Spiritual Wellbeing and the Healing Power of Forgiveness

I was negotiating some hairpin bends high up in the Mallorcan mountains in our rental car when my passenger said out of the blue: ‘I have no time for your Christian faith; you have such a pre-occupation with guilt and sin.’ I was floored for a moment. Perhaps we do to the outside world. But doesn’t that miss some of the point? Guilt gives us a chance to reflect on our actions and inactions and resolve to do better next time.
None of us can possibly be perfect. I am certainly no saint. But we can all strive for improvement in the secure knowledge that with true penitence we do not need to carry a guilt burden with us along life’s journey. Jesus Christ died for our sins, that we might be forgiven. He represents love and forgiveness, not guilt. Forgiveness from God through Jesus Christ, the world’s greatest Wounded Healer, heals us and allows us to move on.
‘To err is human, to forgive divine,’ (1)wrote Alexander Pope, the renowned early eighteenth-century poet. We also have to forgive those who do wrong to us: otherwise we harbor bitterness and resentment within our own souls. Forgiveness is vital for our own spiritual wellbeing. Jonathan Sacks calls forgiveness the emotional equivalent of losing weight. It is even better for you than for the person you have forgiven!
Even if our offer of forgiveness is not accepted, ‘yet once we reach out our hand, we cleanse ourselves of resentment. We may remain deeply wounded, but we will not use our hurt to inflict further pain on others.’ These are the words of pastor Johann Christoph Arnold, who in his book The Lost Art of Forgiving – Stories of Healing from the Cancer of Bitterness, (2) relates the very human stories of ordinary people scarred by crime, betrayal, abuse and war. He tells how many have learned to forgive in sometimes the most difficult of circumstances. He reminds us of Gordon Wilson, whose daughter Marie died in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, the innocent victim of a terrorist bomb; of Chris Carrier, a ten year old abducted in Miami and subjected to the most brutal attack, who many years later exchanged mutual forgiveness with his abductor, by then an old man. Harbored bitterness, Arnold explains, is destructive and self-destructive. It ‘has a disastrous effect on the soul. It opens the door to evil and leaves us vulnerable to thoughts of spite, hatred and even murder. It destroys our souls, and it can destroy our bodies as well.’
The Most Rev. Desmond M. Tutu, formerly Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, oversaw the post-apartheid reconciliation in his native South Africa, as leader of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He has deep practical experience of the power of forgiveness. Without it, he tells us, ‘there can be no future for a relationship between individuals or within and between nations.’ He brought soldiers and paramilitaries face to face with their victims from the Northern Ireland Troubles to grant and receive forgiveness. This was a process, he felt, which would help individuals in Northern Ireland who had been living for decades with unresolved emotions.
Tutu has also observed that if only America could truly heal the wounds from slavery and the displacement of its Native Americans, the country could reach unprecedented heights.(3) He often speaks of such unresolved emotions as festering wounds that need opening up again and cleansing before real healing can occur.
Some of us believe that the Anglo-Catholic Church has seriously lost its way in the last 100 years or so by concentrating too much on individual redemption rather than nurturing a deeper spiritual commune with the sentient world around us, understanding our place in the wider humanity, visibly living our faith more proactively. Until the Church truly admits to its past failings, it will not be able to move on in a truly healing mission within the world.
This ability to forgive and be forgiven is an essential part of any global healing, a fact recognized by organizations such as the Fetzer Institute, based in Kalamazoo, Michigan USA. They are devoted to the furtherance of love and forgiveness in the pursuit of global healing. The Fetzer Institute has a mission that rests on “its conviction that efforts to address the world’s critical issues must go beyond political, social and economic strategies to their psychological and spiritual roots.”(4) And forgiveness, within or without a sound supporting faith, is one key to the healing of those psychological and spiritual roots.
The reality is that we all need our faith, and our spirituality, more than ever in these coming decades of the new millennium.

