Wisdom from C.S. Lewis: On Forgiveness

C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity, Book III, Christian Behaviour, "Forgiveness":

          I said in a previous chapter that chastity was the most unpopular of the Christian virtues. 

     But I am not sure I was right I believe the one I have to talk of today is even more unpopular: 

     the Christian rule, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." Because in Christian morals 

     "thy neighbour" includes "thy enemy," and so we come up against this terrible duty of 

     forgiving our enemies.

          Every one says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive, as we 

     had during [World War II]. And then, to mention the subject at all is to be greeted with howls 

     of anger. It is not that people think this too high and difficult a virtue: it is that they think it 

     hateful and contemptible. "That sort of talk makes them sick," they say. And half of you 

     already want to ask me, "I wonder how you'd feel about forgiving the Gestapo if you were a 

     Pole or a Jew?"

          So do I. I wonder very much. Just as when Christianity tells me that I must not deny my 

     religion even to save myself from death by torture, I wonder very much what I should do when 

     it came to the point. I am not trying to tell you in this book what I could do--I can do precious 

     little--I am telling you what Christianity is. I did not invent it. And there, right in the middle of it, 

     I find "Forgive us our sins as we forgive those that sin against us." There is no slightest 

     suggestion that we are offered forgiveness on any other terms. It is made perfectly dear that 

     if we do not forgive we shall not be forgiven. There are no two ways about it. What are we to 

     do?

          It is going to be hard enough, anyway, but I think there are two things we can do to make 

     it easier. When you start mathematics you do not begin with the calculus; you begin with 

     simple addition. In the same way, if we really want (but all depends on really wanting) to 

     learn how to forgive, perhaps we had better start with something easier than the Gestapo. 

     One might start with forgiving one's husband or wife, or parents or children, or the nearest 

     N.C.O., for something they have done or said in the last week. That will probably keep us 

     busy for the moment. And secondly, we might try to understand exactly what loving your 

     neighbour as yourself means. I have to love him as I love myself. Well, how exactly do I love 

     myself?

          Now that I come to think of it, I have not exactly got a feeling of fondness or affection for 

     myself, and I do not even always enjoy my own society. So apparently "Love your neighbour" 

     does not mean "feel fond of him" or "find him attractive." I ought to have seen that before, 

     because, of course, you cannot feel fond of a person by trying. Do I think well of myself, think 

     myself a nice chap? Well, I am afraid I sometimes do (and those are, no doubt, my worst 

     moments) but that is not why I love myself. In fact it, is the other way round: my self-love 

     makes me think myself nice, but thinking myself nice is not why I love myself. So loving my 

     enemies does not apparently mean thinking them nice either. That is an enormous relief. 

     For a good many people imagine that forgiving your enemies means making out that they 

     are really not such bad fellows after all, when it is quite plain that they are. Go a step further. 

     In my most clear-sighted moments not only do I not think myself a nice man, but I know that I 

     am a very nasty one. I can look at some of the things I have done with horror and loathing. 

     So apparently I am allowed to loathe and hate some of the things my enemies do. Now that I 

     come to think of it, I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate a bad 

     man's actions, but not hate the bad man: or, as they would say, hate the sin but not the 

     sinner.

          For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate 

     what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one 

     man to whom I had been doing this all my life--namely myself. However much I might dislike 

     my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the 

     slightest difficulty about it. In fact the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the 

     man. Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those 

     things. Consequently, Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we 

     feel for cruelty and treachery. We ought to hate them. Not one word of what we have said 

     about them needs to be unsaid. But it does want us to hate them in the same way in which 

     we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man should have done such things, and 

     hoping, if it is anyway possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere, he can be cured and 

     made human again.

          The real test is this. Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then 

     suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not 

     quite so bad as it was made out. Is one's first feeling, "Thank God, even they aren't quite so 

     bad as that," or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first 

     story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies as bad as possible? If it is the second 

     then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us 

     into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that 

     wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as 

     black. Finally, we shall insist on seeing everything--God and our friends and ourselves 

     included--as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of 

     pure hatred.

          Now a step further. Does loving your enemy mean not punishing him? No, for loving 

     myself does not mean that I ought not to subject myself to punishment--even to death. If one 

     had committed a murder, the right Christian thing to do would be to give yourself up to the 

     police and be hanged. It is, therefore, in my opinion, perfectly right for a Christian judge to 

     sentence a man to death [this is C.S. Lewis' opinion; I personally do not believe the death 

     penalty anymore necessary, and cannot justify its continuation] or a Christian soldier to kill 

     an enemy. I always have thought so, ever since I became a Christian, and long before the 

     war, and I still think so now that we are at peace. It is no good quoting "Thou shalt not kill." 

