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The bodies of the three teenage girls murdered by a fellow student at Heath High School in West Paducah, Kentucky were not yet cold, let alone buried, before the students of the prayer group that was shot at announced, "We forgive you, Mike," referring to Michael Carneal, 14, the murderer. This message of immediate and automatic forgiveness of a murderer is angering and depressing, but not surprising. Over the course of the past generation, the idea that the central message of Christianity is to forgive everyone who commits evil, no matter how great and cruel and whether or not they repent, has been adopted by much of Christendom. The number of examples is almost as large as the number of heinous crimes. But one other recent example stands out. In August, the pastor at a Martha's Vineyard church service attended by the vacationing President Clinton announced that it was the duty of all Christians for forgive Timothy McVeigh, the man who murdered 168 people when he blew up the Oklahoma City federal building. "I invite you to look at a picture of Timothy McVeigh and then forgive him," the Rev. John Miller said in his sermon. "I have and I ask you to do so. Considering what he did, that may be a formidable task, but it is the one that we as Christians are asked to do." Though I am a Jew, not a Christian, I believe that a vibrant Christianity is essential if America's present moral crisis is to be reversed. I also believe that despite some obvious differences in theology, there is indeed a Judeo-Christian value system and that it has served as the bedrock of American civilization. And because I do so respect Christian America, and do regard it as the key to America's moral rejuvenation, I am appalled, even frightened, by this feel-good doctrine of automatic forgiveness that has taken over much of American Christianity. This doctrine undermines the moral foundations of both American civilization and Christianity. It undermines our civilization because it advertises the amoral notion that no matter how much you hurt other people even unto murder, millions of your fellow citizens will immediately forgive you - and you don't even have to say you're sorry. It undermines Christianity because it destroys Christianity's central moral tenets about forgiveness - that forgiveness, even by God, is contingent on the sinner repenting, and that forgiveness is only to be given to the sinner by the one against whom he sinned. This is unambiguously affirmed by the New Testament in Luke 17: 3-4: "And if your brother sins against you, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. And if seven times of the day he sins against you, and seven times of the day turns to you saying, I repent, you shall forgive him." If one is automatically forgiven without repenting, why repent? Indeed, theologically speaking, why not do all the evil you want, knowing that after every act of evil, Christians will announce that you are forgiven? Why has this un-Christian and amoral doctrine become so popular among so many Christians?
One reason is widespread ignorance of Christianity among many lay Christians and even among some clergy. Since the 1960s, many people who consider themselves religious have not deemed mastery of their religion a necessary precondition to making proclamations in its name. All that has been deemed necessary to be a Christian speaking in the name of Christianity is to espouse undiscriminating love and universal, immediate forgiveness. One does not have to know Christianity - for many Westerners, especially Americans, religion has become a form of social work and/or psychotherapy, not an intellectual discipline or a standard of behavior that adherents must study and follow. For many Christians, Christianity does not have to be studied before declaring an idea "Christian." All a Christian really needs to know are two words, "love" and "forgive," and presto! One knows Christianity and is a devout Christian. "God is love" and "It is the Christian's duty to forgive just as Jesus forgave those who crucified him" are two of the declarations most often made in contemporary Christian life. The first declaration is largely meaningless, and the second is erroneous. Of course, God loves. But that doesn't mean that God is love. One can just as legitimately argue that God is anger or that God is judgement, since God also gets angry, passes judgements, punishes, and makes demands. Love is but one of God's many attributes, not the only one, and not even the defining one. "God is love" is a late twentieth century touchy-feely reduction of God. As for forgiveness, yes, Jesus did ask God to forgive those who crucified him. But there is no indication that Jesus ever forgave, or asked God to forgive, or would consider forgiving, everyone who commits evil against other people. At any time in his life, Jesus could have gone to where thousands of innocent people were regularly crucified and asked God to forgive their killers. He didn't presumably because he recognized the simple and basic moral rule that while all human beings have the moral right to forgive those who do evil to them, no one - not even Jesus - has the moral right to forgive evil done to others. You and I have no right to forgive Timothy McVeigh; only those against whom he sinned have that right - and those he murdered are dead and therefore cannot forgive. It is theological and moral audacity for anyone living to "forgive" Timothy McVeigh. Unfortunately, this immoral doctrine of forgiving everyone everything has apparently seeped down to the next generation. The day after three of their fellow students were murdered, the Heath High School Christian prayer group announced that it had forgiven the murderer. And on the second day after the murders, a sign reading "We forgive you, Mike" was placed in front of the school. That students, with the school administration's permission, put up this sign rather than one expressing how much the murdered students would be missed (for example, "Nicole, Jessica and Kayce, we will never forget you") or one expressing condolences to the traumatized families…is highly instructive. It reveals the moral and human insensitivity that the