Forgiveness in a Culture of Outrage and Fear, with Amy Orr-Ewing

It’s fair to say that we live in an unforgiving age. Much of our public conversation seems to be dominated by outrage and fear. Where offense is quickly taken, recrimination is immediate and widespread, apologies are weaponized, and atonement is ridiculed. It’s a climate which ultimately rewards shamelessness as well as aggression. And at the same time, victims of racial injustice are too often pressured to quickly forgive, forget and not disclose the harms inflicted by the more powerful such that the concept of forgiveness has become conflated by some with enabling and covering up injustice, even abuse. Our guest today has challenged both of these distortions and argues that forgiveness is not a retreat from truth or accountability, but a transformative force that makes both possible and is, in her words, the greatest gift the Christian faith can offer our age. And she invites us to consider what we’ve lost in a culture that is quick to condemn and slow to restore, and to recover, both a vision for and the practice of forgiveness that is deeply rooted in justice, dignity, and the possibility of renewal. Amy Orr-ewing is an Oxford based theologian, author, and scholar. She’s an honorary lecturer at the University of Aberdeen, a distinguished scholar at Wheaton College, and the recipient of the George Medal for Evangelism and Witness given by the Archbishop of Canterbury. She’s also the author of several books, including Where Is God and All of the suffering, Why Trust the Bible, Mary’s Voice, and her latest forthcoming work to be due out this Tuesday. Forgiveness, reclaiming its power and a culture of outrage and fear, which we’ve invited her here today to discuss. Amy, welcome.

Thank you so much. What a joy to be with you today. Thank you.

It’s great to have you here, Amy. And as we start off, I’d like to ask you something that I ask many authors, which any book is a huge undertaking and, you know, really almost a form of childbirth. And it’s not something undertaken lightly or ever kind of just performed easily. So tell us more about the story behind the story. What led you to write this book?

Yeah, thank you so much. So as somebody who works in public Christianity or Christian apologetics. I’m often on campus. I’m often in settings where the majority of people don’t have Christian faith and have questions, sometimes really hostile questions about the Christian faith or objections. And, around about before the pandemic, I think I began to notice a change in the tone of the public discourse, not just politically in the West, but also around just kind of engaging publicly about faith and increase in anger and increase in outrage, a sense of these kind of justice movements, things like identity politics, driving the idea that if you disagree with me, you are guilty of hate speech and you need to be canceled. And so this sense of aggression and, and outrage just everywhere. And I began to wonder about, you know, how the gospel could connect with people who are objecting to the Christian faith kind of propelled on this forward, on this vision of, of, of justice and to realize that, you know, effectively what cancel culture is doing is it’s saying there has to be death for transgression. If you cross a line and you say something that I disagree with or I regard as hate speech, you have to die a social death, a professional death, you know, a kind of moral death. And there’s no possibility of, of redemption. And so I began to think about ways in which to connect with that driving instinct, that justice matters profoundly and that harm matters really, really profoundly.

And to think about how I could show that Christianity actually makes the best sense of that instinct towards justice at the same time. you know, in my own personal life, I had been working with an organization, a ministry that went through a kind of catastrophic abuse crisis. And through that experience, I became involved in advocating for survivors of sexual abuse, including in religious settings. And so on the one hand, whilst I was trying to develop, you know, apologetics that could say justice matters and forgiveness is possible without minimizing harm. I was also experiencing forgiveness being almost weaponized against those who had suffered actual horror, utter horror, sexual abuse, and being used to kind of shut down disclosure of real harm and also, you know, even potentially enable the perpetration of wrongdoing to continue in the church. So it was like the church was sort of seeing forgiveness as this thing that kind of covered harm. And the world was saying, harm matters so much that you have to die if you cross a line. And it was like, we’ve got this all the wrong way around. There is the possibility of truth and justice and justice being upheld and accountability mattering, and actually forgiveness that can free us from this continual cycle of outrage. And so I’ve spent about four years, three, four years really developing some of this material kind of live in conversation with people as well as in public forums and events, and then eventually beginning to write the book.

Yeah. Well, you know, as you’ve described, the concept at times has been distorted, which means in some ways that knowing what we’re talking about is all the more important. So when you say forgiveness, how, how do you understand what is the proper biblical understanding of what we’re talking about when we talk about forgiveness?

