Forgiveness seems to be a philosophy of spiritual redemption to tell future victims to those in charge and systemically committing violence or repression against them or their neighbors, like other countries. That’s what I just thought of when you posed the question and were answering it. I think that is true. Given that a Roman Emperor is responsible in 323 A.D. for institutionalizing Christianity over the Roman Empire, it makes total systemic sense. “Please forgive me if I and your male soldiers go on a wild killing spree to “defend” the empire (which was collapsing at the time).
It’s sort of like what is going on now: A Christian leader says “There will be riots in the streets” if you arrest Trump (OK, it’s Lindsey Graham, but only his avowed professed systemic religious are what’s important, not actually ones). You can expect that they will be asking for forgiveness if riots break out (“Forgive them Lord, they know not what they do”). These rioters we saw on January 6th, which he is sending a clear message out like Trump’s “Stand down and stand by” message is “in line” with the idea of their shared “Christian nation” ideology. Forgiveness is baked into the victims and the perpetrators.
But can we really forgive over one hundred years of lynching by white supremacists used to violently intimidate black Americans by killing one random one? Never. I have no forgiveness for this evil. Who doesn’t know “Thou shall not kill.” Yet they killed and hung and took pictures of them to use as postcards. Maybe that’s why the Slave Bible was created and used genocidally to wipe out the prior ancestral religious beliefs of black slaves and inculcated Christianity into them: so that blacks Americans (then enslaved) could be encouraged to see their masters as “temporarily” losing their sanity, and the master’s themselves could ask for forgiveness.
By instituting this belief, slaves would “humanize” the weaknesses of their master’s, who were temporarily disfigured by a lust for violence (‘the devil took control of my whip’). This institutionalization of Forgiveness meant black African slaves could then see that whites were “only humans,” pawns not as powerful as God and prone to “mistakes.” Instead of seeing them for the savage animalistic masters working under a systemically of a repressive king who allowed, encouraged and tolerated violent treatment of others based on race. It’s not God that is inhumanly enslaving humans; it’s man, and man is fallible, deserves to be forgiven, deserves Forgiveness.
We should not ask the perpetrators to be “absolved from their misdeeds.” That I agree with.
King was brilliant and used the tools he was given to work with to fight evil. His pacifist technique I don’t see as Christian even though it may stem from that. Instead, I look at the results: the photo included with the article. It is brilliant because MLK constructed for the press to show an image “ordinary” and peaceful black Americans, well-dressed, calmly walking across a bridge, minding their own business. We know what is next though: violent cops with rabid dogs ready to attack. That image revealed on TV to the rest of American outside the South (and inside) that whites were the violent and vicious animals and the “negroes” were peaceful victims. By revealing the animalistic side of whites and cops, he showed what repression looked like, the viciousness of beating peaceful Americans just trying to register to vote.
He embarrassed the white political elite with a conscious in front of the country and the world. The whole world witnessed the stark contrast between professed “democracy for all” and the reality of systemic inhumane violence that dictators use to suppress the masses. This was after WWII, so it had the added benefit of showing a type of Hitlerian fascist dystopia, an Orwellian 1984 nightmare. Fancy diplomatic words and gestures from Americans of great ideology against “the threat of communism” suddenly meant nothing when the fascist ideology of gestapo Alabama Police was exposed to the world. “Is that Democracy?” The photo and news clip played over and over asked the world. It sure looks like the opposite, despotic, animalistic brutality Stalin and Hitler used across Europe only 20 years removed.
This reflection of reality of the System is what we saw in George Floyd. That is the where the system is revealed for a system, not for a “bad apple” moment that needs Christian forgiveness.
Only radical violent Christians are committing the systemically approved violence. Atheists have no one to excuse their evil or wrong actions, and no one to ask forgiveness to or expect it from. They are stuck with those wrongful acts they’ve done, still buzzing around in their head, unforgiven, disturbing their consciousness and moral integrity. Christians get cleaned of their sins on Sunday, then put their badges back on, a shield that will protect their next sin, with the government approved Police Union system behind it to back them up.
As always, very insightful and wonderfully provocative with powerful truthful statements morally on target. Thank you.
