"It's very difficult for me to stand behind an altar and celebrate the Eucharist Communion and lead people in words of peace and reconciliation and forgiveness when I feel very far from that myself... so for the time being, for the moment, that wound in me is having to heal."I feel for Julie Nicholson in her grief and wish her well in coping with her tragic bereavement. My eldest son was in London and on his way to Kings Cross that same July morning - I can only begin to imagine the depth of her grief as a parent by setting it against the relief I felt when I learnt my own child was safe.
But it's not Nicholson's grief I want to focus on, it's her concept of forgiveness: when it is demanded of us and what it involves.
Sometimes I think the idea of forgiveness gets confused, at least in Christian minds, with such exhortations as "turn the other cheek" and "judge not lest ye be judged". To my way of thinking, forgiving someone is only meaningful when they acknowledge the hurt and suffering they have caused and seek forgiveness for their actions. The idea that one might forgive those who have neither acknowledged nor repented their crimes is meaningless to me - and yet, it seems, this is the type of forgiveness that modern Church doctrine requires.
In such a conception, "forgiving" is no longer a social act between two people involving repentance and acceptance, it becomes the private virtue of "forgiveness": a means for Christians to demonstrate their special state of grace. It's a modern conceit and not something you'll find in the Gospels, which repeatedly stress the need of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
Forgiving the unrepentant is not a Christian virtue, it's a sin against society.