Thank you. Yeah. I think that’s really, really important question. so when we talk about forgiveness outside the Christian faith, the kind of predominant idea of forgiveness is that it is a psychological trick you play on yourself. So you basically, release your sense of bitterness about harm that has happened and you kind of release it into the universe and you somehow become free from that. But it’s a psychological phenomenon that almost frees you and you then kind of live in that state. Well, Christian forgiveness really doesn’t have very much to do with that. Forgiveness within a biblical framework means acknowledging that wrong happened. And that’s really important to keep clear. Debt exists because loss has occurred. Jesus often talks about forgiveness in the terms of debt. So a victim of wrong or harm is now carrying a loss. That could be a financial loss, a loss of reputation. It might be a loss of trust, a loss of bodily autonomy, a loss of innocence. But there’s a loss there. And then when we think about this from a Christian point of view as well, there’s a more profound dimension to the scale of that loss. Because if what it means to be human is to have been made in the image of God, you’re not just like a confluence of biology, just the atoms of your body. Then if we’ve been made in the image of God and harm or loss has occurred, then there’s a transcendent dimension to the And the loss we’ve experienced.

And so a sort of sense of a judgment of an evil that has, has occurred. So Christian forgiveness occurs within the context of there being a final judgment that will set all things right, and that providing the context then for our own forgiveness. So forgiveness means giving up the impetus to make a person pay for what they have done to me. And I can do that because the debt for what has occurred at that transcendent level is actually paid by Jesus through his death on the cross, or ultimately paid through the judgment of God at the end of time. And that means that I can live free from that debt, continuing to victimize and harm me. I can live free of grievance and forgive through the grace that I receive through the cross, and I surrender my own effort for vengeance. And I give that to God. So forgiveness needs to happen because a debt has occurred. We’re not minimizing the harm. Forgiveness can happen at a sort of transcendent level, either because of the death of God in history, in Christ’s crucifixion, or because of the final judgment of God. So we can release that debt to him. And that means, then that we live free as Christians, able to forgive. And then obviously, we also can receive that forgiveness, because the reality is that there’s not a single one of us that is only the victim in this scenario. We need to receive forgiveness as well as to offer it.

Yeah. You know, you you mentioned grievance just a second ago and, in giving it up and, grievance, as well as the moral support, the superiority that, Attends grievance. you know, often very rightly. It is a form of power in a sense, and part of what it seems like, giving up that power is, you know, could be seen as, you know, essentially asking the victim who has already been transgressed, to give up, you know, an additional form of power, you know, and at the same time, you mentioned a little bit earlier, essentially trying to extract forgiveness glibly, especially from a victim, is also a power play of sort of, so I’d love to hear you kind of reflect on, you know, how, a Christian understanding of forgiveness, particularly when Jesus was so oriented towards the least, the last, the lost, those, you know, who were not powerful by the world’s standards, How does a Christian concept of forgiveness usurp those power dynamics?

Thank you so much for that question. This is something I really kind of dig into to the in the book, because it speaks very profoundly to the narratives at the moment in our world about what it means to be human. Because if we were to dial back a little bit from forgiveness per se, and we were to ask, you know, what does it mean to be human? Probably the most popular accounts of what it means to be human, outside of the idea of being made in the image of God, are either that human identity is just biological. Everything is our biochemistry. We’re nothing more than the chemicals of our body. And so when we talk about forgiveness, it, it kind of misfires because within a kind of biochemical view of the world, you just dispose of that which goes wrong. You know, there’s a pharmaceutical solution or a kind of just let it die. And that’s, that’s where we see cancel culture come in. But the other account of what it means to be human is related to what I was talking about earlier, about identity politics. And this is where grievance is much deeper than just a feeling or an idea. And this is the idea that human identity is constructed. So we make ourselves our own identity is self-generated. And, what has power today in today’s world are the layers of grievance that we experience that intersect differently for different one of us. So intersectionality theory tells you that you derive power when harm is done to you. So, you know, if you experience discrimination on any level, you know, maybe on the basis of race or sexuality or, biological sex, gender.

