Dear Scott,
You asked how the African-American Christian families of those slaughtered by a White Christian Terrorist could, just a couple of days after the attack, state that they forgive the attacker, suspecting that they offer forgiveness in court, then scream and curse when they get home. You’re probably right, though this is not an either/or, and given the deep faith of this community, I am sure the cursing looks less like profanity and more like lament. But the bigger question is, what is forgiveness to these people.
It has taken me longer to answer than it should, not because I can’t explain it, but because it is mighty tempting to go down a lot of theological rabbit-holes, explaining how we humans construct religion. I think I can avoid that trap, though it is a topic you might find interesting. The other challenge involves the diversity of Christian belief, a sub-topic that, alas, I cannot avoid.
One of the great lies of the Judeo-Christian tradition is that there was a religion called Judaism, and that Jesus replaced that religion with something we call Christianity. In truth, the Hebrew religion was a complex of beliefs, some adapted from other religions in the region, some theological innovations. Even in the earliest layers of text we see competing understandings of God, counter-narratives that subvert the dominant king and Temple narrative. By the time Jesus was born and took up his ministry of healing and teaching, the Hebrew cult was divided into a number of sects, but even these divisions are artificial, classifying groups based only on their understandings of the Law (mostly found in the Torah and supposedly written by Moses) and the Roman occupation.
Decades after Jesus was brutally executed by Roman law enforcement, the Hebrews in Jerusalem and the surrounding region rebelled, and were destroyed. The sect that fared best were the Pharisees, who founded what would come to be Rabbinic Judaism. Today, when we think of Judaism, what we are thinking of is this particular expression that didn’t even exist in Jesus’ time, but there are still traces of older forms. For example, one can still find Samarian Jews in Palestine, cut off from “Judaism†for 2700 years.
The same sort of thing happens with Christianity, despite the myth promulgated by the Roman church that there is one “true†Christianity. Biblical texts make it pretty clear that even the inner circle of disciples weren’t unified in their understanding of what Jesus taught and meant. There was diversity from Day One. Funny enough, the group most closely associated with Jesus would come to be called Ebionites and would be labeled heretics!
To simplify things, I’ll divide Christianity into two sects. This is absolutely artificial, but important, as one narrative or understanding of Christianity completely dominates modern discourse, and my answer connects the two.
The Christians in Charleston belong to what I will call the “Traditionalist†sect. They understand God and the arc of salvation history something like this: God, who looks like a super-sized human male, creates the universe for the purpose of having company and/or receiving praise. But praise isn’t real if it isn’t freely given, so He gives humans free will. They promptly screw it up, eating from the Forbidden Tree and marking humans forever with a sinfulness that is passed down at birth like a bad gene. God’s forgiveness requires sacrifice, but nothing created will suffice, so God incarnates, or becomes flesh, that He might offer Himself. This is, of course, the story of Jesus. But God does not remove the stain of sin from human kind, erasing the bad code that passes from generation to generation. Instead, every individual must choose to “opt in†to this system. And part of that system is following the teachings of Jesus.
Jesus can be frustrating and vague on many things, but there is no mistaking his position of sinfulness and forgiveness. He believes everyone sins and everything can be forgiven. (Actually there is one unforgivable sin in the New Testament, blaspheming the Holy Spirit, something that has stumped scholars and theologians for centuries.) Jesus loathes the self-righteous, leading to his famous teaching about the speck in the eye of another. When he heals physical and mental illness, he actually proclaims that sins are forgiven. And he doesn’t pull any punches when he says that you will only receive forgiveness from God if you have been equally generous in forgiving others.
The “Progressive†Christian sect was not invented on some breakthrough date in the last century. In fact, some of its understandings of God, Jesus and humankind have been around since the beginning, since those first days after the execution of Jesus. The problem has always been that it is nuanced, complex, and willing to accept uncertainty, which makes it really hard to explain and sell to people who want easy answers. It is a faith trajectory informed by natural selection, quantum physics and postmodern philosophy. And as you no doubt realize, it is my location on the map of Christian belief.
I understand religion as a human construction, a placeholder for our fear and our hope. And yet I still absolutely, completely, believe in God, though my God is neither anthropomorphic (human-shaped) or anthrocentric (human obsessed). God is beyond human-understanding, beyond our words, but we must use words, however imperfect, in describing God. So let me call God a divine mystery, a cosmic holy force of creativity and love. Sin, then, is not based on our failure to meet the ego needs of a codependent divine being, an economic transaction of obedience for blessing. Instead, we are hard-coded for transcendence, for the beyond beyond. This is what drives art, sacrificial love, all things creative and beautiful and amazing. It is countered by our fear, for we are finite creatures, and have no proof of what, if anything, comes next.
Like the Traditionalist, I understand that all have “sinned,†though for me this looks more like giving in to fear and hate than rule-breaking. Not that rules aren’t important, they’re just a social construct. Like that powerful (and completely artificial) construct of race.
I’m not at all interested in figuring out some ancient Trinitarian logic. For me, it is enough to believe that Jesus was, in some way beyond our understanding, a direct experience of the divine to those he taught and healed. A long-dead German theologian coined a term, as only a German can do, to describe this nebulous state of embodied transcendence: “perfect Christ-consciousness.â€
Like the better of the Traditionalists, I take the teachings of Jesus pretty seriously, including the condemnation of self-righteousness and the call to forgive. I have certainly acted out of fear and hatred at times in the past. How can I judge others?
Now, society needs rules or it simply couldn’t function, so Dylann Roof will be punished by society. My personal faith forbids the death penalty for many reasons. We can’t undo it if we find we’ve made a mistake in an imperfect system touched by abuse and racism. And, after all, the entire Christian religion is centered on a case of capital punishment. But I doubt South Carolina is going to ask me.
Countless self-identified Christians hold grudges and preach hatred every day. Though there is a pretty wide gap on the Christian spectrum between me and the families at that AME church in the deep south, we share this core belief, received directly from Jesus: you must forgive in order to be forgiven, and all of us need forgiveness. Done deal. Non-negotiable.
An interesting sub-narrative has developed in recent days, one that condemns the public forgiveness offered by those families, and one well worth watching as it plays out in alternative media. Some activists view this display of faith as part of the “Uncle Tom†complex, a set of behaviors where the oppressed collaborate in their oppression by excusing the acts of the oppressor. Today we might think of it as a cultural Stockholm Syndrome. I suspect the critics will focus on the social-order questions, avoiding the deeper theology, and so get it wrong. Still, an important dialogue, one we struggle with every day, where to locate ourselves on a continuum between passivity, passive resistance, and active resistance. It was a question asked by the Abolition movement, in the face of the Nazi menace. It is a question any aware human must ask every day. And it totally sucks.
You are probably more confused than you were before you asked. If so, I’ve done my job. Hopefully, you’ll forgive me.
Blessings,
Gary