Bismarck Tribune

By KAREN HERZOGBy KAREN HERZOG

"So (God) drove out the man; and He placed at the east of the Garden of Eden the cherubim and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep and guard the way to the tree of life.

- Genesis 3:24

We may think of forgiveness as letting someone "off the hook," but that's not so, said the Rev. Jake Kincaid, senior pastor at Bismarck's First Presbyterian Church.

"Consequences linger," he said. "We're all 'east of Eden.' We don't get back into the Garden, not in this life."

"There must be something beyond retribution," Kincaid said. "Forgiveness is that 'something other.'"

In Kincaid's role as pastor, more and more people come to him with this struggle - they can't seem to find forgiveness, he said.

We're told we're supposed to do it, but we don't know where to start.

People ask him:Are you supposed to "forgive and forget?" And what about justice?

Those tough questions are why Kincaid decided to use the title, "The Struggle to Forgive," in his series of winter classes Sunday mornings through Feb. 11.

The "struggle to forgive" runs up against two powerful and basic emotions, Kincaid said - guilt and shame.

Offenders fend off guilt by using power and self-righteousness to justify their actions; victims fend off feelings of shame through power and holding themselves wholly right, he said.

Guilt and shame are innate to humans and, like other qualities, can be both destructive and constructive, he said.

Modern people, in fleeing the extreme guilt and shame imposed on past generations, may run too far - guilt and shame do have their proper roles, he said.

"In healthy ways, (guilt and shame) make good moral rudders," he said. "They are two important ingredients for having order in this world; without them, we would be completely adrift."

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And Jesus prayed, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

Luke 23:34

In the New Testament, Jesus is the great paradigm of practicing forgiveness even in the most unforgivable circumstances, Kincaid said.

One of the best-known stories of forgiveness in the New Testament is the parable of the prodigal son, which was the theme of a 2004 children's musical at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, directed by Barb Tengesdal.

"A child's spiritual development moves from magical egocentric religiosity to standing up for others, developing empathy," Tengesdal said.

Children begin with awe at angels and the wonder of God, and move toward the reality of what it means to live that out, (to) explore relationships, she said.

Confronting the issue of fairness, the children in the musical were struck by the role of the prodigal son's unforgiving older brother, she said. But they all responded to the story's culmination - "they loved it at the end, the prodigal son running into his father's arms, that sense of unconditional love, a big burst of joy by the whole party," she said.

Familiar with the feeling that "they've done something horrible and are never going to be loved," children responded to the father-and-son reunion, "how freeing that felt, that joy-filled experience."

In teaching younger children, adults direct them to say they're sorry, or hug the friend they've hurt:Those are ways of being empathetic, remorseful and forgiving, she said.

But as children grow, they often witness their parent or other adults who don't say they're sorry to children, which usually results from adults feeling the need to be in control and "right."

Adults often associate that "rightness" with discipline and lose the reciprocity of the forgiveness process, she said.

"Forgiveness means you are in relationship," Tengesdal said.

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"In all relationships, especially the intimate ones, we have so much at stake," Kincaid said. "There's always a keeping of ledgers. We want justice," he said.

But "justice," like "forgiveness," may not look like what we think, he said.

In some ways, the Eastern concept of "karma" may be closer to the Hebraic notion of justice, he said.

"We think God imposes harsh consequences,"he said, "but the consequences (for wrongdoing) are in the actions themselves."

Anger is our way of avoiding forgiveness, he said, a way to block that process. But making the other person suffer doesn't heal our own pain, he said.

One way to begin the process of forgiveness is to realize that often the offender and offended have a whole lot in common, Kincaid said.

"Our hands are no cleaner than others," he said; if in one relationship we are the wounded, there are others in which we have been the hurtful one. Those who discover their common humanity with those who hurt them are most likely to discover forgiveness, he said.

Accepting forgiveness can be as hard as offering it: "We don't want to acknowledge we have been wrong or surrender power, give up the pretense of being right, humble ourselves," he said.

Another challenge in finding forgiveness is false notions of what it is.

The old children's nursery rhyme in "Humpty Dumpty" may say it best, he said: "All the king's horses and all the king's men, couldn't put Humpty Dumpty back together again."

"People feel they are failing at forgiving because they can't put the relationship back together just the way it was before," he said. "(But) forgiveness seldom means returning to things as they were, exactly the same," he said.

In some cases, the relationship can be reinterpreted; in others, forgiveness means coming to terms with reality and accepting that it cannot, he said.

People ask him if it's possible to truly "forgive and forget."

Probably not, Kincaid said. What forgiveness offers, however, is that "we are not constantly remembering," he said.

One quote he uses for his class says this, that "maybe we forgive because we can't forget."

"If we don't forgive, we continue to suffer," he said. "The aim of forgiveness is to ameliorate that (suffering) in some way.

"Forgiveness can be a release from all that negative emotion - in theological terms, a new life," Kincaid said.

(Reach Karen Herzog at 250-8267 or karen.herzog@;bismarcktribune.com.)