Then that’s how you construct your identity. It’s on the basis of those grievances that you’ve kind of accumulated, and your identity and identity politics has more power than more grievance you have. So within that framework, so for a young person who’s involved in justice movements today, or in any form of kind of more kind of Marxist thinking or identity politics, when they hear forgiveness, what they’re hearing is moral weakness. You are letting go of the power that your grievance gives you in the cultural moment. And that to require someone who’s already been abused to do that would be to harm them. Forgiveness is harmful. It’s dangerous because it’s to surrender power. And so, I found that, the way the Christian gospel speaks to people caught up in this mindset, is actually is really powerful if we understand what’s happening. So what we’re saying when we say when we talk about grace and forgiveness is we are not saying the harm that happened wasn’t wrong, didn’t hurt or doesn’t matter. It’s actually only uniquely in the Christian faith that it is even possible to have forgiveness that doesn’t minimize harm and moral wrongdoing. Any other form of forgiveness outside of Jesus basically requires you to let someone off or say, it didn’t really hurt that much. And that is to, you know, to do what, what these individuals who, who feel this would be harmful, that’s to do what they’re saying we’re doing. But that’s not Christian forgiveness. Christian forgiveness says the harm matters and it matters profoundly. And it matters far more than a material account of the world can say.

So material account of the world just says, you’re the biochemistry of your body and you have the value that biochemistry can give you. But if you’ve been made in the image of God, then your value is transcendent. And so the harm that has occurred to you matters at a transcendent level. So forgiving it would cost something cosmic, something on a sort of grand scale of the universe. And that’s precisely what the Christian faith says the cross of Jesus Christ is. This is God in history, dying for the sins of the world and dignifying our pain, our suffering, dignifying our status as human beings, as divine image bearers, and saying that the transcendent scale of our pain is met in the cosmic act of God by dying this death on the cross in Jesus. And that’s how forgiveness that frees us from grievance, that gives us a new life and a new start. When. When we’re the one whose hooves seemed and perpetrated wrong in the world. That’s how it is possible that we can have that grace and that new life, but also the harm done to us is not minimized, and neither is the harm that we’ve done to others. It’s actually really beautiful and really powerful. And if it’s true, it is literally life changing and nation changing. And that’s, you know, what the claim of the Christian faith is that God’s death in history and as the Son of God is not just a theory, it’s not an accident of history. It’s a cosmic event that just changes the world.

You mentioned that this, it’s nation changing. And in your work, you quoted a journalist named Elizabeth Bruenig who said that as a society, we have no coherent story about a person who’s done wrong, how they can atone, how they can make amends. essentially we have no coherent cultural story for forgiveness, either on a personal or perhaps more on a public level. And I guess this question is a little bit perhaps of an imaginative exercise, but, you know, if we were to internalize that story, what would that look like on a public level, on a societal level, as well as on a personal one?

Thank you so much for that question. I love that quote. And I think, you know, the importance of the narratives that just shape the environment and the culture of what we think and how we react are so significant. And of course, Tom Holland’s work in Dominion on essentially arguing that it’s a Christian story that has formed Western civilization would be really important here. But I think both on a personal and a communal level, a truly Christian understanding of forgiveness would look like, people being dignified and harm, having proper accountability and justice and consequence. And it would look like the possibility of freedom from grievance and that being a good thing rather than grievance defining us or being a sort of agency propelling us, giving us power in the culture, grievance would be something that we’re set free from, that we get to live free of bitterness and the possibility of people having a new start, both individually but also culturally. So redemption narratives that we do long for. If you think about story arcs in films and novels and books, we long for that second chance and that possibility of things working out. So it might look like, structures where, you know, people are able to take risks and fail and be rehabilitated and start again. You know, business structures that make that possible. It may look like, families where people can be forgiven and actually have relationships restored. you’re probably aware, like, like I am that we’re living in a moment in history in the West where, you know, family estrangement. And I don’t just mean divorce marriages breaking up, but estrangement between generations, children and parents and grandparents and grandchildren. It’s the highest it’s ever been. So a culture that was shaped by the Christian story would look like the restoration of, of some of those relational bonds and familial bonds being possible. I think.

