Does it seem to you that Western culture is growing increasingly merciless and unforgiving? Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe you think the opposite is true, given the rate at which behaviors traditionally understood as wrong are being normalized—but that has nothing to do with mercy or forgiveness. Actually, that trend underscores my point; given the increasingly pharisaical tenor of Western society, true toleration of behavior is disappearing into polarization, leaving only approval and anathematization as options. The drive for societal affirmation of such behaviors as same-gender sexual activity isn’t driven by the intolerance of Christians. Yes, there are plenty of intolerant Christians out there, but on the whole, the American church at least is far more prone to conflict avoidance. We strive to avoid offending anyone because offending people reduces both attendance and giving, and we’re all about seeing those numbers going up. When it comes to sin, we might still believe it’s sin, but our usual policy is, “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” The same cannot be said of the culture at large. That’s why the first rule of watching videos on YouTube is, “Don’t read the comments.” It’s also why this comic from Randall Munroe continues to resonate so powerfully:
Our culture is very good at forgiving things it doesn’t think need to be forgiven—and increasingly good at denouncing orthodox Christians as unloving and unforgiving for insisting that such things do need to be forgiven. When it comes to beliefs or actions which the elites who shape Western culture find unacceptable, however, there is little or no capacity for forgiveness. This is a result of the ongoing re-paganization of the West. The idea that forgiveness is a good thing was a Christian intrusion into the culture, and is fading as the cultural influence of the church fades. As Tim Keller points out,
The first thing about [Christians that offended pagan cultures] was that the Christians were marked by the ability to forgive. Almost all ancient cultures were shame-and-honor cultures. A shame-and-honor culture meant that if someone wronged you, you paid them back. Your honor was at stake. You have to save your honor. That’s what mattered. And most of the people in the shame-and-honor cultures believed that that’s what kept society together. Society was kept together by fear. . . .
Christians came along and said, “No, no, you forgive. Someone wrongs you, you forgive. Seventy times seven.” This was nuts to a shame-and-honor culture. Nuts. We know that the Northern European pagan cultures that were being won to faith through the monks coming up during the fifth/sixth/seventh/eighth/ninth century . . . were shame-and-honor cultures, and one of the things they used to say in resistance to the Christian gospel was that “If Christians come in here and everybody starts forgiving everybody else, society will just fall apart, because what keeps society together is fear.” And so the idea that you forgave your enemies and you turned the other cheek was crazy.
True forgiveness is renouncing the right to demand (or enact) judgment. Read more
