negotiations and contracts for restitution.
The right to withhold or grant forgiveness is the victim’s right alone as part of their relationship to the perpetrator. Whatever the victim does not forgive cannot be dispensed with through forgiveness by any other family member, descendant, friend, or, especially, politician. The burden remains on the perpetrator and those who are entangled with them in their guilt. The world is full of guilt that has never been forgiven and which can now no longer be forgiven – unless by God.
But forgiveness is not the only response to an injury that keeps it from festering and allows it to rest. Injuries can be condemned, forgotten, and have their burdensome meaning lifted through reconciliation. How forgiveness and reconciliation are similar but also different becomes apparent when we look at those who can forgive and condemn, forget and reconcile.
While only the victim can forgive, anyone can condemn. Anyone includes the victim, though that person may well be too dismayed and overwhelmed by the event to pass judgment concerning the perpetrator impartially. But to pass judgment means both to identify the crime and the perpetrator, and the determination of just punishment. While the victim may not be capable of determining just punishment, he can certainly charge the perpetrator with the crime.
Everyone is also capable of forgetting. On occasion someone is too deeply injured to ever forget the injury. But again and again one observes someone who is so grievously injured that no one believes they could ever be capable of forgetting who finally does forget.
Just as one can lose the ability to judge impartially when one is in shock or has a conflict of interest, and as one can lose the ability to forget when one is particularly seriously injured, one can also lose the right to pass judgment or to forget. Those who live in a glass houses shouldn’t throw stones – whoever has some guilt to contend with should not go around accusing and judging others. Certainly, under the rule of law if a charge is true, then it is true regardless of who made it – it can even be someone who also deserves to be accused and judged. But while this person may still have the right to accuse and judge, they have lost the credibility to do so. Their right to accuse and to judge and to condemn is not accepted unless they ensure that they recognise the precarious nature of the charge coming out of their mouth and explain why they are making it anyway. Similarly, when someone claims that they have forgotten about the crime they committed they will not be entitled to their forgetfulness, and here not even assurances and explanations will help. How can the perpetrator allow themself to forget what they have done – the reaction is speechlessness and indignation. Forgetting can make forgiving easier for the victim, but the perpetrator should not be allowed to make it easier on themself. To forget and pass judgment are the rights of others.
The circle of participants is again small when it comes to reconciliation. In the history of this concept it was not always the case; in German the term Versöhnung (reconciliation), was originally related to the term Verurteilen (to pass judgment). It included attributing the deed to the perpetrator and determining the atonement required of them in order to stave off revenge and restore public order. As atonement imposed by the legal community developed into the state-regulated system of compensation for damages on the one hand, and the system of state-imposed and -executed punishments on the other, reconciliation became a concept defined as the restoration of peace between people explicitly without state sanctions. After the end of Apartheid, as South Africa strived for truth and reconciliation, it did not want the state to sentence and punish, exclude and lock away. Instead the goal was to heal the damaged relationships between the perpetrators and victims through
The right to withhold or grant forgiveness is the victim’s right alone as part of their relationship to the perpetrator. Whatever the victim does not forgive cannot be dispensed with through forgiveness by any other family member, descendant, friend, or, especially, politician. The burden remains on the perpetrator and those who are entangled with them in their guilt. The world is full of guilt that has never been forgiven and which can now no longer be forgiven – unless by God.
But forgiveness is not the only response to an injury that keeps it from festering and allows it to rest. Injuries can be condemned, forgotten, and have their burdensome meaning lifted through reconciliation. How forgiveness and reconciliation are similar but also different becomes apparent when we look at those who can forgive and condemn, forget and reconcile.
While only the victim can forgive, anyone can condemn. Anyone includes the victim, though that person may well be too dismayed and overwhelmed by the event to pass judgment concerning the perpetrator impartially. But to pass judgment means both to identify the crime and the perpetrator, and the determination of just punishment. While the victim may not be capable of determining just punishment, he can certainly charge the perpetrator with the crime.
Everyone is also capable of forgetting. On occasion someone is too deeply injured to ever forget the injury. But again and again one observes someone who is so grievously injured that no one believes they could ever be capable of forgetting who finally does forget.
Just as one can lose the ability to judge impartially when one is in shock or has a conflict of interest, and as one can lose the ability to forget when one is particularly seriously injured, one can also lose the right to pass judgment or to forget. Those who live in a glass houses shouldn’t throw stones – whoever has some guilt to contend with should not go around accusing and judging others. Certainly, under the rule of law if a charge is true, then it is true regardless of who made it – it can even be someone who also deserves to be accused and judged. But while this person may still have the right to accuse and judge, they have lost the credibility to do so. Their right to accuse and to judge and to condemn is not accepted unless they ensure that they recognise the precarious nature of the charge coming out of their mouth and explain why they are making it anyway. Similarly, when someone claims that they have forgotten about the crime they committed they will not be entitled to their forgetfulness, and here not even assurances and explanations will help. How can the perpetrator allow themself to forget what they have done – the reaction is speechlessness and indignation. Forgetting can make forgiving easier for the victim, but the perpetrator should not be allowed to make it easier on themself. To forget and pass judgment are the rights of others.
The circle of participants is again small when it comes to reconciliation. In the history of this concept it was not always the case; in German the term Versöhnung (reconciliation), was originally related to the term Verurteilen (to pass judgment). It included attributing the deed to the perpetrator and determining the atonement required of them in order to stave off revenge and restore public order. As atonement imposed by the legal community developed into the state-regulated system of compensation for damages on the one hand, and the system of state-imposed and -executed punishments on the other, reconciliation became a concept defined as the restoration of peace between people explicitly without state sanctions. After the end of Apartheid, as South Africa strived for truth and reconciliation, it did not want the state to sentence and punish, exclude and lock away. Instead the goal was to heal the damaged relationships between the perpetrators and victims through
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