Yeah. You know, I also wanted to ask you, you had mentioned how it changes our story, and you have also argued in your book that, forgiveness, in some ways, like trauma is embodied. and you noted that like forgiveness that’s offered through the body of Jesus can be experienced in our bodies, as well as our souls. And so kind of moving from a societal to a more personal level, how does forgiveness affect us bodily?

So, part of my journey in the last 5 or 6 years, partly, through my husband who’s a survivor of abuse in early childhood and see PTSD, but also through a traumatic experience that, that I had about six years ago. and sort of needing therapy for that experience. And so beginning to read a lot about trauma and then experience therapeutic practice. I’ve reflected a lot on, what it means to be in a body and then noticed that as so profoundly Hebrew. You know, in the Hebrew Scriptures, this integration of the whole person, our body, our mind, our emotion, and God interacting with us as whole people. And then, of course, in the New Testament, we see that too, as God is incarnate in Christ. And, you know, the role of the body in our discipleship. And so as, as I was thinking and reflecting on forgiveness, not just from an apologetic point of view, I really wanted to include reflection on this question of trauma. And think about, what it looks like to experience the giveness as, fully embodied human beings, which is how I think the Christian faith envisages it. If you think about, you know, one of the classic teachings of Jesus, you know, when you’re in prayer and you remember, you know, a falling out with someone, first leave your gift at the altar and go to that person and be reconciled and then come back. You know, it’s a very physical, embodied action and idea.

And then, how as early Christians experienced that, memory of grace, of Jesus’s crucifixion, it’s not just a theological idea of the atonement, it’s the embodied experience of breaking bread and drinking wine together and living as a community of, of grace in forgiveness. So those are two sort of obvious examples. But one of the things that I, discovered in the psychological literature around trauma is that there’s a school of thought that suggests forgiveness can be harmful in trauma therapy. And when it’s harmful, it’s where, two things happen. One, the anger is short circuited. So forgiveness, talk of forgiveness to a trauma survivor can be harmful in their recovery. If forgiveness is envisaged as something that minimizes anger or harm. And again, remember, Christian forgiveness never does that because it says the harm matters so much that it, you know, requires the death of the Son of God in history. Anger is not short circuited. That’s why we have the Imprecatory Psalms. You know, we have these Psalms that kind of long for judgment and justice. We have a language in Scripture for moral outrage when moral injury occurs. And so often, you know, the mistake we make in forgiveness is to short circuit anger. And the other reason forgiveness can be harmful within trauma is if it’s forced or, you know, forced on you too quickly in any way, it has to be chosen and sort of, you know, journeyed with there needs to be freedom and autonomy there. And I think that very much overlaps with how the Christian faith envisages forgiveness.

But then when you look at the positive literature around, trauma and forgiveness, I came across this stunning phrase and it said, basically, in order to recover from trauma, what you need is someone to bear empathetic witness to what occurred. The bearing of empathetic witness is utterly vital. in, in our recovery, when we’ve experienced something horrific and certainly in our recovery, to then be able to, you know, release that desire for vengeance. And it struck me as, as a theologian that God on the cross, this cosmic event of Jesus in history is precisely that God in Jesus bears empathetic witness, not in theory and not as sort of a mental level, and not even just at an emotional level. God in Christ bears witness to the suffering of the world, and actually takes that sin and the judgment for that sin upon himself. And so when we begin to encounter God as trauma survivors, we encounter a God who has experienced trauma and bears empathetic witness to what we have suffered. Validating, not minimizing what has happened. Not short circuiting our anger and but ultimately freeing us from grievance, freeing us from bitterness, freeing us from that impetus to get the justice we deserve, which for many of us will always be outside of our reach, but enabling us to then live free in in a flow of forgiveness that we receive, but also give. It’s really beautiful I think.

Yeah, yeah. You know, you touched on this, but I’d love to hear you dilate a little bit more because, as you spoke about the importance of empathetic witness, it’s, it’s much, we can much more easily imagine extending forgiveness to someone who has acknowledged wrongdoing, especially if they are repentant about it. But there are some homes that the perpetrator never acknowledges, and may even feel like they are the wronged party. there can be deep differences that way. how does one think about extending forgiveness when they’re lacking empathetic witness? And when, when there is a disagreement about what happened and when harm is not acknowledged?

