A word about forgiveness in a Christian way vs. victimblaming

Exclusive. "So will My Heavenly Father do to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother his sins from his heart." (Matthew 18:35). To put it mildly, unpleasant words. First, who is my brother? And the Scriptures clearly speak of the unity of the human race, and this teaching is recognized by the Church as part of Divine Revelation. My brother, this is every person living on earth. And this command of God (and also with a threat) to show mercy even to very bad people. But here a question arises. And should society and the state also forgive everyone?

And instead of prison terms, the judge should hand out flyers with invitations to Bible reading groups? And we understand that it is not. Otherwise, the state will simply disappear, and society will die. That is, this commandment of the Divine Revelation is addressed, first of all, to the personality of a person. Although to the collective essence of society/state, too, but in a slightly different way. About which I will say a little later. Now let's talk about a person's personality, trying to answer the question of why it is important to learn to forgive.

Here, for example, there is a person among your relatives who is frivolous, spends money on entertainment and takes micro-loans, and to give them back, he takes two more. A real case, in one of the big cities there was such a celebrity that took 300 microloans. And how can you lend money to such an acquaintance, and then not demand it? This is an important point. God calls for mercy and forgiveness.

"I want mercy, not sacrifice." At the same time, justice requires paying off debts and applying punishment for crimes. At the same time, God speaks on the one hand about justice, on the other hand about mercy. Clearly indicates to us that absolute recovery for a person justice is not available.

Debts can be paid, stolen goods can be returned. But how to drive loose gossip back? Or how to bring the dead back to life? Unfortunately, most people's actions are irreversible. Therefore, there is only hope for mercy. But in order to expect forgiveness from God, you must learn to forgive yourself. And the first thing here is the refusal of revenge. "Vengeance belongs to me, I will repay, says the Lord" (Rom. 12:19). Its meaning lies in the fact that we should not take revenge for ourselves, no matter what insult is inflicted on us, but we should humbly give place to the wrath of God, His justice. The Lord speaks, indicating that a person in an attempt to restore justice can spin the flywheel of violence to incredible proportions. The Lord speaks about how important it is to stop and stop the desire to produce "higher justice" with your own hands.

It's about revenge, trying to create retribution for evil with your own hands. I will give an example from Dumas' novel "The Count of Monte Cristo". A man who was treated meanly and criminally became the owner of huge treasures. And he spent the opportunities that opened before him on revenge and punishment of his enemies. In several places of the novel, the author compares him with the devil, and it is not easy. And when vengeance was taken, and the villains punished, this man was left alone and desolate. Despite the fact that the title that the writer invented for the character "master of Christ's mountain" clearly refers to the theme of God's judgment and retribution. At the same time, the author himself shows, using the example of a trickster character, how the thirst for revenge works destructively.

But what about the actor with microcredits? To forgive him? And here is the answer. A distinction must be made between the desire to avenge evil and the desire to end evil. A person who likes to take micro-loans must go through the bankruptcy procedure and not take any more loans. Evil must be stopped, but not without mercy. This is very important.

And now let's return to the state and society. For millennia, starting with the ancient world, it seemed that justice is primarily the proportionality of punishment to actions. And in societies where this principle is violated, the state collapses. The average citizen, obsessed with revenge and malice, may think that the threat of severe punishment can stop a criminal.

Although this thought prevails in minds, it is unworldly stupidity. We can see in history (I will point out on purpose for those who miss Stalinism) how in the most criminal period - the Middle Ages, when the punishments for crimes were as cruel as possible, with the aim of inflicting the most painful physical suffering on the condemned, crime was the highest in history.

And the lowest crime rate in history is now, in our day. Moreover, it is precisely in the countries where the system of criminal punishments is the mildest. Unexpectedly, it turns out that mercy towards a criminal does not increase the crime factor, but lowers it. Purely empirically, it turned out that it is not the severity of the punishment, but its inevitability that reduces crime.

An ordinary reprehensible person commits crimes in the hope of avoiding punishment at all, even a symbolic one. And a psychopath like Breivik will not be stopped even by the fear of the most brutal medieval punishment. This is the paradox of human nature: to reduce the amount of evil in the world, evil must be stopped, not avenged. Because the desire for revenge and the anger that drives them destroys, first of all, the person possessed by them.