     There are two Greek words: the ordinary word to kill and the word to murder. And when 

     Christ quotes that commandment He uses the murder one in all three accounts, Matthew, 

     Mark, and Luke. And I am told there is the same distinction in Hebrew. All killing is not 

     murder any more than all sexual intercourse is adultery. When soldiers came to St. John the 

     Baptist asking what to do, he never remotely suggested that they ought to leave the army: 

     nor did Christ when He met a Roman sergeant-major--what they called a centurion. The idea 

     of the knight--the Christian in arms for the defence of a good cause--is one of the great 

     Christian ideas. War is a dreadful thing, and I can respect an honest pacifist, though I think 

     he is entirely mistaken. What I cannot understand is this sort of semipacifism you get 

     nowadays which gives people the idea that though you have to fight, you ought to do it with a 

     long face and as if you were ashamed of it. It is that feeling that robs lots of magnificent 

     young Christians in the Services of something they have a right to, something which is the 

     natural accompaniment of courage--a kind of gaity and wholeheartedness.

          I have often thought to myself how it would have been if, when I served in the first world 

     war, I and some young German had killed each other simultaneously and found ourselves 

     together a moment after death. I cannot imagine that either of us would have felt any 

     resentment or even any embarrassment. I think we might have laughed over it.

          I imagine somebody will say, "Well, if one is allowed to condemn the enemy's acts, and 

     punish him, and kill him, what difference is left between Christian morality and the ordinary 

     view?" All the difference in the world. Remember, we Christians think man lives for ever. 

     Therefore, what really matters is those little marks or twists on the central, inside part of the 

     soul which are going to turn it, in the long run, into a heavenly or a hellish creature. We may 

     kill if necessary, but we must not hate and enjoy hating. We may punish if necessary, but we 

     must not enjoy it. In other words, something inside us, the feeling of resentment, the feeling 

     that wants to get one's own back, must be simply killed. I do not mean that anyone can 

     decide this moment that he will never feel it any more. That is not how things happen. I mean 

     that every time it bobs its head up, day after day, year after year, all our lives long, we must 

     hit it on the head. It is hard work, but the attempt is not impossible. Even while we kill and 

     punish we must try to feel about the enemy as we feel about ourselves--to wish that he were 

     not bad. to hope that he may, in this world or another, be cured: in fact, to wish his good. 

     That is what is meant in the Bible by loving him: wishing his good, not feeling fond of him nor 

     saving he is nice when he is not.

          I admit that this means loving people who have nothing lovable about them. But then, has 

     oneself anything lovable about it? You love it simply because it is yourself, God intends us to 

     love all selves in the same way and for the same reason: but He has given us the sum ready 

     worked out on our own case to show us how it works. We have then to go on and apply the 

     rule to all the other selves. Perhaps it makes it easier if we remember that that is how He 

     loves us. Not for any nice, attractive qualities we think we have, but just because we are the 

     things called selves. For really there is nothing else in us to love: creatures like us who 

     actually find hatred such a pleasure that to give it up is like giving up beer or tobacco. . . . 

Unfortunately, it is true today that people hate real forgiveness.  If it benefits them, they want your forgiveness, and maybe they praise certain examples of it--but too much, and you're a "pushover."  Wasn't Christ, in His Humility on the Cross?  Too much, and you're not upholding "justice."  Was it just that Christ the Perfect died Sinless on a Cross for the sinful ones, the very ones who put Him there on the Cross (all of us, in our sins)?  No, and we are all sinners, unable to judge.  Only He can, and He knows how to best.  I remember my closest brother and friend, after the death of Osama bin Laden, posting on his Facebook page a prayer for his soul, as hard as it was to do.  People hate forgiveness, the very same sort of forgiveness that Christ showed to those who crucified Him, to all of us--and they hated his loving prayer, choosing to usurp God's Throne and judge.  It is hard not to judge when we see such things, and I am not trying to say we should look at Osama and not see sin--we should, of course, see the atrocity of his actions.  But we cannot judge the man even for this, for we truly have made ourselves worthy of the same condemnation in our sinfulness, our hatred and judgment (indeed, in the very one with which we would judge him), our pride against God, and love of all else only after ourselves.  Only through His ineffible mercy are we not destroyed.  Those on death row can't judge one another worse than themselves--they can only beg the Merciful Judge for His mercy.

In Christ,

Teopile/Theophilos Porter