Yeah. Thank you so much for that question. I think it’s really important. And, one of the things that I cover in the book is that there are sort of four common views of forgiveness in the church. So we’re not always actually talking about the same thing as Christians who, you know, read the Bible. And so if I would love to just briefly go over those four, because I think it speaks to this. So the first sort of possibility is that forgiveness in the church is primarily understood as a psychological tool, which benefits the victim. And the focus is that sort of personal release of anger, a personal release of any desire for vengeance. The perpetrator really is kind of irrelevant to the project. So whether they’re repentant or not, you know, what you’re focusing on is the inner healing, the soul work of the of the person. And when I practice forgiveness, you know, as a follower of Jesus, I’m receiving that grace and I’m sort of freed from grievance. And I don’t really think very much about whether the person has repented or not. Now, one of the problems with that model is that if you have suffered, you know, egregious harm, sexual assault, the murder of your child, you know, the destruction of your reputation so that you can’t work again, you know, the blowing up of your Christian community, you know, something absolutely devastating at a sort of life level.

It’s actually really hard to put the perpetrator out of your mind. It’s like, how do I do that? And so people feel I’m constantly failing at this. And it’s the burden is almost on me psychologically to achieve this Zen like peace that’s out of my out of my range. So that’s, that’s possibility number one, with its limitation. Possibility number two is that forgiveness must be offered unconditionally regardless of whether the perpetrator Acknowledges the harm and without any requirement of then repenting. And that when you forgive. The definition of forgiveness is a restoration of relationship without any requirement for forgiveness. And you will often hear that taught in the church. And it’s often sort of rooted in teachings around, you know, the life of Joseph. It’s, it’s a popular envisaging of forgiveness. Again, that is hard in areas where, you know, a woman has survived domestic violence or, you know, some of these more egregious harms that we’ve experienced. That’s how sometimes abuse is allowed to continue to be perpetrated because the burden is on the victim to make maintain contact with the abuser. A third possibility is that forgiveness is conceived of as only being offered under the strict condition that the wrongdoer repents. So the idea is, you know, God doesn’t require doesn’t forgive us unless we repent. So we should not be required to forgive anyone until they repent. The problem with that is that many of us experience the scenario that you described, where we see a situation quite differently.

We may have had a falling out, and the person we feel is our perpetrator that has really harmed us, thinks they’re the victim. And so, you know, if you practice this idea that I’m never going to forgive until the person has repented, you’re not going to be forgiving very often. And you’re still then sort of stuck with that burden. So here’s the fourth view, which I think is the biblical view, which is what I argue for in the book. And this view is that forgiveness is offered by a Christian unconditionally. So I do not require the person that has harmed me to have repented, for me to be able to live in the grace of forgiveness, giving ultimately that divine judgment and vengeance to God and living free then of that impetus to get get that just ultimate outcome. So forgiveness is offered unconditionally, but it is actually enacted and fully actualized only when repentance occurs. And so, you know, when Jesus dies on the cross for the sins of the world, something similar is happening. He pays the debt of humanity’s guilt. But we access that grace and forgiveness when we repent. So the analogy I use in the book, which I find helpful and see if anyone else here finds it helpful, is that, you know, when you buy a house, it’s very similar in Britain and America.

When you buy a house, usually you can’t afford to pay that for the whole house. You might have saved up a bit of money for a deposit, but the distance between, you know, the cost of the house and what you can afford is covered by a mortgage. That’s a sort of debt that you incur. And, you, you, you make a deal with the seller or, you know, through your realtor or whatever a price is agreed for the house. Now what happens is you don’t just sort of wire the money to the person. What happens is the money from your deposit and the money for the mortgage go into what’s called an escrow. I think in the US and for us in Britain, it goes into the solicitor’s account. You know, the money is there. So you know, the funds have been transferred, the debt is covered. Both, you know, your decision to buy the deposit and, you know, the mortgage funds covered by the big bank that, that that’s in the escrow. So, you know, something has happened, but the transaction is only fully enacted when the paperwork finally goes through and the deeds of the house transfer. And so the analogy, I think, is this. It can be true that I have forgiven someone who has harmed me. The deposit has gone. I’ve made the decision as a Christian that I’m receiving the grace of Jesus, and I’m living as a disciple in the flow of forgiveness.

