Forgiveness and Reconciliation in World Religions

In Islam, there are many names of God. They represent the attributes of Allah, the ones that people should strive to emulate. Two of the most notable are Al-Afw, which means to forgive, and Al-Safh, which means to forgive AND to forget; or perhaps we could just call it “reconciliation.” Forgiveness and reconciliation, while we sometimes conflate them, are two very different actions, two very different kinds of reaction to wrongs done to us.

I want to talk about that today. What is forgiveness, what is reconciliation? How does a person get to one or the other place, and how does the Jewish tradition, the Islamic tradition, and the Buddhist tradition think and talk about the concept of forgiving and its next step, reconciliation? I thought that using these three major faiths, which are currently at war with each other in various parts of the world, might be an interesting way to engage with the topic. The holy books of these three faiths are the cornerstone of faith for billions of people worldwide, yet the faiths often cannot reconcile themselves. So what do they have to say about the concept, in their own words?

Also, I’ve just been thinking a lot lately about forgiveness. As more and more people find themselves on opposite sides of ideological divides, I’ve seen a lot of social media content around the idea of “forgiving” a person who doesn’t “deserve” it, or “forgiving” people by walking away from any person who does not give you back the energy that you give to them. Both of these use the word forgiveness, but they feel more like just shutting yourself off from the work of actual forgiveness or reconciliation. Obviously not every person needs to co-exist peacefully with every other person, but after reading how these three faiths talk about and advise their faithful to handle forgiveness, I think that there’s a lot to be learned about how to approach the people we may need to forgive, for our own peace of mind and wellbeing.

I’m a historian so I want to go chronologically. The oldest faith of the three is obviously Judaism. Much of the Torah was created during a time of very different values and morals, even before the Code of Hammurabi. So its stories are some of the oldest we know. Because the stories were first told so long ago, the reasons why things happen are not as clear and it doesn’t seem to matter much in the narrative; obviously narrative has evolved quite a bit in the past 3500 years. The Torah can be hard to read for that reason. For instance, the story of Jacob and Esau has always been confusing for me. Jacob (whose name means “tricky” by the way) tricks their father in order to steal his brother Esau’s blessing. He is then gone for 14 years, and when he returns, he gets God’s forgiveness AND his brother’s as well. But there’s very little in the way of explanation for Esau’s forgiveness. How was anything that happened, fair to Esau? And why does Esau forgive Jacob when Jacob certainly doesn’t seem to want to apologize?

Rabbi Harold Schulweis wrestled with this. Rabbi Schulweis, who spent his career in California, was famous, and sometimes infamous, for his insistence on inclusion — he introduced bat mitzvahs, held interfaith programs, and openly included the LGBTQ community throughout his career, which spanned the 1940s-2000s. He also helped to found the Chavurah movement, which created lay fellowships of the faithful and did not rely on clergy to learn more about the Jewish faith.

During the Jewish high holy days, the Days of Awe, Yom Kippur is the day of atonement, a day when everyone asks forgiveness and makes amends. Or should. Schulweis asks his congregation “Is there a divide between what we can forgive and what God can forgive?” He asks, are we just God’s cheerleaders, watching Him understand others, pardon others, forgive others while we get to sit and simply say “all acts are God’s to take, not mine”? Are we not able to be as forgiving as God?

Judaism doesn’t work like that, he says. A cornerstone of Jewish belief is that God is not responsible for the things we should be doing for ourselves. “Giving it up to God”, which is a popular Christian slogan, is not considered righteousness, it’s abdicating responsibility. This is an enormous theological difference between Judaism and Christianity.

This also puts anyone of the Jewish faith in a very interesting position when it comes to forgiveness. Like Islam’s separation of forgiveness and reconciliation, Al-Afw and Al-Safh, there is an acknowledgement in Judaism that forgiveness is not forgetting; one does not flow from the other naturally. Esau might have forgiven Jacob but did he forget all that Jacob did? A very old rabbinic story goes that bad acts are like pounding a nail into a wooden board. Forgiveness is like removing the nail. But once the nail is gone, the hole remains. Forgiveness does not reverse the past. But it does signify a new reality. Reconciliation is not God’s to create, because God does not do things for man; it is each person’s responsibility. And when they reconcile, they not only remove the nail from the wood, they are making space to create something new in the hole.

