Rhea Wessel - freelance writer, author

Forgiveness and Repentance
Rhea Wessel, Star Staff Writer
The Anniston Star
September 20, 1998

Oftentimes have I heard you speak of one who commits a wrong as though he were not one of you, but a stranger unto you and an intruder upon your world. But I say that even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each of you, so the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also. - Kahlil Gibran, Lebanese poet.

These words remind Americans that as we examine the deeds of our President, we must also examine our own lives. And if we find wrong in our own hearts and in the actions of our President, ignoring one will not fix the other.

The road to repentance is long and treacherous. And it is private. One can be prodded down it, but only personal energy can fuel the journey.

President Clinton and his poor judgment have put the world in a state of extended crisis. He must do more than give lip service to repentance. He must, on his own accord, begin his long and treacherous journey toward repentance and thus healing.

And so likewise must the nation. We must recognize that, in the words of Gibran, Clinton and his transgressions are not lower than that which is in our own hearts.

Repentance and forgiveness go hand in hand. Each plays a part in the theology of Christians, Jews and Muslims. Secularists can see the pure humanistic logic of a philosopher such as Gibran.

The tie that binds the two acts of repentance and forgiveness is trust. Because the American people and the American leadership are imperfect, we must both make equal effort to rebuild Trust in our society.

Whether we like it or not, the United States is having its own truth and reconciliation hearings. At stake are integrity, truth, justice, honor and civic virtue.

In this time of national soul searching, we have a unique chance to clarify our norms and strengthen our values. To seize the day, here is a discussion of the universal concepts of repentance and forgiveness from a pan-theological viewpoint.

What is Repentance?

Though there is some theological difference in opinion on the steps to repentance, it is widely regarded as a process. Some theologians believe repentance comes before forgiveness. Others believe the order of business is not an issue.

Today, most consider the journey to repentance to be one shared only with the closest of family, friends and spiritual advisors. This has not always been the case in American history, says Ted Ownby, a University of Mississippi specialist in religion and evangelical Christianity in the South. He says public repentance in 18th and 19th century American history was rooted in church life and in Southern church life. In the Spartan, wooden churches of the region, the people would confront an alleged wrongdoer, he would give his defense and claim repentance, the church would vote on his sincerity and forgiveness would usually be granted.

The sins most often deliberated were public drunkenness, profanity, dancing and family offenses, such as adultery, abandonment or abuse.

Though the process may have died out, Ownby believes the concept of public repentance "stays in the mind of people who grew up in evangelical churches." They believe there is no radical difference between public and private life, a debate which is now raging in the press.

From a Christian perspective, repentance is a three-step process. According to Tom Elliff, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, who spoke recently at the First Baptist Church in Weaver, it begins with admission. This is not an action. It's a reaction generated when people get caught doing something they know to be wrong.

Next comes confession. The repenter must accept responsibility for his or her deeds. Finally, repentance is reached when a true change of heart occurs.

"It's a 180 degree return," said Elliff, whose brother Jim is also in the ministry.

Jim has written a pamphlet called the "Unrepenting Repenter" in which he outlines 12 attitudes that will not qualify as the about-face the brothers see as necessary. Among those are repentance that doesn't come from the heart, repentance made for fear of reprisal alone and repentance made in public but not in private.

The Rev. Kevin Cooke, the priest at St. James in Gadsden, has this view on repentance: "One must feel sorry for what they've done in order to know God's forgiveness ... We're called to repent no matter what."

For Catholics, the process begins with confession, what Cooke calls a "sacrament of reconciliation." The priest, representing Christ, then forgives. As in Protestantism, the process, particularly the reconciliation sacrament, means Catholics turn away from their old ways.

For Jews, says Rabbi Fred Raskind, repentance is something done by the individual with God directly.

"It involves reflection and a sincere statement of recognition of fault and a sincere intention not to repeat the offense and to make amends," he says. The Atlanta-based rabbi, who ministers to Anniston-area Jews, says the issue of Repentance is timely for Jews. The Jewish High Holy days, which begin at sundown today, are a time of reflection and atonement.

A person can pray directly to God for any sin. But first he must go to the person wronged and ask forgiveness, explains Rabbi Raskind. Yom Kippur is a time for solemnity and self reflection.

Moslems believe repentance is part of the process of forgiveness, says Safaa Al-Hamdani, an organizer and founder of Anniston Islamic Center.

What is Forgiveness?

Al-Hamdani, an Iraqi native who teaches at Jacksonville State University, says forgiveness comes in three stages. First, one must ask for forgiveness directly from God and be sincere about it. Second, the person must feel bad about what he has done and see it as wrong. Finally, one must promise never to do the act again.