Therefore, it is important to learn to forgive, even the one who does not seek this forgiveness, and generally considers himself an infallible angel, committing his evil deeds. But to forgive does not mean to refrain from stopping evil.

You can forgive a person, but if you are not sure why he/she has corrected his/her worldview and behavior, then do not communicate and have common affairs.

That is why society creates a state that has an army and police. To end evil through violence, not revenge.

That is why it is important for a person to be merciful. One of the tasks of evil is dehumanization (or dehumanization) Depriving man of his image of God and contributing to the transformation of man into a cruelly embittered animal.

This is well described in Varlaam Shalamov's stories about the Gulag system. The task of the Soviet state was to destroy the human in man and turn him into a "cog and cog" of the Soviet state machine. That is why the Soviet state had such a huge apparatus of human dehumanization. That is, you can dehumanize a person with violence just as effectively as with depravity with impunity.

Modern Mordor returned to the Soviet course of dehumanization of man. And first of all, it dehumanizes the "enemies": Ukrainians, Americans, agents, etc. But in reality, this state completely dehumanizes those who believe in it and are loyal to it. Those who believe the propaganda of the Shvabrostan mass media turn into embittered animals. As in the Gulag system, in fact, the first to lose human dignity and turn into beasts were the NKVD (KGB) employees, not the prisoners. This is the curse of the society that created a state based on depopulation. Naturally, there is no place for mercy in such a system. There is no room for forgiveness and mercy.

And further, why should we forgive them. Here it is important to understand that to forgive does not mean "excuse" and does not even mean "understand". To forgive is not to wish to retaliate with evil. Do not want revenge. When they say "to understand", it means "to forgive" - ​​they are deeply mistaken.

You can understand anyone. All psychology tries to understand every human being, including the murderous psychopath. And the explanation of the psychological mechanisms of his actions does not mean either an apology or an excuse. Likewise forgiveness is not an excuse. To forgive does not mean to justify. Justified means innocent. And the innocent does not need forgiveness.

Forgiveness is an act of refusing to punish the guilty. Renunciation of revenge.

Forgiveness is an act of refusing to justly punish the guilty.

Forgiveness can be one-sided. Not as a response to wanting to be forgiven. This is a special grace. And we do it not at all for the sake of the guilty. We do it for ourselves. To remain human in conditions when our enemy does everything to make us cease to be human. This is our victory.

Symbols of Victory from ancient sports culture - a laurel wreath and a palm branch - entered the iconography of martyrs. Those who "suffered and were crowned with the victory" of Christ over the cruelty of the world and the horror of death.

It is their victory over evil that we see as a perfect victory. It is by not succumbing to evil, even if necessary, stopping evil with violence, that you can show mercy. And thus preserve your human dignity.

And this is the only way to preserve and strengthen the image of God in yourself, to find closeness with God, even divine adoption and eternal life with Christ in His Kingdom.

I remembered the novel "1984", where evil still triumphed, and the unpleasant residue remained not from Smith's physical death, but from the fact that he was depopulated. This is again on the topic of thinking about the Gulag, because the following question arises: does this mean that it is a sin to wish evil on those who kill our people with rockets and do not think to stop? Not so much a sin as a weakness of nature. It is necessary to wish for the cessation of evil, but quite often evil has grown with its carrier to such an extent that the cessation of evil inevitably drags suffering and even the death of its bearer.

One may get the false impression that an apology can be demanded. Like, since you are a Christian, then let's say goodbye to the villain. Ah, you don't want to forgive, so you are the same villain. It is not difficult to discern primitive manipulations based on these considerations. Forgiveness cannot be demanded. You can ask for it, you can hope for it. In some sense, a person can demand from himself. But not third parties and not the villain himself. The latter is especially cynical and nasty.

The Church as a collective entity can force itself to mercy and forgiveness. But at the level of relations between people, even between flocks and shepherds, the language of an ultimatum is not always acceptable.

In addition, pastoral wisdom requires discerning the situation. Demanding mercy and forgiveness to enemies from a person who is currently subjected to violence, on the grounds that Christ forgave his tormentors right at the time of the crucifixion, is as unreasonable as demanding Olympic records from a student of the Junior High School.

Therefore, the pastoral sermon about mercy to the bearers of evil in a situation of continuous violence risks becoming banal victim-blaming, when the victim of crime or violence is blamed for what happened to him.

