The Challenge of Forgiveness

“During Reagan’s war [the Contra War] 50,000 young people were killed. They were carried away from their families and off to the war in military trucks, stuffed full. They say Reagan died of cancer…he deserved it.”

Forgiveness. It’s really the only key value that distinguishes Christianity from the other major world religions. If you think about it, all the major religions talk about love, peace, goodness, stewardship or solidarity, in some form or another. But forgiveness –the radical kind Jesus was talking about when he told Peter not to forgive “seven times, but seventy-seven times” (Matthew 18:22)—is unique to Christianity, and for me it’s one of the most difficult values to uphold.

Nicaragua went through a popular-based revolution during the 1980s to overthrow a family dictatorship which had been in power for almost 50 years. Just 2 short years after the triumph of the revolution, a new war started, this time against counterrevolutionaries. Unfortunately, our United States government had a lot to do with that war. It funded the Contras (as they were popularly called) and after popular support in the U.S. declined and Congress cut funding, President Reagan and his administration then looked for other ways to finance the effort, including the Iran-Contra Affair of 1986 in which the U.S. government illegally sold arms to Iran.

When the Contra war finally ended in 1989, 50,000 people on both sides had been killed, 150,000 Nicaraguans were in exile, and many human rights violations were alleged by both sides. Two decades of blood-shed. Thousands of young people dead. Thousands of families torn apart. Both sides claiming their way is correct.

Politics aside, many middle-aged and senior folks in Nicaragua remember quite vividly the war years. Their stories are incredulous and having never experienced a war first-hand I can only imagine what it must have been like. They don’t harbor ill-will toward people from the U.S. They are skeptical of our government though.

Nicaragua is an overwhelmingly Christian nation, the majority being Catholic. The person I quoted at the beginning of this reflection is a very pious woman and has been her entire life, yet she caught me off guard with her stinging remark. It seemed so uncharacteristic of her. I even forgot to listen to the rest of her story because of it.

It called me to reflect. How on earth do you get yourself to forgive someone (or some institution) who has committed great atrocities against your people and literally caused misery for you and your family? From where do you pull the courage and strength to do such a thing? I have a hard time forgiving the young woman who cut me off getting on the bus just because she wanted the last seat.

I can’t say I blame this woman for saying what she did because I didn’t live her experience. Yet Jesus never claimed it was easy to forgive our trespassers seventy-seven times; he just told us to do it. He did it himself from the cross as he was being crucified: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).

Sometimes the side of me that yearns for justice finds it very difficult to follow that example. It takes a lot of courage, prayer and self-esteem to forgive someone for a wrong committed against you. Yet it’s what defines us as followers of Jesus Christ. None of the other major religions can claim that. It’s one of the hallmarks of being Christian. It’s also one of the greatest challenges.

Anne Marie Castleman