"Forgiveness is not like human insurance," he says, explaining that people cannot rationalize their actions by assuming later forgiveness.

According to the Islamic faith, anything you do in your life can be forgiven if you are truly sorry. Yet there is a punishment for each deed. In strict Islamic societies, adulterers have been known to be stoned and thieves may have their hands cut off.

Dennis Sansom, a specialist on church and society at Samford University in Birmingham, says for Christians, there are no options. The Christian is commanded to forgive those who trespass against him as God forgives their trespasses.

"The Church has to forgive the president ... the problem is ... the law involved and the issues of justice ...There has to be some form of justice, quite honestly ... When the church is commanded to forgive the offender, the whole emphasis is on requiring 'me' to change, not the offender," said Sansom.

"Forgiveness is not condemnation. But also, it is not tolerance," he added.

In a recent sermon, Elliff also chose to define forgiveness by saying what it is not. He told worshipers that forgiveness was not reconciliation, restitution, restoration to full rights and privileges or approval.

The International Forgiveness Institute, affiliated with the University of Wisconsin at Madison, has studied world theologies and come up with a "Process Model of Forgiving."

"The research on forgiveness...may be as important to the treatment of emotional and mental disorders as the discovery of sulfa drugs and penicillin were to the treatment of infectious diseases," psychiatrist Richard Fitzgibbons was quoted as saying.

The model has 20 steps categorized in four phases.

First comes the uncovering phase, then decisions, next is work and finally a person experiences the outcome and the deepening phase.

In the first phase, an individual realizes he has been wronged. "Anger and other negative emotions are brought out into the open and healing can begin to occur," it says.

During the decision sequence, an individual starts to understand that focusing on the transgression or the transgressor may only cause more suffering.

"The individual entertains the idea of forgiveness as a healing strategy. The individual, then, commits to forgiving the injurer who has caused him/her such pain," it says. In this phase the forgiver must reject revenge as a rebuttal.

In the third phase, "the active work of forgiving the injurer" begins. The injured seeks understanding of the injurer, not as rationalization for his actions, but to acquire empathy.

Finally, in the outcome and deepening phase, a person begins to get a release from the emotional pain of the injury. "The individual may discover a new purpose in life and an active concern for his/her community. Thus, the forgiver discovers the paradox of forgiveness: as we give to others the gifts of mercy, generosity, and moral love, we ourselves are healed," it said.

Other secular philosophies, such as the one taught by Landmark Education, a worldwide group, also focus on the benefits forgivers receive. In Landmark's language, by refusing to forgive, people hold on to their "rackets," or fixed ways of thinking. Rackets allow one to dominate or avoid domination or to be right at the expense of others being wrong.

Christianity also states that forgiveness leads to an end to bitterness.

Judaism teaches that God forgives sins only through repentance. When a person harms his neighbor, however, he must not only repent; he must make amends for his action.

This brings up the issue of paying penitence. Even with forgiveness, that a wrongdoer must suffer the consequences of his ill deed is universally believed.

This of course is easier said than done. To see that someone else must pay is often clear; to increase one's own sentence is a different story.

Says Sansom, "If the president asked my spiritual advice, I would say repent, do penance, resign, and work as hard as you can to rebuild ... As his political adviser, I would say work for the best of the country ... (there needs to be) some form of punishment."

The Inseparable Link between Repentance and Forgiveness

By a sincere effort to repair the damage of one's wrongdoing, Trust can be rebuilt. Though sinners should seek repentance and the wronged should offer forgiveness unequivocally, many reject taking the first step. The person is sure that he will not be forgiven or certain that the signs of repentance are only an act.

According to Ownby, Southern churches of the last centuries were "almost immediately ready to say, 'Okay, we believe that you're sincere in your repentance.'" It was only when people repeated their transgressions that, as he puts it, "it got sticky."

This is at the heart of the Clinton issue. The American people seem ready and willing to forget the President's poor judgment in accepting the advances of a young woman who laid a trap. The problem is that there is overwhelming evidence, though vehemently denied, that Clinton has fallen to such temptations numerous times - and lied to cover them up.

"(Clinton) would have been kicked out (of these churches) long ago. You don't get to deny, deny and then split legal hairs," says Ownby.

Jim Elliff terms the link between repentance and forgiveness as faith. "A repenting man has no hope for obedience without faith in the source of all holiness, God Himself," he writes.

Father Cooke believes the trust element depends on the relationship. "Sure there may be forgiveness, but it will take a while for the trust to build back up again," he says.

