THE SOCIAL IMPORTANCE OF FORGIVENESS
It’s not easy to listen to Jesus’ call to forgiveness or to grasp the implications it can have when we accept that a person is more human when we forgive whenever it’s needed.
Undoubtedly we need to understand well Jesus’ thinking. To forgive doesn’t mean ignoring injustices committed, or passively or indifferently accepting them. On the contrary, if we forgive it’s precisely to destroy somehow the cycle of evil, and to help the other to rehabilitate themselves and act differently in the future.
In the dynamic of forgiveness there’s a power to overcome evil with good. Forgiveness is a gesture that qualitatively changes the relationships among people and seeks to establish our future living together in a new way. That’s why forgiveness mustn’t be just an individual demand, but ought to have a social expression.
Society oughtn’t abandon any person, not even the guilty ones. Each person has the right to be loved. We can’t accept that repressive punishment only «returns evil for evil» for the imprisoned, burying them in their crime, degrading their existence and keeping them from their true rehabilitation.
The great juridical expert G. Radbruch understands that the punishment as imposition of evil for evil must go about disappearing in order to be changed as far as possible into «stimulus to redeem evil with good, the only way in which we can exercise in the world a justice that doesn’t make things worse, but transforms them into a better world».
There’s no justification for acting in a degrading or unjust manner with any prisoner, whether they’re a common delinquent or a political prisoner. We will never advance toward a more human society if we don’t abandon postures of repression, hate, and vengeance.
That’s why it’s also a mistake to incite people to revenge. The cry of «the people don’t forgive» is disgracefully understandable, but isn’t the clear path for teaching them to build a more human future.
The rejection of forgiveness is a cry that we as believers can’t ever subscribe to, since definitely it’s a rejection of the fraternity desired by the One who forgives us all.
José Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
