Listen to this

About Forgiveness

Mark Smith

Since writing last month’s column I have found myself reflecting a bit further on how some of my personal beliefs impact on the way I consider Child and Youth Care practice. Last month I used the biblical parable of the Good Samaritan to present a vision of care based around reaching out to the other, rather than meeting minimal regulatory requirements. This month I want to draw a bit more on my limited stock of biblical stories to share a few reflections.

One of the things that keeps me clinging, sometimes by my fingertips, to the Catholic faith is its emphasis on forgiveness and healing. Sometimes this essential Christian message can be misunderstood of course. When I was in North Carolina this Spring I was amused by a banner outside one of the churches there. It announced that all of our sins would be washed as white as snow. Immediately underneath was a sign stating that skateboarders would be prosecuted. I don’t think they quite got the message.

Of course it’s sometimes easier and safer not to get biblical messages. Despite the hijacking of so much organised religion, in The States at least, by the neo-cons for their own purposes, biblical messages are in fact radical. It suits establishment forces want to try to emasculate them. For they call us to challenge conventional wisdom “to challenge the establishment. Specifically they challenge us to reappraise how we deal with wrongdoing.

Here is one of my favourite biblical stories. Again, I’ve no idea of chapter and verse. It’s just one of those stories that strikes a chord and has become ingrained.

Jesus came across a crowd surrounding a cowering woman. Asking what was going on he was told that the woman had been caught in the act of adultery and that, according to Jewish law, the mob were about to stone her to death. They awaited Jesus” approval for their actions. It didn’t come. “Let the one amongst you who is without sin cast the first stone" was his response. And slowly the crowd disappeared. He refused to judge the woman, leaving her with the exhortation “Go and sin no more."

So what might be the relevance of this story to Child and Youth Care? I think there are several points of contact. The first is perhaps our tendency to equate legalism with justice. Sometimes doing things right, according to legal or procedural definition might not be the same as doing the right thing.

Another reflection is around our tendency to judge (especially perhaps when questions of sexual impropriety are in question). I become concerned when I come across practitioners for whom things are so simple, those who think there is some universal and objective standard of best practice and who want to judge kids and their colleagues against it. Too often they are quick to judge but slow to understand. I suppose judging is easier. It allows us to separate self from other and hence avoids us from having to confront the punchline in this biblical story, “Let the one amongst you who is without sin ..." This demands that we embark on that journey inwards to examine our own thoughts, feelings motives and actions. And if we were to do this with any degree of honesty, then guess what? Maybe we’re not too far removed from those we can be so quick to judge.

Another possible reflection is that this is a hopeful message ... I do not judge you. Go and sin no more. It’s about forgiveness in the moment, not anything that’s grudged, conditional or that has to be earned. How often in our dealings with kids do we look for our pound of flesh and call it a consequence? Might it not be better to say “OK so you screwed up. Go and sin no more." Would that not be a more liberating response than some of our normative institutional ones? It might even free kids up from the baggage of past failures and resentment at past responses and allow them to contemplate a different future.

Am I being hopelessly naive? Would the walls fall down if we failed to exact our due consequences from kids (and indeed from staff). Not necessarily. But like all of these things its about that human and relational bit. Go and sin no more will only work if kids (and staff) have some respect and warmth for whoever’s saying it. And that respect comes through reciprocity, through give and take. I always felt that some of the most powerful moments in practice were when I was able to say sorry to a kid; to acknowledge that I had got things wrong. Nowadays the opportunity for that kind of personal healing can be subverted by the proliferation of institutional props. Instead of saying sorry, its more likely that staff will respond to situation by saying, “OK if you’re not happy here’s a complaints form". And the whole business will end in a dither of indecision, where no-one is happy and nothing is resolved.

It seems like the scribes and the pharisees, those who in biblical times wanted to get hung up on legal and procedural niceties, have taken over child care. They present it as a technical and instrumental task. It is of course essentially a moral and political one. We need to assert these moral and political dimensions. That calls on us to question received wisdom and to challenge the legal and procedural groupthink. Gradually that crowd might just disperse.