I have read a plethora of blogs and articles, in credible newspapers and non-credible newspapers this last week. The theme — we will never forgive and we will never forget. I’ve seen more anger after the election than before.
I would like to start with Abraham Lincoln
If you look for the bad in mankind expecting to find it, you surely will.
Indeed, we seem determined to only look at the bad in our fellow men and women. We would rather judge them by their worst tenants than their best. And that leads me to one conclusion, Trump has won. He has made us into him. I expected his followers to be like him, but I had expected his opponents to resist his message fairly fervently. Today, I feel like I was wrong.
Yes, I know, there is racism there, but can I really convince myself that the way to cure it is to hate those who suffer from this affliction? Surely not. I can only cure that ill by talking, showing them they are wrong, giving compassion, even in the face of hate.
This isn’t something I learned from the Bible or from my white parents, although they lived this way, I learned this from my Black friends. It is they who turn the other cheek, and offer kindness and forgiveness in the face of hate. It is they who are bothered when I tell them that I don’t like a racist person, it is they who demand tolerance. How can I not make the effort that those who are abused make? How can I not be as good and generous as they are?
I think the modern place that best demonstrates this is the Dylan Roof massacer at the Emanuel African Methodist Epsicopal Church. When the family members from that church came to court to see Dylan Roof, their first thought was to forigive him. And they did so. The strength and character it takes to do something like this is the strength and character it takes to make a country great. To build the bridges required to unite a people who have become divided. It is these folks who are the best of America, that I admire as having the American Spirit.
Where we reside, unable to forgive and to heal, to find that which divides us and cure it, is the greatest threat to our country, greater than Trump. I think it is better to think that we created Trump, or at least allowed him, than to think that he made America what it is today. We’ve allowed our own anger to divide us. I know, it takes two to fight. Thanks Mom. But instead of trying to find ways to talk to Trump fans, to understand how they got to be who they are, we have judged them by the lowest value, the racism and sexism, and we are now so comfortable with that view that we are willing to throw 70 million people into that category, when it is clear that the vast majority of his fans are neither of these things. We don’t consider, that we, who all helped to create the problem, are less than those who have suffered from the world we created. We are less forgiving, less tolerant than those who have suffered. Why? It is much easier to hate than to solve.
Forgiveness is not the same thing as a pardon. The families who were so damaged by Dylan Roof did not ask that he be pardoned. They understood he needed to be held accountable. They simply forgave him. Can we not do the same? Donald Trump is what his father made him. He was damaged, manipulated, and carved into a self-serving evil gnome. Can we not forgive him while still asking that he be held accountable? The same goes for his enablers. Such an approach only works if we are sincere. A sarcastic, “Yeah, I forgive you, now burn,” isn’t the solution. We have to find it within ourselves to forgive and to mourn for what should and must be done to Trump. Until then, we are part of the unwhole total that is now America, never to be made whole again.
I will leave you with Lincoln.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.