What Is Forgiveness?

Allen Breed writes:

BLACKSBURG, Va. - On the edge of the Virginia Tech Drillfield stands a semicircle of stones , 33 chunks of locally quarried rust-grey "Hokie" limestone.

There is one for each of Seung-Hui Cho's victims.

And there is one for Cho.

"I'm really impressed with the maturity of Virginia Tech people," said the professor, who teaches electronics and computer engineering, and who is also faculty adviser to the Korean Student Association. With the memorial, he said, "they also treat him as a victim."

My friend, Catherine, responds to this article from a Christian perspective:

This didn't sit quite right with me. I'm all for the families and grieving friends coming to forgive Cho. After all, this is at the heart of restoration and peace. Furthermore, Scriptures command Christians to forgive. But this seems different to me. To say that Cho is a victim is to somehow diminish the willful role he played in an act that cannot be considered anything less than evil.

In the best of all worlds, true forgiveness happens when someone who has committed an evil act confesses and repents. That person not only speaks truth about the nature of the act, but also chooses to turn from it in the future. The one offering forgiveness does not forgive because the act itself is deemed inevitable or somehow rationalized. The forgiver calls the act evil along with the perpetrator. For the Christian person who forgives, he or she calls upon God's strength to forgive and live in peace once more with the repentant perpetrator. The forgiver is helped in this act by understanding his or her own forgiveness through Christ.

What do the rest of you think? What is forgiveness?

Here are some of my thoughts as both a Christian and a VT alumnus:

I think it is admirable and good for the students down at VT to seek forgiveness of Cho, but agree with Catherine that it is a disservice to conceive of Cho as a victim. I certainly feel sorry for him in many ways and think he struggled with demons I have never had to face, but others do too and they don't resort to doing what Cho did. No amount of inward demons justifies shooting down 32 others in cruel, calculating, cold blood. To try to justify his actions in light of his hardships only makes it easier for others going through similar trials to inwardly justify taking the lives of others.

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day and she said what happened wasn't Cho's fault, but instead insisted it was society's fault. I had to strongly disagree. Blaming this on society is the same thing as blaming it on no one. It is impossible to hold society responsible for anything and implies that society acted with intention. Where does this collective conscience come from? Was everyone in America against Cho? He may have thought so, but that is the very definition of paranoia.

Certainly some people who encountered Cho were mean to him, but who hasn't encountered mean people in their past? I'm sure some people in his life were also nice to him. Don't they count as part of society too? From the reports of one of his professors, Cho was far meaner to others than anyone ever was to him. Are those people now justified in going on a murderous rampage?

Many people in America (and around the world) suffer from mental illnesses and do not commit acts like Cho did. They face the same society Cho did but do not do what he did. The difference is not in society, the difference is in Cho. He was functional enough to get into Virginia Tech and to pass his classes without getting kicked out. He was meticulous and methodical in his plans, his acquisition of guns, his mailing his videos to NBC, and in the way he shot his victims 3 times each to make sure they were dead. You can make the argument he was haunted by paranoia, but you cannot argue that he did not know what he was doing. Unfortunately, he knew all too well.

To claim society is responsible is to claim there is no center of responsibility. It feels good to make this claim because it allows us to get away from thinking badly about Cho, but it also keeps us from placing blame where it belongs.

There were many victims from last week's rampage -- the students and faculty who were killed, those who were wounded and are still recovering, the families and loved ones of those whose lives were tragically cut short, the students and university community who now grieve and whose lives will never be the same, and also Cho's family who had nothing to do with this but have gone into hiding and have experienced nervous breakdowns. All of these people suffered because of the brutal actions and intentions of one man. No one ever intended to drive Cho to the point of committing these unspeakable acts, but there is no doubt he fully intended to inflict ultimate harm on others. Blame for this rests on him and him alone.

I once read a book by Lewis Smedes called "The Art of Forgiveness" after being deeply wounded by someone very close to me. In it, Smedes wrote that we cannot claim to truly forgive someone until we blame them for what they did. It is only at that point you can truly have said to forgiven the person. Attempts to avoid blaming Cho for what he did are not the same thing as forgiving him. In fact, they prevent true forgiveness from being able to take place.

P.S. -- I do not think that it is necessary to wait until a person repents before forgiving them. Repentance is critical for reconciliation to take place, but not forgiveness. If repentance were necessary, no one could ever forgive Cho or anyone else who does harm without acknowledging the wrongness of what they have done.