Apology and Forgiveness - Part Two, and Expanded

Update Below

The ultimate object of apology and forgiveness is reconciliation. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that the consummation of apology and forgiveness is reconciliation. However, this is often not possible. The other person might be dead. Reconciliation is pretty much imaginary at that point. Or it may be impractical or unwise to contact them. The apology or forgiveness might be prepared and written but never sent. 

The big-ticket apology and forgiveness items that make the news can be instructive and inspiring, or they can be irritating because we sense an insincerity about them. But those aren't really the things which give us trouble. Real-life apology and forgiveness is interactive and complicated. You are sincerely and abjectly apologising for A, but almost pointedly by omission not taking responsibility for B. I was childish and vindictive in how I left you. Unspoken but usually noticeable is I do not apologise for the basic fact of leaving you. Forgiveness can be a complicated mess of overlooking, excusing, understanding, combined with the truer forgiveness of taking no revenge, or as Korora described it, showing no cruelty. It is no longer simple, as the newsy examples are. Apologies are exchanged; forgiveness attempted; new resentments are discovered as some apologies are left out: Are they being oblivious to how they offended or are they asserting that they did only limited wrong? How your own apology is received can sometimes remind you of mistreatments you had forgotten, and one suddenly recognises they have spent years blaming themselves for something that was not their fault after all. Or we are brought up short like Orual in Till We Have Faces, nakedly aware that we have invited or even caused the sins against us and should actually be preparing an apology rather than awaiting one.

Reconciliation is more complicated. We love people that we hate and find that others have put up with us more than we care to admit.

I think that's the point., and why apology and forgiveness are so central to emotional life, and certainly to Christian life. It is not just working ourselves into a fever pitch for a few moments of massive sainthood. We see things and unsee them. 

Update: When we receive an apology, we often quickly find that we did not want the apology so much.  What we wanted was for the other person to change. Here we are, back in the realm of interaction and reconciliation again. It is much the same when we extend forgiveness, though we seldom admit it to ourselves at first. We want the forgiveness to either be a reassurance that there really are no hard feelings - or to be a stepping stone for the other person to change.

I believe in change a lot less than I did even a few years ago.  I don't say that it never happens, but I think it is not common and not easy. One of the lessons of the Nostalgia Destruction Tour has been noticing the continuities of people over decades, continuities they are clearly not much aware of. I conclude that the others look at me in much the same way, and despair. We cannot expect others to change, we can only expect that they make changes. We cannot expect ourselves to change either, we can only make changes. Great revelations and forced insight seldom does very much. Only in the movies "Luke, I am your father," and a long, staring, pivotal moment. I am a parent of five and a spouse of one and don't think I have ever seen a long, staring pivotal moment. And when I look like I'm doing that myself, it's an illusion.  I'm actually suddenly trying to remember whether it is Wednesday of Thursday.

There is a strip joint almost two towns over, on a road where I have occasional errands, and used to drive some of my sons frequently to indoor soccer and lacrosse. I used to laugh at it, pointing out to them that business must be bad if they have to highlight the prime rib on the sign instead of the women. I was proud, even a bit conceited in my confidence that the place did not beckon to me. Until the afternoon a decade ago when I drove past and it said "Thursday: 40's Pin-up Night." The blood sort of drained out of me a bit and I thought that's going to be a problem. Who knew? I wasn't even alive in the 40's. But even since the 70s, no deep change.  So I made changes instead and drove a different route to get to those errands for a few years. No need to even think about it. No change, just making changes. 

We apply the requirements of apology and forgiveness on ourselves and others with equal severity*, which is why the Scriptures tie our forgiveness in with our forgiving so often. We learn the one by doing the other. We should therefore ask the same - not for ourselves or others to change, but only to make changes. 

*Well, most of us do. When there is a disconnect we recognise it as a character flaw in others. We think at first we let ourselves off more easily, but poking around in the caverns we find similar monsters there.