Tom Elliff, who believes the president should step down, says, "True repentance is not a strategy. True repentance comes from a heart broken over sin." Elliff believes it would be a struggle to accept Clinton's apology because "behind everything done in the administration has been a strategy."

Weaver First Baptist Church pastor Dr. Roger Willmore says, "Clinton has basically mocked God by the way he has waved his Bible and portrayed himself as a godly man."

Elliff pointed out the irony of former President George Bush's "Read My Lips" mistake.

"Bush got kicked out because Americans didn't want a liar in the White House." Now look what we got, he says.

Elliff sees the national backslide as a result of seeds sown years ago, including the Supreme Court decisions that legalized abortion and banned organized prayer in public schools.

Rebuilding trust in relationships that have been violated is perhaps the most difficult part of reconciliation. Any married couple can tell you that. Once a lie has been told, even if it is to cover up information that would surely be hurtful, a notch of trust is removed from the totem pole of the relationship. John Gray, the popular psychologist and author of the Mars & Venus books, would say that points or dollars were removed from the couple's trust accounts held with each other.

But how is trust handled on a national level? Americans can't sleep on the other side of the bed. We can sulk and pout and swear, but that gets us nowhere.

Secular leaders would say the nation should seek justice and see that the president and his men are held accountable for their actions. Religious leaders would say the same and add forgiveness to that list.

The Time Element of Forgiveness and Repentance

For most people, trust is a factor of time. For the begrudging forgiver, only time will tell if the wrongdoer is truly repentant. From this reasoning, some people derive their argument against short-term forgiveness or forgiveness at all.

Elliff believes that forgiveness is sometimes a short and sometimes a long process. "It depends on the faith of those involved - how much they're willing to forgive and to seek forgiveness," he says.

For Father Cooke, repentance and forgiveness "go hand in hand." He gave biblical and present-day examples. Without prompting, the Pope forgave the man who shot him. And the father of the prodigal son offered forgiveness. Yet King David repented for his affair with Bathsheba before he received forgiveness.

For Muslims, the process of forgiveness can take as long as it needs to, but the assumption is that it reflects a "permanent action" by the person, says Al-Hamdani. "In the Islamic faith, we believe humans can talk to God any time and anywhere. It could be a minute or a second (for forgiveness)," he says.

Sansom believes Christianity teaches that forgiveness precedes repentance. "That's the whole message," he says.

While we were sinners, Christ died. One repents because one is forgiven. "One does not have to repent to be forgiven," he says.

Sansom recognizes that the modern sequence of events is usually to require repentance before forgiveness. "But God loves us before we ever love God. That's hard to do because it runs contrary to our natural instinct for revenge."

The Rule of Law in Repentance and Forgiveness

Many Americans believe that the rule of law is what is at stake in the Clinton crisis. The argument that the commander in chief must be held to the same standards as his underlings is often cited. Then there is the issue of alleged perjury and reckless disregard for the laws of the land.

Americans see that invoking moral authority no longer elicits actions from countrymen. There is an overwhelming sense that if the rule of law is lost, there will be anarchy.

The post-modern society, a place where Friedrich Nietzsche may have felt at home, tells us that right and wrong are relative. There are no absolutes. Hence, the loss of moral authority. What options, besides the rule of law, do we have left for ensuring order? The Clintons surely spent some of their time in their law schools studying the importance of respect for the law. Or were they attracted to the field in the first place because respect for the law generates power?

For Sansom, in a situation of forgiveness and repentance, "revenge" is a strong motive for laws. The laws are necessary, he argues, but Christians should not forget the commandment to forgive.

"Secular laws are there to bring one to repentance. Our forgiveness does not have to do with this. It is given unqualifiedly and unconditionally," said Sansom.

"It's hard for us to talk about moral issues because we've become illiterate about moral terminology ... We lost the ability to solve moral problems when we no longer looked for moral laws and instead sought autonomy," says Sansom.

He believes forgiveness is being politicized and is part of the Clinton strategy. Sansom hopes for a "political healing" by our nation's leaders. "(It is) incumbent on all these people to restore integrity and trustworthiness in our country."

To the 18th and 19th century church and its public justice system, sin was pretty clear, says Ownby. "You didn't debate it or try to redefine it. You either apologize or they ask you to leave," he says.

Ownby believes the public repentance practice began to die out when Southern religious figures started trying to pass laws against the things they had been accusing people of in church. Moral questions essentially became compartmentalized under the law. Instead of focusing on alcoholism in church, people put their energies into Prohibition, he says. Another reason, one that Ownby is hesitant to believe, is that as churches began to struggle for members, the congregations became "a little less circumspect" about their members' personal lives.