I’m not seeking vengeance for what occurred to me. The mortgage payment is there, like the debt is ultimately cosmically actually paid by Jesus for this harm that has happened, including at a transcendent level, because I’ve been made in the image of God. That is all there is in the escrow. And so I it can be true that I’ve forgiven, but if the person hasn’t repented, then full reconciliation isn’t enacted. So it can be true, both that I’ve forgiven and that I’m living in this space of not always fully complete transactions. So I’m not required to say that, you know, I know the state of the heart of the perpetrator. I’m not actually required to become a judge and get embroiled with whether they’ve truly repented or not. I’m living free in forgiveness downstream of the grace of God through Christ and ultimately the great attorney in heaven. The one who manages the escrow can judge whether that person has ultimately repented or not, and whether they really receive that forgiveness. I think that’s really freeing way to live. And it also makes clear that there’s a difference between reconciliation, where there does need to be clear repentance and confession and the, you know, the desire to make amends and an honesty about living with the consequences sometimes of the harm that has occurred.

Yeah. You know, we’re going to turn to questions from our audience in just a second. But, one last question I did want to ask you is that we hear so much about the phrase forgive and forget, as if the two go together. And of course, memory, as well as attention is largely what forms our sense of identity. And so I wanted to ask you what you see as the relationship between forgiving a trespass and forgetting one.

Thank you so much. I love what Desmond Tutu writes about that. He says forgiving is not forgetting. Forgiving is actually remembering. So Christian forgiveness is not, minimizing. And it’s not saying the harm doesn’t matter anymore or I just let’s just forget about it. Forgiveness is saying, you know, what happened occurred and it hurt. But we’re both free from its power because of what Jesus has done. And so you can access that obviously through repentance And the way then that memory works, I think is really interesting because as you say, you know, memory is such an integral part of who we are, our accumulated experiences and even the formation of our neural pathways and brains. You know who we are as people. But God can also heal memory. So my experience in the Christian life is that forgiveness is also a journey. These things don’t happen instantly, but that I can. I can choose to forgive. And for a long time, the memory of what occurred can still actually stab. You know, the pain can still be real because the harm is not minimized. You know, there’s a sort of exquisite beauty in that harm mattering because that costs the death of Jesus. There’s an intricate connection with the crucifixion of Christ and the love of God then being poured into our hearts, even in and through our suffering. So it may be that as time passes and as healing increases with certain ones of those wounds, like the potency of that stab feels less powerful, with, with the passage of time. But forgiveness is, is not forgetting and forgiveness is, is not minimizing what occurred.

Well, the questions from our viewers are stacking up. And just as a reminder, if you have joined us for the first time, you can ask a question in the Q&A box. And you can also like questions, which helps give us an idea of what some of the more popular questions are. So our first question comes from Mark Taylor, and Mark asks, can you say more about why and how grievance gives people moral power in the context of identity politics? If in that context, grievance is a form of power and forgiveness is a loss of power. How can we conceive of forgiveness as a true act of power, or an act of a different, truer kind of power?

Yeah. Thank you. Well, I think you’ve given the answer in the question. That’s so true. And so, I think powerful because what we have in the Christian answer ultimately, identity politics and grievance politics, you know, the grievance politics on the left, the outworking of it is identity politics. I have these intersecting layers of injustice that I’ve experienced, and they form the foundation of my identity. And this was taking Kimberlé Crenshaw Williams work on intersectionality, which was initially actually an analytical tool. It was meant to sort of dissect how injustice works. So, for example, she would argue that, you know, the experience of sexism of a woman is different from the experience of a person who also experiences racism. A black woman, so she would have a kind of compounded injustice experience, which would be different. And that’s how injustice would intersect differently for different ones of us. And, you know, add all the isms into that and you have the various kind of different injustices that intersect. But what happened with identity politics is that an analytic tool came to be, you know, with, the, the death of God, if you like, in the culture, the analytic tool came to be like a definitional principle. This came to be okay because God doesn’t exist. It’s not really enough just to say we’re just the atoms of our biology.

