The limits of forgiveness

Author and lecturer Kaya Oakes is the most recent guest on ‘A Matter of Faith’

by Mike Ferguson | Presbyterian News Service

Kaya Oakes

LOUISVILLE — Kaya Oakes’ upcoming book “Not So Sorry: Abusers, False Apologies, and the Limits of Forgiveness, ” which will be published by Broadleaf Books on July 30, made her the logical choice to appear last week on “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” to talk about forgiveness in faith communities.

“One thing that doesn’t happen a lot in faith spaces is we don’t talk about what we mean when we say ‘forgiveness,’” Oakes told hosts Simon Doong and the Rev. Lee Catoe. “We assume we’re all on the same page and we know what it means to say, ‘I forgive you’ or ‘I’m asking for forgiveness from somebody.’ What does that actually mean? Does it mean severing a relationship? Taking space from somebody? Moving past something? Forgetting?”

Furthermore, considering deep societal issues such as racism and the nation’s incarceration rate, “What do we mean when we talk about, ‘Can I forgive an institution?’ Churches are wrestling with this, too,” she said. “I think it helps to define what are we talking about when we talk about forgiveness.”

Oakes is an author and senior lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley. Listen to the 52-minute conversation Oakes had with Catoe and Doong here.

Catoe asked her about how she classifies what he called “cheap forgiveness.” He asked Oakes: What does the process of forgiveness look like for you?

“I’m glad you used the word ‘process,’ because a lot of the time we expect forgiveness to be instantaneous,” she said. “We don’t realize when you ask someone for forgiveness, you’re putting the burden on them, and they have to decide pretty quickly whether to give it or not. We don’t give people a lot of time to decide if they’re going to forgive, and that’s a really big problem.”

Forgiveness is a spiritual and psychological process, and sometimes it’s a physical process, too, “because trauma resides in the body,” she noted. “Sometimes when people are asked for forgiveness, they have to revisit the traumatic experience, which can be very difficult.”

“I can imagine one can forgive somebody but also want to see that person held accountable,” Doong said. If the institution isn’t able to do that, it can impact people’s willingness to enter into the process, he said.

“A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” with the Rev. Lee Catoe and Simon Doong drops each Thursday.

A recent op-ed from a member of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission “talks about this very topic: what is forgiveness, and who is it for?” Oakes said. The op-ed argues that being forgiven “is the beginning of systemic change,” but Oakes has her doubts, especially in institutions including the church.

“Christians unfortunately use forgiveness as an excuse to sweep things under the rug, and as a result, accountability is ill-defined,” she said. “I think we need to be more specific in our conversations about accountability, whether that’s an individual or an institution.”

Because our society is so litigious, often “the outcome is settled in a court of law, and so much of it is financial,” Oakes said. The message becomes, “Here’s some money and that should solve the problem. There’s a gap that happens between thinking about it and actually doing something.”

“From what I know about your denomination, there’s a lot of different people involved in the decision-making process, and as a result it gets more complicated and it takes longer for action to happen,” she said. In her book, Oakes explains the Mennonite process of bringing people back into the community after they’ve wronged somebody. “It’s more time-consuming, but it’s more specific, she said. “The end goal of forgiveness is bringing the person back into the community. Other denominations are not that specific about what the action is going to be.”

“I think we put pressure on marginalized communities to forgive wrongs because it enables us to feel like history is over and it doesn’t continue today, and the legacy of these historical harms is done. It’s tragic,” she said, “because it makes forgiveness feel like something that ends a story, rather than being the beginning of a bigger conversation about grace, compassion, and individual and systemic change.”

Catoe wondered: How do we do forgiveness better and center victims and survivors?

“It helps to have conversations like this, where we can talk about what do we mean by forgiveness,” Oakes responded. “In Christian spaces, when we’re talking about forgiveness, we should be specific about what we mean. There are so many different examples in the gospels that we just lump together in one giant example.”

“If I’m going to forgive you, what does that mean for me? What do I have to do, and what is this going to cost me internally? Those are two places we can start and do a better job with.”

Oakes and the hosts discovered sermons and podcasts they’d recently heard. Oakes cited The Letter, a podcast in which forgiveness is a main theme.

“Culturally, we really like happy endings, and I think the idea of forgiveness is a happy ending,” she said. “But it doesn’t necessarily help us to move on. We still carry the scars of trauma no matter what, whether we forgive or not.”

She called her upcoming book “a call to have more conversations like this one. As churches and institutions, America has this unique history of having been founded by very Christian people, but then going on to do a lot of terrible things to groups of people.”

“I think it can be freeing for people to know you don’t have to offer [forgiveness] right away,” Oakes said. “You can take your time, and if you never get there, it doesn’t make you a bad person, necessarily.”

New episodes of “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” drop every Thursday. Listen to previous editions here.