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Apologies for the sins of history sometimes get dismissed as empty gestures. Can we really repent on behalf of our ancestors? What’s the point, if the wrong happened centuries ago?
Canadian Mennonite theologian Jeremy M. Bergen offers insight, prompted by the Lutheran World Federation plan to renounce 16th-century condemnations of Anabaptist and apologize for persecution that happened nearly 500 years ago.
Bergen suggests that when others apologize to us, we should consider what we also ought to be sorry for.
He says we should not be comfortable with forgiveness that costs us nothing.
Mennonites might repent of our role in promoting disunity among Christians and of self-righteousness, Bergen says.
We’re guilty of these sins on small and large scales. We create divisions when we assume certain last names are “Mennonite” and others are not. We fall prey to pride when we condemn the other side in a disagreement as being not really Mennonite or Christian.
Being asked to forgive should “become an occasion for our own conversion,” Bergen says. His idea of not accepting an apology without examining our own hearts is excellent advice. — Paul Schrag
Friday, February 5, 2010
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2 comments:
Thanks to you, Paul, and to Jeremy Bergen, for reflecting on our response to the LWF apology. I agree that this is an occasion for “conversion.”
I find myself a little uneasy with what’s being suggested, however. It may be just nuance, just a matter of semantics, perhaps the order of things. But I’ll try to explain what I mean. It seems to me that repentance and apologies of our own would be a by-product of the hard work of forgiveness, not the first/next step. To say too quickly, “Well, we’ve done some bad things too” (and I’m putting it too simply, too colloquially, of course) deflects or distracts us from what we’re being asked to do. And, it seems to me further, actually dishonors the LWF. The way I heard the request for forgiveness as presented at MWC in Asuncion, it is the LWF’s desire to be healed of “the poison of the scorpion” within them. Being asked to do this via our forgiveness puts us in a new and sacred position of power, which is very humbling indeed. Will we free the LWF from their history? And what will it do to ours? We will have to add a postscript to the Martyrs Mirror or perhaps a foreword of warning “Read these in the light of this…” The potential of the past to shape us shifts…
But, as I said, perhaps this is just nuance. Thanks again.
I recently picked up Martyrs Mirror. What struck me was the fervor, sometimes delight, of those who suffered and their hardline refusal to compromise. It was a war of ideologies, it seems, an age of religious intolerance from every side. Was Jesus truly honored in all the argument and the blood? Yes, perhaps apologies all around are in order, from those who murdered and those who died, from mother's who chose a martyr's crown to the hard task of raising children here on imperfect earth.
I believe Paul identified the poison of the scorpion well when he pointed out our tendencies today to be self-righteous and to see all matters of faith in uncompromising black and white.
Dora, you said it--The potential of the past to shape us shifts....
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