Recently, a colleague wrote concerning the betrayal of a friend: “The apology that never comes [as a result of a betrayal] really hurts.” To add to the thinking here, my antidote to that kind of dark circumstance is to respond in a personal way: by forgiving and by showing understanding and mercy.
To take that action is perhaps easier said than done when the hurt seems so spiritually and emotionally devastating. Thus another and related inner hurt is the hurt that comes from having to give up hope that things in a betrayed relationship can ever be substantially the same as they were before the perpetration of the betrayal. Giving up that hope of having back some of what had been good in the relationship is sometimes very hard to do. Occasionally, immense personal suffering and mental anguish ensue. Thus more suffering: “Sic transit gloria mundi.”
When we do, in fact, give up the hope of anything purposeful in the betrayed relationship, then there still can be more suffering, this from having now to grieve the loss of the hope. When the betrayal comes home to the betrayed, the harder edges of reality will sometimes take hold. Emotions are taut, understandably. Forgiveness of the betrayer just seems so damnably impossible at that point, just another kind of terrible internal suffering that will only produce more agony.
In these very disquieting circumstances just described, it is then that I try to take a smidgen of inspiration from – among other social ethicists – Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971).
Niebuhr said about forgiveness: “No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our own standpoint; therefore we must be saved by the final form of love – forgiveness.”
To go a little deeper into the quote’s fuller context, Niebuhr said: “Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we must saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we must be saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our own standpoint; therefore, we must be saved by the final form of love, forgiveness.”
Jim Boushay
Oak Park