As I read about the recent incident with Prof Gates of Harvard University something he said jumped out at me. “Gates said he’d be prepared to forgive the arresting officer “if he told the truth” about what the scholar called “fabrications”in the police report.” See article here.
Since when do we wait for the truth to be told or even for an apology before we forgive? Having this frame of reference will make it harder to forgive across the board. We often don’t get apologies, or facts corrected. If we decided to withhold our forgiveness under these circumstances we’d be walking around with a whole lot of baggage.
Granted Prof Gates is not thinking of this primarily from a personal perspective of keeping a grudge or extending forgiveness. I imagine he would like to see this incident used as a learning opportunity for the police department in particular and for national race issues in general. I hope for his sake his anger has abated and he’s operating now from a more self-less perspective.
Forgiveness is ours to give. Granted. But if we’re going to give it, we can’t have conditions attached. It misses the whole point. Maybe he needed to attach a condition of another sort. This condition suggests that Prof Gates believes his forgiveness is a gift to the policeman. This is a myth of forgiveness as it is primarily a gift to the person who is doing the forgiving and to all those who can benefit from his wisdom, calm and potency.
Forgiveness is for HIS peace of mind and for his effectiveness as an agent of change. Not much gets done in anger.
“Anger is the enemy of non-violence and pride is a monster that swallows it up.” Mohandas Gandhi
“I have learned through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power which can move the world.”
— from Gandhi the Man, by Eknath Easwaran, Nilgiri Press.
I know Prof. Gates is not a man prone to easy or lingering anger. I know this is not the message he wishes to send. I know he has a much larger and honorable agenda than his personal anger. The average person won’t place his comments in political or policy perspective though. They’ll hear anger.
Somehow I don’t think he means this literally – that he would forgive him IF… But unfortunately the message it sends to all those who look up to him as an informed and humble person is that this is how forgiveness works; we wait to get the facts straight or for an apology. I wish he could take it back or explain it further.
Another story of a mother who lost her daughter to a hit and run accident could teach Prof Gates a thing or two. This Mom, Kim Ferrell said to the man who killed her daughter – with much pain in her eyes, “I forgive you.” This was right before his sentencing and before he even offered an apology.
“Who am I not to forgive Mr. Payne?” Ferrell later said. “If I don’t forgive him, then I’m no better than the mistake he made.”
THAT is the truth!
Our community needs to observe our Harvard scholar living that truth so he, the arresting officer and the community can move forward into a “power than can move the world.”
Wishing you an abundance of peace and light,
