I was pointed to an interesting post on Instagram. It is worth reading both for the post itself and the comments that attend it. You can find it here:
The story, in a nutshell, is this. A man committed manslaughter and ended up in prison. After his release he went into a restorative justice programme. He met with the parents of the person he killed, who determined to forgive him and asked him to make something of his life. He now has an ongoing relationship with this couple and has dedicated his life to being a youth justice campaigner who argues for greater use of restorative justice. It is a story of forgiveness and its power to change the lives of those who do not deserve it.
The comments, as you can imagine, range from bewilderment to rage. For the most part, it seems, not many people can imagine forgiving their child’s killer, ever, under any circumstances. Many cannot fathom how this couple manage it. The overwhelming noise, however, is how unjust it all seems. Not only how can they forgive this man, but why would they. There is rage against the criminal justice system, rage that he should be let out of prison at all, rage that this family dare to defy justice and forgive him. Many are particularly angry that this horrible killer might go on to have any sort of life at all, especially when his victim has no such chance. People seem angry at forgiveness and are adamant there is no redemption for such filthy, rotten sinners as this.
It doesn’t take much poking around to find the fatal flaw here. As soon as we start demanding justice, as soon as we start insisting some people are beyond redemption, we soon find ourselves drawing lines. Here are matters beyond the pale and from which there is no coming back. Almost to a man, this mode of thinking stops just a step beyond me. I am the measure, I am just the right side of the line, everyone else who goes further is a rotten, unforgivable sinner. Everyone else can get some grace.
The problem is, we’re not the only ones playing this game. This is a numbers game. This is about where the majority draw the line. And as the clampdown gets closer and closer to home, we no longer necessarily find ourselves in the majority. Our own finger-pointing lead inexorably to fingers being pointed at us and our insatiable demand for justice without clemency means there is no redemption for filthy, rotten scumbags like me. Only I thought of myself as nothing but a rascal. But all the rascals have been outvoted by the more upright people who now determine we are bottom of the pile, not worthy of redemption, without hope of release. As we play this game, we get further and further down the pecking order until we are left with the only righteous person in town, no society left to make them feel good by comparison and no consolation as they have to face their own failings without any recourse at all.
Whilst many cannot conceive of themselves as anything like a murderer, few reckon with the real problem: the distance in wrongdoing between them and a murderer is vastly smaller than the distance between them and genuine, objective uprightness. The measure is not whether I scrub up righteous next to a murderer, it’s whether I might be deemed righteous stood next to perfect holiness. If the saying is true, nobody is perfect, then we’re all in trouble. If we’ve demanded justice to the uttermost, what do I do when I realise – though I might be better than a murderer – justice makes its own demands on me? If there’s no redemption for those who transgress, where are any of us left?
If only there was some way of maintaining perfect justice whilst offering clemency. If only there was a way to let failures be redeemed without pretending that their wrongdoing isn’t real or doesn’t matter. If only we could identify that final, perfectly righteous person so that we might recognise we are all in trouble stood next to him. If only we could find a way to deal with evil without making it the end of all things. It’s naught but despair if we can’t; we’re all up the creek without a paddle. I wonder where there might be an answer to these things?