forgive-everyone-everything doctrine breeds. Those who hold this doctrine end up preoccupied more with those who hurt people than with those who are hurt. If a child of mine were murdered at school, and my child's classmates hung out a sign announcing that they forgave my child's murderer, my despair would be beyond description. Likewise, if a loved one were among those blown up in Oklahoma City, and I heard a pastor announce that it was the duty of all Christians to forgive the human debris that murdered my loved one, I would regard that pastor as morally challenged. My heart aches for the loved ones of the murdered who have to endure insensitive calls to forgive their loved ones' murderer. This doctrine is also enormously arrogant. Calls to forgive Michael Carneal and Timothy McVeigh are made by people who haven't been directly hurt by these murderers. Who gave these Christians the right to forgive on behalf of the murdered? The murdered? God? The hubris involved in forgiving murderers, rapists, and torturers, when one is alive and has been neither raped nor tortured, can only be described as incredible. The pastor's call to all Christians to forgive Timothy McVeigh defies credulity. First and most important, McVeigh has never apologized! The idea that one forgives a person who is not penitent and who even boasts of his sin (as McVeigh did in court when he was sentenced) is moral lunacy. If we are automatically forgiven no matter what we do - and even if we do not repent - why repent? In fact, why have God? If people are to forgive everybody for all the evil they do to anybody, God - and God's forgiveness - are entirely unnecessary. Thus, in addition to all the terrible moral consequences of forgiving all evil done to others, there is a terrible religious consequence to this practice - those who do it have substituted themselves for God. Lest this habit catch on further, I hereby announce - and invite all those who agree with me to announce on their own behalf - that if I am murdered, I do not forgive my murderer and forbid anyone to forgive the murderer on my behalf. When confronted with this argument, those callers to my radio show who defended the students in Kentucky offered another defense. "The students were not forgiving Carneal for murdering the three students," these callers argued, "they were forgiving Carneal for the pain he caused them." This argument is so self-centered, it may have created a new theological category - religious narcissism. To understand why, let us summarize this mode of thinking: You murder my classmates, and the next day I announce that I forgive you for the pain you caused me! That such self-centered thinking masquerades as a religious ideal is one reason why much of religious life is in moral disarray. Some Christians have a more sophisticated defense of the forgive-them-everything argument. They argue that victims should be encouraged to forgive all evil done to them because it is psychologically healthy to do so. Forgiveness, the argument goes, brings closure. Even if this argument is valid, it is again primarily a selfish, not a moral or a religious, one…
The pastor to the families in the tragedy, Dr. J. Kevin McCallon, responded to Prager's essay in the Wall Street Journal with a 200 word essay of his own that Prager published in The Prager Perspective:
While I appreciate his encouragement of Christian involvement in addressing morality in our country, I was offended by his efforts to label the response of Christians in our area as people merely interested in a kind of selfish idealism designed only to make themselves feel good. He has listened to too much talk radio and not enough Christianity…. I am saddened by his gross misunderstanding of the Christian's mandate toward forgiveness… sets himself up as an expert on a matter he (apparently) has little or no experience or credentials to comment on publicly (mass murder and the response of a society surrounding him)… I had to wonder about the many other talk show hosts I hear regularly trying to gain callers or listeners by taking an unpopular or even ridiculous side of an issue. …Mr. Prager may not realize the sense of community of the people of McCracken County, since he lives in the detached personal life of Los Angeles…
PRAGER: If I have a gross misunderstanding of "the Christian's mandate toward forgiveness," I share it with most Catholics… It is inconceivable to me that Jesus advocated the automatic forgiving of all people no matter what they did, no matter to whom they did it and irrespective of whether or not they repented. If, God forbid, someone were to rape and murder your daughter, and the next day I publicly announce that I forgive this man, I would be a moral idiot, not a good Christian imitating Christ. Second, there isn't a hint in the New Testament of such forgiveness being called for. You state that my citation of Luke 17:3-4 is out of context. But you do not show how so. It seems to me that not only is it in context, it is a perfect summary of the New Testament position on forgiveness. Third, regarding my "blanket statement" about Jesus: I wrote, "Jesus did ask God to forgive those who crucified him. But there is no indication that Jesus ever forgave, or asked God to forgive, or would consider forgiving, everyone who commits evil against other people. At any time in his life, Jesus could have gone to where thousands of innocent people were regularly crucified and asked God to forgive their killer. …Since you feel that my specific statements about instant forgiveness of Michael Carneal offended so many people, how could you blanketly offend the millions of people who live in Los Angeles. If you really believe that living in Los Angeles necessarily means living a "detached personal life," you have been in Paducah too long. There are beautiful and ugly parts to Los Angeles urban life; and there are beautiful and ugly parts to small town life. Indeed, my wife, born and raised in Bluff City, Kansas (pop. 150) has told me enough about small town life to make me aware that no place has a monopoly on social health. Moreover, healthy places don't produce young mass murderers - and we are hearing more and more about young murderers in Small Town, USA.