So why did Esau reconcile with Jacob? Who was right and who was wrong in the story of their argument? Rabbi Schulweis argues that it *doesn’t matter who was right.* The important thing is always the reconciliation. Not to obsess over the past but to look forward to the new opportunities that wait for us when we forgive, looking for what might fill the space that the nail left in the wood. And no one, not even God, can do that work except us. We must change our own hearts, all by ourselves. This is the challenge of the faith.

Buddhism, although it doesn’t worship the Buddha, is still a faith all its own. Buddha, called the Perfect One, told his followers: “there is an addiction to sense-pleasures, which is low and coarse; and there is an addiction to self-mortification, which is painful and unworthy.” The middle path is the only way to enlightenment. Buddhism reflects, often, on what suffering is and what it means. Holding a grudge, or refusing to forgive, is a form of suffering; it’s holding onto a state, and holding onto any state, without a recognition that the state cannot last forever, is what causes suffering.

Thubten Chodron, the abbess of the only Tibetan Buddhist training monastery in the United States, has talked widely on the concept of forgiveness and reconciliation. She starts by reminding the audience that while they might believe they are nonviolent, while they might believe that others are the problem, or that their anger is justified because it corrects society, none of that is precisely true. As I was talking about earlier, the social media posts that hold us up as the ones who are wronged, and therefore we must walk away in order to be happy — we are setting ourselves up as the “right” ones, and saying that our own suffering must be coming from other people. Buddhism recognizes that the only person we can change is ourselves, and since we are interdependent on other people, perhaps more than ever before in human history, we must recognize that our own happiness is also interdependent. This is where compassion becomes very important.

The Dhammapada is a collection of Buddha’s sayings and insights, compiled in a few hundred years after his death. He says “When we hold fast to such thoughts as “they harmed me, they mistreated me, they robbed me” we keep hatred alive. If we thoroughly release ourselves from such thoughts as “they harmed me”, hatred is vanquished. Never by hatred is hatred conquered, by the readiness to love.”

It seems like everyone has an example that they could bring up, the bad things other have done to us. We hold tightly to those bad things, sometimes we even create an identity around past bad things. We can hold onto the feelings we have for decades, but who really suffers when we hold onto those feelings? Is it the person we refuse to forgive? No. Buddhism tells us that the only person who will suffer is ourselves. So we forgive to make ourselves happy, to release our own misery. As Buddha said, hatred is not conquered by hatred. Chodron says “people who have harmed us did what they did because they were trying to be happy and they were confused about what the causes of happiness are. So it makes more sense to look at the people who harmed us, and wish them happiness. Real compassion thinks ‘wouldn’t it be wonderful if that person had peace?” wishing them well.”

Reconciliation, which is the next step in that process of forgiveness, would be not just to wish them well, but to even try to help that other person be less confused about what the true causes of happiness are. That would take a lot of courage and a lot of strength, but for Buddhists, it would also be a release from suffering.

Islam, though it’s often held up by Christians and Muslims as being very different from Christianity, actually shares quite a bit with it when it comes to forgiveness; in some ways far more than Christianity shares with Judaism. God is held up as the perfect model for behavior; as He forgives, so should we. His 99 names, which include the ones I began with, Al-Afw and Al-Safh, are the 99 ways in which anyone can try to emulate Allah himself. It’s important to remember that everything in Islam is derived from Mohammad’s words — the word of God was given to Mohammad, who had scribes write them down (Mohammad could not read nor write). Again, this is similar to Christianity where others wrote the actions and life of Jesus, who is held up as the perfect model of goodness. This is also pretty similar to how Buddhism operates, something I find very interesting — the idea that there is a model somewhere for you to emulate, and perfecting yourself is possible. These are all quite different than Judaism, which shares the stories of flawed humans and asks the faithful to use them as the lesson. But back to Islam: the Qu’ran states that all faithful should be as forgiving as Allah, because wouldn’t they want to be forgiven if it was they who were at fault? And how can a person expect Allah to forgive their sins if they cannot find it within themselves to forgive others? Suppressing one’s “naf”, or ego, is paramount to these kinds of actions, in Islam. I’ll come back to naf in a second.

