Forgiveness is headline news in an era that more often trumpets blame, litigation and punishment. Yet to the evangelical Christians caught up in Sunday’s shootings, forgiveness is not only the touchstone of their religion but also a common language practiced by victim and perpetrator alike.
And in the past two decades, forgiveness has moved beyond religion and psychotherapy and into the political and scientific worlds.
The image of murderer Matthew Murray’s family hugging Murray’s victims at an Arvada church seemed startlingly new to a Colorado public more accustomed to the acrimony and mystery surrounding the Columbine school massacre. Yet forgiveness is now a hot topic in academic research, and governments such as South Africa’s have made it national policy as an attempt at overcoming unimaginable trauma.
Recent interest in forgiveness may even be feeding itself, with copycat gunmen prompting more positive acts of copycat reconciliation. Perhaps the public acts of forgiveness after the Pennsylvania Amish shootings last year “provided some impetus to the families affected in Colorado to make this gesture as well,” said David Weaver-Zercher, a professor of religious history and author of “Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy.”
In both the Amish and Colorado cases, traumatized communities spoke among themselves in familiar words.
“When you know the Lord, you process things so much faster,” said H. Norman Wright, a certified trauma specialist who has counseled close to 1,000 people at New Life Church in Colorado Springs. Before driving to Colorado Springs, Murray killed two people at Youth With a Mission in Arvada. “We can offer forgiveness because we are a forgiven people.”
Clerical leaders and psychologists acknowledge the concept of forgiveness is not selfless — it is meant first to help the forgiver, not meant solely as a gift to the offender.
“If you don’t forgive,” said New Life Pastor Brady Boyd, “you turn into something you don’t want to be. You turn into a Matthew Murray. That was his problem. He had been offended. He had been hurt. He didn’t forgive, and that turned into hatred and bitterness.”
The Internet rantings apparently posted by Murray also spoke of forgiveness, sentiments that were eventually overwhelmed by his anger and hatred.
“Forgiveness and mercy is not something uniquely Christian, but Christians, at least those who are intense about what they do, see this as the ultimate litmus test of whether their faith is authentic or not,” said Carl Raschke, professor of religious studies at the University of Denver. Forgiveness was what separated Jesus Christ from the Old Testament emphasis on retribution, and that evangelical faith is severely strained when a gunman like Murray kills four and wounds five others in a horrific attack, Raschke said.
“What makes Christianity different is that it makes forgiveness a duty, not an option.”
Forgiving takes commitment
A group of teenage girls gathered in a prayer circle under the cavernous rotunda of New Life on Wednesday night, trying to practice that duty.
“We’re praying,” said 16-year-old Kate Overtubbesing. “We’re praying for peace. We’re praying for forgiveness,” including for Murray, she said.
Talk of forgiveness was not so immediate, or persistent, after 1999’s Columbine massacre, a tragedy that continues to resonate in Colorado.
Tom Mauser’s son, Daniel, was one of 12 students who died there. The parents of killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold have never met with the victims’ families, speaking briefly in letters of apology through their lawyers.
Mauser said it’s “helpful” that Murray’s parents are meeting families, but he was surprised it happened “so early in the process.”
“Because of the breadth of what happened, I’d want to have a little more idea of what did happen in the household before I accepted that kind of reaching out,” Mauser said.
The threat of lawsuits against the Columbine killers’ parents complicated any possible reconciliation, he said.
Mauser said his own concept of forgiveness is complex, and he assumes it will be for the church shooting families as well. “I think people look at it as if it’s a one-dimensional thing, that it has a beginning and an end. It will come in its own time, and it will come in many forms.”
In close work with victims, prison inmates and other groups, researchers often conclude that forgiveness is not a single act but an ongoing “practice” that grows more meaningful with repetition, said Boston University liberal studies professor Ruth Henderson.
Evangelicals are attempting to perfect what other groups are just beginning to talk about, she said. “They meditate on that topic on a regular basis. They’re in better shape than people who are not thinking about it. They’ve made a conscious choice to have it be a centerpiece in their lifestyle.”
Punishment still has its place
Forgiveness grows muddled when people confuse it with words like acceptance, tolerance or mercy. When Jesus forgave the adultress, Raschke noted, he was not tolerating further sins — he said, “You’re forgiven; don’t do it again.”
“I still get angry,” Boyd said. “A young man burst into my church and killed people I love. To not feel anger would be inhuman. But I’m not going to let that turn into unforgiveness. That would destroy me.
“I’m not ashamed to express anger,” Boyd said. “Jesus showed emotions many times on earth. He expressed anger. It stopped there. It didn’t turn into a deep-seated root of bitterness.”
Boyd has twice sat in the hospital with David Works, the father of the two girls killed in the New Life parking lot, and who himself is hospitalized with injuries from the shooting.
Boyd said he has been amazed by Works’ spirit of reconciliation.
“He’s been spectacular,” Boyd said.
Forgiveness does not preclude punishment, religious leaders and scholars emphasized. Many who have opposed reconciliation commissions for South Africa’s apartheid horrors or the Rwandan genocide argue that true healing will come only after criminal justice.
Henderson urges crime victims toward forgiveness because case studies show it helps them recover, yet she also asks them to avoid simplistic declarations.
“It’s a sophisticated position to say: I have compassion for you, and you need to go to jail,” Henderson said.
Counselor Wright said he is quick to jump on a false or superficial healing as he talks to traumatized churchgoers.
“You have to process anger and the other emotions. It’s unhealthy to stuff these feelings down,” he said. “But then we let go of them. We release them.”
Forgiveness in Colorado’s shootings may be easier because the gunman is dead, and there is nothing more to demand from him.
“If he was still alive, it might be a different question,” Raschke said.
Even when the murderers are already gone, he added, American society as a whole has not always chosen the forgiveness route. “Look how we reacted to 9/11. Nobody was willing to forgive the dead al-Qaeda. Americans wanted blood.”
Michael Booth: 303-954-1686 or mbooth@denverpost.com
