How can I forgive him? What he did was so wrong, so cruel, so destructive! And he doesn’t even acknowledge it; no sign of remorse or regret even, let alone repentance. Even though it happened years ago I can’t pretend that it doesn’t hurt. It still does. To forgive would be a violation of justice, an act of betrayal even, for those he hurt.

Silence 

Don’t you hear me, Jesus? It was so wrong and I’m so angry. Yet you tell me to forgive and forget. I can’t, don’t you understand?

Silence

Silence

It’s okay then to be angry, to complain, rage and cry out!  You did. You really did? Yes, I remember your anger with the religious authorities, your anger against those who exploited the poor or harmed children and those who oppressed the weak. So I can be angry? I can be honest with you? Really honest? Well, the honest truth is that I neither want to forgive nor am I able to forgive. What’s more my anger is partly to do with the fact that I feel let down and abandoned by God.

Silence

So you understand? You identify with my abandonment and betrayal? Of course, your friends abandoned you in your greatest need. One of them actually betrayed you. But it’s God I feel most let down by. He let it happen. He stood aside and allowed it to happen. So I can’t trust him, especially with forgiveness.

Silence

Eloi, Eloi, lama Sabacthani ("My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?) - your cry of dereliction from the cross. You were forsaken cut off from your Father. So God let you down too?

Silence

You felt as if he had let you down. But his heart was breaking too? His anguish matched yours? I’ll have to think about that one. And yet I do accept, Jesus, that you understand – that’s important to me. Nonetheless to forgive – that’s so difficult so costly.

Silence

Yes I know, Lord, it cost you everything, but I’m not you Jesus. I couldn’t have acted like you when they flogged you, paraded you before the crowds, stripped you naked and then nailed you to the cross. I’d be screaming out in pain; cursing the soldiers; crying out against the injustice of it all. How could you forgive?

Silence

That was why you died? It wasn’t so much about justice as mercy. That was why you forgave. Justice demands satisfaction: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a death for a death. Without mercy we perish. Okay, I accept that, but it makes it no easier for me to forgive.   

Silence

No, I don’t what the vicious spiral to continue: of hurt begetting vengeance. No, I don’t want to be consumed by bitterness or guilt. No, I don’t want my life to be warped and twisted by the past. But it’s there and I cannot undo it or escape from it. I can’t pretend so I have to cry out.

Silence

Someone has to make the first move? Yes but why me, why is it always me? Why not him? I’m the victim, he‘s the perpetrator? What about him?

Silence

So you are working on that front too. But what if he rejects your overtures? It’s a risk and so is faith…. You are in the risk business. No guarantees? So why should I step out you are asking too much?

Silence

Yes, I suppose, I could be willing to be willing to forgive. I know I can’t stay like this. Help me Lord I’m sinking! Rescue me from this morass of pain.

Silence

You promise to be with me on this road. But there’s no compulsion I can choose to go with you or stay behind. It’s a hard choice, Lord, a very hard choice, but I guess it’s better to begin the long journey.

Don Dowling