We’re just, you know, blobs of atoms, just machines. We want to make our humanity mean something more. And so, so identity, what identity politics is, does is to give power to that grievance. And that becomes then foundational to who I am. And so any threat that I experience against any of that grievance is an attack on my personhood and my innate value. And that’s why there’s so much anger and rage. And you can’t disagree with an idea anymore without, you know, canceling a person. And so what I think we can, we can do, in this setting is to suggest that a materialist account of the world which underpins identity politics, right? Because, you know, God doesn’t exist. We can say that a materialist account of the world might be able to tell you that that grievance has power, that these injustices have power or give you power. But they can’t. It can’t tell you why it hurts. It can’t say why the rage is warranted in the first place, because, a material account of the world just says, you know, you’re just the atoms of your body. And, you know, time and time again on campus, I’ve found this with young people, with students that I could bring them back to this question. I don’t think your worldview about what it means to be human can warrant your rage.

Being a confluence of atoms doesn’t account for why you are angry, to the level that you are angry about injustice in your own life, let alone injustice. 200 years ago to blobs of atoms, slavery, colonization, you know, all the things that we care about today, particularly amongst young people. But I think our worldview can account for why a person might feel rage about injustice against another person. And that’s how we get to the image of God. And then we can introduce a narrative of hope. You know, this is a generation with all the anger, all the grievance, all the power. With the high suicide rates, high levels of anxiety, high levels of that deep, profound experience of meaninglessness. So many people choosing not to have children. So many people looking at the world with total despair. And so it’s into that context that we can account for the possibility of rage being warranted. But then we introduce forgiveness and the intervention of God into the world, not minimizing harm and injustice. That, you know, we’ve already talked about, but the possibility of hope and new life in Jesus through this cosmic event. And I found if we do that in a way that connects with those real concerns, we’re saying hope justice matters, but also hope is possible. It’s very powerful and there’s no one else can do that. There’s no other worldview offering that.

So a question from an anonymous attendee who asked, how can and should we protect ourselves when we forgive someone who commits violence against us, including cases of domestic violence when we know the perpetrator? How do we set boundaries or seek protection? And under what cases is reconciliation not advisable or potentially harmful?

Thank you so much. I do address this in the book. And, you know, as as a pastor’s wife, someone who’s worked in pastoral ministry over many years, I’ve heard and seen so many horror stories where forgiveness, a wrong teaching about forgiveness is weaponized in cases of domestic abuse to, you know, keep a woman and her children in a situation of profound danger. So here’s two ways that I think we can address this. The first is by actually being clear about what forgiveness is and what it is not. Because that form of weaponized forgiveness always actually undermines the potency and seriousness of sin. And it’s doing what the world says forgiveness is. It’s just like let people off. But actually, Christian forgiveness in a way, overemphasizes more than emphasizes the seriousness of sin and harm and abuse. and so in cases of domestic abuse, in cases of sexual abuse, in cases of crime, you know, I think we need to be absolutely clear that, you know, there is always the possibility of a perpetrator repenting at a kind of transcendent level and receiving forgiveness, but that does not do away with the need for and the requirement of real world consequences and actually an acceptance of real world consequences, whether that’s penalty for crime or, you know, reasonable and right boundaries for the protection of those who’ve suffered egregious harm.

You know, that’s actually evidence. Acceptance of those boundaries is evidence of real repentance so that, you know, eternal forgiveness is possible. But that doesn’t mean then that that person still has access to the wife or child they’ve abused, or that the sexual predator has access to the woman or child or boy that they’ve sexually abused. And this is so often where the mistake is made. I think Rachael Denhollander speech at the trial of Larry Nassar, the sexual abuser of the US gymnasts, is so helpful in this, where she speaks about offering him forgiveness and asking for a full accounting of the law, like the full penalty for the crimes. And there is no contradiction between those two things within a Christian thinking of a framework of forgiveness. And just briefly, that is also why I think that fourth model that I argued for earlier about forgiveness, that there is a difference between forgiveness and reconciliation. So a woman who’s experienced domestic abuse or a woman who’s experienced rape may be able to say, I forgive the perpetrator and express, you know, a very right need for and an intention to see follow through on justice and boundaries. Real world justice and real world boundaries for the perpetrator of that harm. So I think clarity really matters.

