that people of my culture have committed atrocities to other peoples.  However, I certainly understood Mr. Wiesenthal's point of view since I would have treated it similar to him in the past.

Here are my thoughts on forgiveness:
I must forgive in order to be free of resentment, if not it will rot my soul.
I can forgive the person if I separate them from the offense.
In order to do this I must treat the offender as a sick person, a good person who went wrong somewhere.
It is imperative that I understand my nature, human nature, that I am just as capable of having gone this astray but for good fortune.
This in no way diminishes the gravity of the offense.
I don't have to like the person, or validate the behavior, just stop hating and blaming.
I must recognize that wrong paradigms, bad environment, wrong attitudes are the source of evil.
I must forgive in order to stop the cycle of justifiable resentment.
This sort of radical forgiveness might not be possible without faith in a Higher Power (at least its not for me).

I looked up the book after class and found it disturbing.  The coauthor's bio showed his picture and which he was between two candles and had prosthetic horns.  I found this eerie.

In the evening I attended initiation into a fraternal order of men at my church.  I am excited to become more involved for my family but I was troubled by the spooky rituals.

Thanks be to God for this day.