2024 Conference

Love and Justice

Facing the dilemma of the forgiving process

Forgiveness is a process in ongoing relationships. We need to forgive one another and ourselves as a consequence of our continuous failure to live up to expectations. Only as long as forgiveness is part of our relationship, do we truly relate. 

When different kinds of violence and betrayal enter relationships, the very essence of relating is endangered. Violence threatens life. To forgive someone who threatens life and safety, is not in the interest of creation. It has no survival value. Nevertheless, churches and society have at times demanded that victims of abuse turn to their perpetrators and forgive them, not out of concern with restoration nor of the survival of the victims. Rather, it has been done to support and maintain authorities. 

Many have been told that we need to forgive to be free. That might be true but forgiving on demand does not work. When it comes to injustices such as violence, abuse, rape, neglect and war, this demand would only mean the freedom for the abusers to further enslave the victims. 

Forgiveness at the level of negotiation, reconciliation, making amends and settling for an armistice, requires just and equal relationships. Forgiveness at the deepest level, as a gift of love at a personal level, transcends the concept of justice. 

No relationship has been so uneven and unjust, and no gift of love so undeserved as in the case of Christ’s prayer of intercession for his tormentors on Golgotha. This inspires us to see that in Christianity, as in everyday life, forgiving is a gift, undeserved, unjust, a legal malpractice, the folly and vulnerability of love. 

At our next conference we will explore our understandings and experiences of forgiveness, love, and justice. We welcome you to wrestle and rest with this theme in group works, in lectures and in worship.

On behalf of the planning group

Bent Falk (DK) Psychotherapist MPF, M.Div.

André Sjåvåg (N) Parish priest at the Church of Norway