There’s a great scene in the movie Invictus in which the newly elected South Africa president Nelson Mandela is justifying his policy of including the whites under whose racist policies he was imprisoned for 27 years. In his characteristic short, declarative sentences, he says:
Forgiveness liberates the soul.
It removes fear.
That is why it is such
a powerful weapon.
I watched this movie just a few days after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission began its work in Winnipeg. Canada’s commission is modeled on the South African TRC, which sought to heal the wounds of that country’s racist policies, including the bantustans that were apparently modeled on Canada’s native reserves.
What goes around certainly does come around. We can only hope that what comes around this time is better than what we sent around last time.
Too often, we still fail to be humble in our faith and culture. Our reflex is defensive.
Even those who most want to heal the wounds of the past flounder. In newspaper stories about the opening of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, various church leaders were quoted as saying they offered to pray for victims, that cash wasn’t the answer to native problems and that Brother So-and-so was upset that his good work in the schools will be swept aside by other stories.
We should assume that all these responses came from a good place. That does not make them any less naïve and misguided.
Who are we to assume the superior position that we can pray so effectively for victims? Who are we to tell them that cash isn’t the answer to their problems? (It’s the basis of all our litigation.) And who are we to be so quick to point out that good deeds were done in an evil system? Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s martyrdom did not expiate the collective sin of Germany in permitting the rise of Hitler and Nazism. At best, Christians might say that where sin abounds, so too does grace.
So what should we do? Perhaps just apologize and listen. That’s what happened at General Assembly during the presentation on the TRC. Moderator Herb Gale apologized again for the wrongs committed in Presbyterian-run schools. And commissioners listened to some stories.
One of those stories was told by Terry Paul, chief of the Membertou nation on whose traditional lands the assembly was meeting.
“It is here that our lives and souls are. The souls of our ancestors are buried here. It is believed by all of us through our elders that every shovelful you turn here in Atlantic Canada has the soul of our ancestors. I would also like to welcome the members of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission because we believe it’s an important part of the process of healing. It is the important part because we want to make sure the people in this country hear our voices. Hear what was done. Hear about the legacy that the residential schools left. For me, its very difficult to think about let alone talk about.
“It is very difficult to go back to that five-year-old that I left. That’s who we will be talking about. That’s who we will be talking to. Thousands and thousands of five-year-olds. But I know, and many of our people know, that it’s important to forgive. It’s important to forgive so you don’t stay being a victim. You need to forgive if you’re going to lift that heavy burden off your shoulders. We need to lift that burden of that five-year-old.
“I know for many years I blamed the church. I blamed the government. I blamed a religion, I blamed all the religions. In fact I even blamed God. But it’s not God. It’s not the religions. It’s not the churches that did this. It’s people. It’s people like you and I who had a different belief about us. People who believed we were less than they were, nothing more than animals. But here we are. Ready to forgive. And live. Side by side. And today, I can say to you, and I can say to the reconciliation committee, that I’m not only a survivor. I’m a witness to this horrible history. Thank you.”
Let us hope we can be forgiven.