Most often, victim-blaming refers to those who write accusations against those who have experienced sexual or domestic violence (a situation typical for mopbroids). Victim-blaming can take various forms: it can be comments in the style of "it is his/her fault", justifying the perpetrator, or bullying a person who has experienced physical or mental violence. The phenomenon of victim-blaming acts as an indicator of the state of society: by blaming the victim for what happened to him, we normalize violence in society and cannot adequately respond to various forms of injustice.

Among other things, victim-blaming has a negative effect on the person who has experienced violence: the person may feel helpless, ashamed and humiliated. Also, victim-blaming intensifies the difficult mental state that the victim may have.

It is necessary to blame the aggressors for the crime, and not their victims, otherwise bullying will harm not only the victims, but also society as a whole. Psychologists agree that the main reason for victim-blaming is probably the belief in a just world — cognitive distortion and a psychological defense mechanism.

Its essence is this: one believes that nothing bad happens to good people, that everyone in the world gets what they deserve, and that if you strictly follow the rules, you will be safe. Study for A's and you will have a good job. Help your friends - and they will never betray you. Don't wear a short skirt - and you won't be raped. Do not contradict a man - and he will not beat you. Be vigilant - and fraudsters will not be able to take your money.

Such faith grows out of heretical (that is, distorted) religious dogmas, parental attitudes, fairy tales that we hear in childhood. But its deep reason is that it seems to make the world not such a scary and incomprehensible place. It is difficult and scary to admit that anything can happen to any person (or country) at any moment and it does not lend itself to any logic. And here it seems as if there are simple and clear rules, and if someone got hurt, then he did not follow them. That's it, the case is closed. You can not worry and continue to live in your fictional safe little world.

This is a cognitive trap through which we extend our own positive experience to all other people. "I've never worn a short skirt, and I've never been raped - so neither should others"; or "I didn't hang out in the evenings in dark alleys, and I wasn't robbed."

When the victim understands that the environment - the closest or the most distant - blames her for what happened to her, and not the criminal, she feels heavy emotions: shame, horror, resentment, bitterness. In essence, she has to relive the same feelings she faced after the incident. Psychologists call this phenomenon retraumatization and re-victimization of the victim

At the heart of victim-blaming is an absolutely cannibalistic idea: the victims deserved what happened to them. If you develop this idea, it turns out that some - "wrong" - people can be beaten, raped, robbed, killed. Because they proved, provoked, failed to defend themselves, looked the wrong way, went the wrong way. And in general, there is nothing to break the life of a criminal and put him in prison. It sounds absurd, creepy and completely unhealthy.

But by discussing, blaming and shifting the focus away from the criminal, we are not doing any good. We assert ourselves at the expense of those less fortunate, protect ourselves from an unattractive reality, and most importantly, instill in other people the dangerous idea that the victim is to blame for what happened. And these peaceful, law-abiding people must walk a tightrope, look around, carefully choose what to wear, how to speak and where to look. And criminals - well, what can you take from them.

So, unfortunately, victim-blaming does not bring any benefit, on the contrary, it harms all adequate people. Because anyone can be a victim.

And every time you want to give bad advice and say the instructive "you should have been sitting at home at twelve o'clock at night", it is better to take a break, take a few deep breaths and think about what these words will lead to, and you shouldn't have kept them to yourself at all.

But let's return to the topic of our sermon. That is why pastoral wisdom requires distinguishing and considering when and how to voice the truth of faith, and not just voice truths with an ultimatum to accept them. The simple truth that a person with a toothache is deaf to all the best preaching is somehow not always self-evident.

As in medicine, first anesthesia, then surgery, so in pastoral guidance, the preaching of mercy must follow the cessation of evil. It is an extremely big pastoral mistake to appeal to mercy by creating a more or less positive image of the bearer of evil.

Imagine a preacher addressing the Dachau prisoners, urging them to forgive their executioners on the grounds that "the Germans are a people of great culture, who gave the world Kant and Hegel, Goethe and Schiller." It is absurd and would be funny if it were not tragic. Therefore, we will pray to the Lord to guide us on the right path, not to let us wash away in the matter of forgiveness, and to give us the strength to understand everything and implement true forgiveness in our everyday life.

Hieromonk Feofan (Skorobagatov) Polotsk, doctor of theological sciences.