By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
My guess is that most readers of this column will have seen by now the televised expressions of forgiveness of Dylann Roof from the family members of the nine black men and women he killed while they were worshipping at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C. Roof stood under guard in a courtroom, while his likeness was transmitted on a closed-circuit television screen to the family members, whose voices were audible in the background.
The family members are being widely praised for living out Christ’s call to “love your enemies, and do good to those who hate you.” I join the chorus. But how concerned should I be that I can’t imagine myself acting as magnanimously toward someone who had killed my loved ones as viciously as Roof killed the members of that congregation?
This may sound callous, but I don’t think I should be concerned at all. Why? I don’t know where I first heard the line “even God cannot forgive an unrepentant sinner,” but it seems to me that it applies here, and that the reasoning is sound. The Gospels are filled with calls for repentance and contrition. They are the necessary preconditions for God’s forgiveness. The place Jesus described as a “furnace of fire, where there will be wailing and the gnashing of teeth” awaits those who die without repenting. The message is that we are not to assume that God does forgive in every instance. Sorrow, contrition, and a resolve to sin no more must come first.
Jesus did not mince his words about the fate of those who lead children to sin: “If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a large millstone were hung around his neck and he were drowned at the bottom of the sea.” Jesus does not talk of forgiveness, absent some indication of sorrow.
Reporters at the courtroom observed that Roof offered no sign of repentance. He stood silent. He did not ask for forgiveness. But, from all external signs, the survivors of the Charleston shootings did not require repentance of him. Should that degree of willingness to forgive be required of the rest of us? Should we be more willing to forgive than God, who, the Bible tells us, requires repentance and contrition?
Some would answer, “Yes! Of course, precisely. We are not God.” They would say that there is a different yardstick that applies. Jesus taught, “Vengeance is the Lord’s”; that we are to “judge not, lest we be judged.”
Fair enough. I get the point. As long as “doing good to those who hate you” and “judging not” are not interpreted as a requirement that I feel warm and fuzzy toward them, or behave as I do not remember the great pain that they have brought into my life. I would argue that behaving in such an insouciant manner would bring dishonor to the memory of the loved ones who were killed. I don’t think that Jesus requires that of us.
Permit me to offer an example: Does loving those who hate us mean that Christian groups should be organizing outreach groups to persuade the families of the men beheaded by ISIS to appear on camera to proclaim their willingness to forgive the executioners? Even if the ISIS terrorists were to mock them and proudly proclaim their willingness to continue to kill their captives in the same way? That would be a preposterous thing to ask.
Here is what I think Jesus is calling upon us to do: I interpret His teaching to be an instruction that we sincerely hope that the evildoer repents and attains the state of grace; that those who have sinned against us find a way to save their souls; that they find the peace of Christ. I can’t imagine that Jesus is asking us to act as if the killing of our loved ones is a bygone that we should let be a bygone; that we should get over it and get on with our lives. To my mind, there is nothing praiseworthy or Christian about such a dismissal of evil.
Perhaps I would react differently if we were considering the case of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the man sentenced to death for planting the bombs at the Boston Marathon in 2013. In late June, he appeared in court in and apologized for his deed, stating in mumbling tones, “I am sorry for the lives that I’ve taken, for the suffering that I’ve caused you, for the damage that I’ve done — irreparable damage. I’m guilty of it. If there is any lingering doubt of that, let it be no more.”
Like it or not, from what Jesus taught us about the Father, we have to conclude that if Tsarnaev is sincere, and not merely maneuvering at his lawyer’s instructions to secure a lighter penalty, God will forgive him. And that we should do the same. But Dylann Roof has done nothing comparable to Tsarnaev. Not yet, anyway.
One other thing: Even if we can find it in our hearts to say that we forgive Roof and Tsarnaev, that does not mean we are obliged to not want them punished under the law. The Christian understanding of “loving our enemies” does not mean that we are required to favor pardoning them from their lawful penalties. The family members of the men and women shot by Dylann Roof are not saying that. There is nothing contradictory about hoping that evildoers “find the Lord” while in prison — and advocating a long and unpleasant sentence to afford them the opportunity to experience that spiritual conversion.
There is also nothing contradictory about hoping that those who have inflicted harm upon our loved ones experience a spiritual conversion, while simultaneously calling for them to be kept away from society for a long time, even their lifetimes, to avoid the possibility that they may fall back into their old ways if they are released. “Loving those who hate us” does not mean ignoring the fact that such things happen. Christians are not obliged to ignore recidivism rates.
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