Yeah. I’m actually going to combine two questions that are somewhat related. one is a question from an anonymous attendee that asked, must the modern church do more to teach and train people in forgiveness, particularly as central to discipleship training is the lack of forgiveness training, perhaps along with increasing polarization in church membership. Yet another example of of a Christianity vanishing or merely becoming moralistic therapeutic deism. And somewhat relatedly, another viewer asked, how can confession in the church context create possibilities for forgiveness? How can the church emphasize this connection? And are there resources available to make this living connection in our church services and model it?

Two wonderful questions. Let me start with the second one and come back to the first one. So the second question about confession, I think is so powerful and so true. And it’s why, liturgical traditions. You know, I’m an Anglican. I grew up as a child in an Anglican church, saying the confession and hearing the absolution Sunday by Sunday. So, when we’re in a community that practices either corporate confession or, you know, community where discipleship is encouraged and, you know, on a biblical level, the Bible says, confess your sins to each other, where we’re in living in accountable relationships, where we’re honest about, you know, where we’ve messed up that week or that month. And we have people in our lives who hear that and pray for us and reassure us of the possibility of forgiveness within the Christian life. It’s so powerful. It’s so hard to grow as a Christian without this as a regular practice, and without that being something that is forming the neural pathways of our brain. You know, Romans 12 says, be transformed by the renewing of our minds and a modern brain science talks about how words and language and, you know, repetition of practice literally does that. It kind of rewires the brain. And so practices of confession, I think, really help us with that and to live redemptive lives, to live honest lives where we’re repenting and, and, and seeing that grace. So absolutely, I think that’s really important.

And also being in a church where we regularly receive Holy Communion, where we share the Eucharist, because these are physical symbols that we then take into our bodies that symbolize that grace that we’re receiving, that’s then deeply connected to being able to forgive others. and secondly, I think teaching about, and this is partly why I’ve written the book and this, you know, we’re going to release a study guide for small groups to do it in churches. You know, when I was writing this book and people say, oh, what you’re what you’re writing on. And I say, I’m writing about forgiveness for every single Christian. There’s hundreds of people in the course of, you know, two years while you’re writing. Every single Christian I said that to said, oh, no, you know, like dread at the thought of, oh, there’s this big long list of people I’ve failed to forgive condemnation or oh, no, you know, perhaps someone who’s been involved in, you know, dysfunctional church situation where forgiveness has been weaponized against the victim, just dread that it’s going to be more of that, like systemic injustice. And so I think teaching with clarity on what forgiveness is and isn’t as an integral part of the Christian life is really important. Now, the first question, I’ve sort of forgotten what it was. Cherie can you sorry, can you remind me? I know we ran the two together.

I think you hit them.

Okay, good. Good by mistake. That’s good.

And we’ll end with one more question from an attendee who basically says, following up on the question about language in the church context, this is from Kevin Ford. Should we be changing our own language and move from ‘I’m sorry’ to ‘forgive me’.

I think that’s wonderful. I think that’s absolutely wonderful. And maybe run them together so that, you know, again, we’re emphasizing there is repentance. We’re not just saying, forgive me because you have to because you’re a Christian, but saying, I’m sorry and I repent and I own what I did and forgive me. Yes. So to normalize that, but perhaps let’s not get rid of. I’m sorry.Cherie Harder: That’s great. Amy, thank you so much. I’m going to give you the last word.

Thank you so much. So I think as many in the West seek meaning, the church needs to recapture the vision of forgiveness as an actuality. This is something real rooted in the sacrifice of Jesus at the cross. And it’s that that has actually been the animating force of the Christian faith throughout history. Jesus’s death, his victory over evil, resonates with people who’ve suffered horror and this kind of transcendent and life giving truth of the gospel, that forgiveness has the power to change a person, to reconcile us to God and to transform our lives. And I think that we will also find the tenderness and the power of the love of God awakening in us. This connection and attachment to our creator. Forgiveness has the potential to be the greatest gift the Christian story has offered our age. It’s the greatest gift. Wherever we find ourselves politically, whether on the left or the right. It’s the greatest gift to a person. It’s the greatest gift to a community in trauma. We desperately need it in these days.

Amy, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you.