Hadith are where much of the guidance to Muslims originates from, outside of the Quran. The hadith are thousands of sayings attributed to Muhammad, compiled in the middle ages into six books. These sayings, as much as the Quran, form the basis of “right” behavior for people of faith. One hadith states that the prophet said he could promise a house in paradise to the man who can avoid quarrelling even when he’s in the right — thus making it clear that maybe it’s not that easy to get a house in Paradise after all. Another hadith purports that the Prophet said that no true Muslim could be allowed to avoid someone they were fighting with for more than three days, and the one who gave greeting and reconciliation first would be the better Muslim. And even after death, the hadith tell the faithful that there are still tests: on the bridge over Hell, before the entrance to Paradise, all believers will have to confront each other about the wrongs they did to each other in their lifetimes, and forgive each other before they can enter.

Giving up the ‘naf’, giving up ego, is the common denominator in these hadith. A person can only forgive others, or lead a good life, if they are willing to give up on being right all the time. In this way, the faithful can emulate Allah, who forgives everyone if they only ask for it. And reconciliation, which is the next step, is even more important in the process. In the hadith that states a true Muslim would be the first to offer peace during a fight, there is a direct line between a person who can manage reconciliation and the strength of their faith. Much like Christianity, Islam leans on the twin concepts of both unconditional love *and* judgment — you are loved but you are also being weighed. Your chances to be good, to show God your ability to be good, are limitless in the course of your life, but it is up to you to take advantage of those chances. Most of the stories of Muhammad focus on the idea of self-reformation — never giving up on the hope that everyone can eventually make peace with each other, just as Allah would be able to do. Like Buddhism, you are offered the opportunity to do the right thing and therefore make *yourself* happy and fulfilled, whether in this life or the next.

While I was researching these faiths, I came across a work called the Nostra Aetate, which is a document written by the Second Vatican Council. “Vatican II” as it’s known, was a gathering of Christian thought leaders that drove a huge paradigm shift in the way that Catholics approached other faiths and the scientific community. Its effects are still rippling in the Catholic community, over 50 years later. When I applied for a job at the University of St Thomas, here in Houston, one of my application materials was an essay on John Paul II’s “Faith and Reason” which was created in 1998 and was one of the intellectual descendants of Vatican II’s work.

The Nostra Aetate, which means “In Our Time”, offers a Catholic perspective on other religions. One passage I find particularly remarkable:

“Religions found everywhere try to counter the restlessness of the human heart, each in its own manner, by proposing “ways”: teachings, rules of life, and sacred rites. The Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life which reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens everyone.”

Reconciliation starts with each of us, but the need for reconciliation across larger groups, nations, religions is probably one of the most pressing needs in our world. For all three faiths, the basic tenets are the same: look to yourself first. Are you in a place to forgive others? Why not? What is holding you back from forgiving? Is it obsessing over the nail that someone else drove into your heart? Is it that you can’t imagine yourself feeling any other way? Is it your ego?

This can be applied to any group or situation, of course. Evangelicals v “liberals”, Myanmar v Rohingya, Israel v Palestine.

Psychologists say that the hardest part of getting people to reconcile is convincing them that they aren’t different, that they actually belong to the same community, and are all one humanity. In many ways, that looks like forgiveness, from the community and for oneself.

History is littered with the effects of people ignoring each other’s common ground. Perhaps because forgiveness and reconciliation are, at their core, about forgiving and acknowledging our own shortcomings. Unitarian Universalism embraces commonalities and I think that is one of our greatest strengths. Especially in times like these, when there is so much division and misinformation, the ability to forgive may become necessary more than ever. Thank you.