In New England, at about the same time, Puritanism was the moral benchmark and people's private lives were a public matter. There was no escaping public scrutiny for Hester Prynne. Estranged from her husband, the character in Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel sought comfort in a lover's arms. Should we pin a Scarlet "A" on the president for doing the same?

And are we as a nation purging our own personal shame by pinning that guilt on the one who committed adultery?

It seems Americans are still grappling with the same issue - what is public and what is private, and how does the rule of law fit here?

A strong sense of community was the reason the difference between private and public life did not matter in New England, says Ownby. Morality was a matter of public interest for the community's sake.

What about all the recent talk of community renewal? Was it not Hillary Clinton who gave fame to the saying, "It takes a Village to Raise a Child." In other words, children's morals are best cultivated by a variety of positive role models.

From the traditional Christian view, there's not a radical difference between public and private life, says Ownby.

"A lot of people in the press are debating this right now. The evangelical concept of salvation is entering into a metaphorical community of brothers and sisters. This is your metaphorical family."

Still today, the public role in private virtue is enshrined in the vows of most people wedded in a church.

In many marriage ceremonies, the pastor asks the congregation, "Do you promise to help this couple keep their vows?" The people reply, "We do." That vow is the reason a couple's sexual and moral dilemmas are a matter of comment to those who took it.

Ownby sees parallels between then and now but says, unlike in Puritan New England, we are debating the gamut of personal morality.

"Everything seems up for grabs. What's sex, and what isn't? I suspect that people trying to draw real clear lines about what's acceptable and what isn't - they may be doing 'The Scarlet Letter' thing, transferring their own murky attitudes. Ultimately there's a right and a wrong and we can see that there is wrong here," he says.

What are the Social Products of True Repentance and Forgiveness?

We have already discussed the personal benefits received by repenters and forgivers.

If the United States were to go through a national reconciliation process marked by true repentance and forgiveness, what might be the result?

Renewal, hope, trust, healing and empowerment come to mind.

The life of the late George Wallace, the former governor of Alabama, is an interesting case study in repentance and forgiveness.

After years of shouting, "Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!" Wallace saw the errors of his ways. He could not reverse history and unharm those he hurt, but he began a journey of seeking forgiveness from his enemies.

That voyage began quietly in the days after Wallace was shot and paralyzed from the waist down. His chances at winning the presidency diminished, and Wallace began to think about how history might judge him, his biographers say. Eventually, he publicly apologized for his racism and forgave Arthur Bremer, the man who shot him.

For many, Wallace's life is a true symbol of the power of repentance and forgiveness.

John Lewis, writing in the New York Times, says, "...the George Wallace who sent troops to intimidate peaceful, orderly marchers in Selma in 1965 was not the same man who died this week. With all his failings, Mr. Wallace deserves recognition for seeking redemption for his mistakes, for his willingness to change and to set things right with those he harmed and with his God." Lewis is a black congressman from Georgia who grew up in rural Alabama in the 1950s.

He closes by saying that "...our ability to forgive serves a higher moral purpose in our society. Through genuine repentance and forgiveness, the soul of our nation is redeemed. George Wallace deserves to be remembered for his effort to redeem his soul and in so doing to mend the fabric of American society."

Lewis says he has forgiven Wallace.

Pastor Elliff says, "It would appear from what I have read that he came to a point where he sincerely believed he made a mistake and he had a change of heart that results in changed actions. I believe we all could learn some lessons (from this)."

David Horowitz, a conservative author and commentator, says he sees only a few parallels between Wallace's life and a course of action Clinton might consider.

"Wallace went directly to the people he hurt. I don't believe this guy is sorry. I believe he's sorry he got caught," Horowitz said. On the question of what Clinton could learn from Wallace's life, Horowitz said Wallace earned sympathy by truly apologizing. "America is a very forgiving country," he said.

If that's true, it still does not mean that forgiveness comes easily. Clinton's own Washington minister, J. Philip Wogaman, was quoted as saying, "For the country as a whole to participate in his healing will involve a strong element of forgiveness and an easing off of condemnation."

Other products of national reconciliation? Ownby hopes for more clearly defined issues and Elliff wishes a spiritual awakening.

Says Sansom: "This kind of experience should lead everybody to repent of their own sins. We've all fallen from grace."

As we begin to consider the national road to repentance and forgiveness, the heart may say one thing while the head says the other.

Returning to the words of Khalil Gibran, an appeal to the sober logic of both repenters and forgivers:

Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul. If either your sails or your rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas ... therefore let your soul ... direct your passion with reason, that your passion may live through its own daily resurrection, and like the Phoenix rise above its own ashes.