REV: We cannot choose the way of Mr. Prager - holding onto anger…
Prager: I said nothing about anger. All I said was that only victims may forgive their oppressors, and that since the victims of murderers are dead, murder cannot be forgiven by people, only by God. But since you mention anger, what is wrong with holding onto anger when it is righteous and moral anger?
Tuesday, March 31, 1998 LA TIMES PERSPECTIVE ON THE JONESBORO KILLINGS It's Too Soon to Ask Forgiveness The Sunday sermons should have addressed why a loving, just God permits such evil, not called for absolution. By JACOB NEUSNER If you lost a daughter to the pre-pubescent snipers in Jonesboro last week and came to church for solace this past Sunday, you found only confusion. The message being preached was not why does a loving and just God permit evil in the world? It was a demand for Christians to forgive the children's murderers. Surely the grieving families, the community of Jonesboro and the nation are puzzled over the enduring mystery of monotheism: Why is there such evil in the world of the one and only, the all-powerful, loving and just God? The preachers didn't deliver the message that we cannot explain what happens but have to accept and be grateful for what we have had--the lost children and heroic teacher, the legacy of memory. Nor did they preach what is certainly the human challenge of the hour: acceptance, reconciliation, solace in hope for life to come and the classical Judaic and Christian response to death of accepting the gift of faith. No, the message the preachers offered the grieving town and the world beyond was that right now, on the spot, we have to forgive our children's murderers. How brutal. That grotesque distortion of monotheism hardly exhausts available Judaic and Christian responses to the crisis of catastrophic death. When Cardinal Richard J. Cushing committed John F. Kennedy to the ground, he spoke of how, even at that hour, the murdered president was entering heaven. The Catholic message of resurrection finds its match in the Judaic response of acceptance of God's justice and dominion. When the state of Israel buried Yitzhak Rabin, it was in the silence surrounding the words of the Kaddish, the prayer recited, among other circumstances, as a requiem affirming God's rule. Cushing did not ask forgiveness for Lee Harvey Oswald nor did the Israeli rabbinate bless Rabin's assassin. But what defines the Protestant-Christian message these days? At the moment of grief, the Southern Baptists tell us only that forgiving the sinner defines the urgent spiritual task of this hour, as though hatred and recrimination defined the human situation of parents who have lost their innocent children, a husband his heroic wife, a town its purity. In the heavy months to come, the mourners will find ample occasion for recrimination. Then sermons on forgiveness and reconciliation will find their occasion; surely not now. But the reason for the inappropriate sermons heard Sunday cannot really be, as one of the ministers explained on TV, merely that the sermon had been written, so why compose a new one? It is rather what that particular Christianity finds to say, defining what it deems the spiritual challenge of the moment. The Jonesboro message finds its match in Billy Graham's dispensation of cheap grace to an unrepentant president. Bestowing a kind of preemptive forgiveness, Graham invokes charismatic sexuality to explain away the president's circumstances: Women go wild and he gives in to temptation. The president need not confess or atone or ask forgiveness. It's all done up front. That's not a religion, it's an exercise in fatuity. I wonder what Graham will have to say to Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler, whom, by his theology, he will meet in heaven. After all, a place of such easy access in the no-fault-theology of the times surely can't keep out anybody. On Sunday TV, responding to the same tragedy, a political conservative spoke of evil in the world and a political liberal of "rooting out the causes" for two youngsters' premeditated acts of murder. When the country turns to politics, politics rehearses its familiar routine. But surely we had reason to expect of religion a message that matched the moment. - - -
Jacob Neusner Is a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of South Florida and Professor of Religion at Bard College
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