1. Alexander Pope English Writer, (1688-1744) from Part II of An Essay on Criticism.
2. Johann Christoph Arnold, The Lost Art of Forgiving – Stories of Healing from the Cancer of Bitterness (Farmington, PA: The Plough Publishing House of the Bruderhof Foundation, 1998)
3. Desmond Tutu, January 2006, reported by Waveney Ann Moore in the St. Petersburg Times,
4. Fetzer Institute, (nothing at all to do with Fetzer Wines of California, but the latter do have a wonderful website and are justly proud of their sustainable and organic achievements!).

The spirit and hope of compassion - time to take action

The Charter for Compassion is an idea whose time has come. This was the theme of the speaker and co-founder of the Charter, Karen Armstrong, at the Scientific and Medical Network Conference I attended last weekend, The Science of Empathy and the Spirit of Compassion.
Launched globally in 2009, The Charter is the result of Karen’s 2008 TED Prize wish. Supported by the Fetzer Institute, (fostering awareness of the power of love and forgiveness in the world), the Charter was drafted by a multi-faith, multi-national council of thinkers and leaders, representing the 6 major world faiths, and based on a principle also embraced by every moral code. The Charter developed out of Karen’s frustration that, in her view, not enough was being done by the world’s religions to promote compassionate action. Because as she says, compassion manifests itself in the world not by thinking but by doing. That was what inspired me to write my book; the frustration I shared with Karen, that I felt looking around me at our behaviour and general lack of responsibility, our lack of knowledge and unthinking actions. That was why I wrote the book about what everyone can do, linking it to compassion and spirit and where we can nurture it in our lives. It complements everything that the Charter stands for. Although actually it is perhaps more about what we must refrain from doing! I am pleased that people are buying it. I pray that they convert ideas into action!

Confucius probably founded the Golden Rule, in a period of the world’s history similar to our own, when societies were being torn apart. And all the great religions share the same rule, expressed variously but always meaning: “Do not impose on others what you do not wish for yourself.”
500 years later Jesus taught that we should love our enemies. But love in that context meant loyalty, Karen explained, looking out for each other’s interests. The ancient Greeks introduced the tradition of tragedy plays, where the audience participated, encouraged to weep for the suffering played out on stage, because weeping together creates a bond.
We are now profoundly connected as humans across the world, and action is urgent. But we are guilty of group egotism, she warned us, loving only our own kind, and we are addicted to our own pet hates. We need to understand that each individual is a unique spiritual mystery, and we must be prepared to not only make dialogue with others outside our own limited circle but also be prepared to then change at a profound level. To see each other as divine is, she warned, the only way forward. She spoke of positive projects with The Charter; of international businesses applying the 12 steps, of eliminating violence amongst prisoners in a tough Washington jail by training the prison officers in compassion, how Seattle has become the first City for Compassion, and the enormous success story in Pakistan, leading the charter in its work, with modules of compassion introduced in education, including at primary school level and in the independent universities there, where it is mandatory to take a compassion course; Because education is key to the success of the project in many ways.

But here is the crunch. The media must be part of that education process, and they are guilty of bias against religions in so many ways. Karen told us that the minimal media coverage of this year’s floods in Pakistan failed to mention the many businessmen who put their companies on hold, often for many months, whilst they went to help in the afflicted areas. And after 9/11 a Gallop Poll showed that 93% of Muslims worldwide said that the atrocity was not justified, and none said that it was justified on religious grounds. The small number, 7%, who said 9/11 was justified quoted political reasons! Furthermore, most said the biggest obstacle to better relations with the West was the latter’s lack of respect for Islam. How many knew that from media reports?
We have to demand better media, because the media is so invasive into our consciousness, so easy to tap into in film or internet, YouTube and blog, so difficult to avoid and yet so powerful and far reaching in its influence. The creative forces at work in the media that relentlessly bring so many images into our lives, the writers, editors, journalists, photographers and all the myriad of support staff we see listed for example in the credits at the end of any film, bear an awesome responsibility.
As with other creativity, those working in the media can use their talents to help heal the world and nourish our souls, or to assist in the destruction of both. We all have free will and choice. The choice is ours and theirs.