The Power of Forgiveness

The image of Silda Wall Spitzer is something I can’t forget -- a once mighty corporate attorney with a Harvard law degree wilting like a dying flower next to the man she once adored.

When news broke of now former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer’s habitual trysts with “posh” prostitutes, I went into search mode trying to find something that would explain it. An estranged marriage, a bitter wife, anything that might tell why a man who had everything, and promise for even more, would wreak such pain and devastation on his family and himself.

What I discovered made his actions even more senseless. All reports told of a happy marriage and family. All testimonials about his wife describe a woman who is extremely smart, kind, witty and fun to be around.

And pictures to support this portrait are plentiful – a beautiful wife beaming with pride at his side or looking admiringly at him. Smiles, smiles everywhere – such a contrast to the grim photos of her looking deflated and disheveled at his side while he confirmed for the world the truth about his numerous infidelities.

In a 2005 New York Times article, Spitzer talked about his wife’s “deeply held sense of ethics,” and said he relies on her very much as someone to talk to “in order to resolve a tough issue.” Too bad he didn’t talk to her about whatever “tough issues” were driving him to pay other women a lot of money for sex.

As I look at pictures of this devastated woman, I wonder if forgiveness will be possible for her. Is it possible to forgive such selfish and reckless behavior? A small part of me, I’m sorry to admit, hopes it is not.

I stumbled recently across an interesting effort called “The Forgiveness Project.” It gathers stories about forgiveness from people throughout the world – people who have endured horrific pain and injustice.

The organizer of the project has concluded that the idea of forgiveness causes dramatically different reactions in people.

Some, perhaps many, people see forgiveness as a weakness, a cop out, a way to let their enemies off the hook. To people in this camp, forgiving an awful deed shelters perpetrators from the justice they are due.

This project has created an exhibition about forgiveness. Its provocative title, “The F Word” is intended to speak to those who think forgiveness is a dirty word.

But others see forgiveness in the opposite light -- as the ultimate form of power. Mariane Pearl falls into this category. Remember her husband Daniel Pearl? He was the Wall Street Journal reporter who was kidnapped and subsequently beheaded by terrorists in Pakistan a few years ago. A video of his brutal murder was posted on the Internet for everyone to see.

Mariane Pearl said of her husband’s killers, “The only way to oppose them is by demonstrating the strength that they think they have taken from you.”

Archbishop Desmond Tutu is another believer in the liberating power of forgiveness. “Forgiveness does not mean condoning what has been done,” he told The Forgiveness Project. “It means taking what has happened seriously and not minimizing it; drawing out the sting in the memory that threatens to poison our entire existence.”

I like these ideas. Forgiving does not mean surrendering or crawling into a pit with the weak and timid.

Forgiveness is an expression of power – that’s why it’s so difficult to do. Remaining bitter and angry and oppressed is easy, natural. But to forgive? That requires strength. You must be strong to forgive.

This is the message of Christ at Easter – our most powerful role model of forgiveness. It’s a message of hope for Silda Wall Spitzer and everyone facing wrongs large and small that challenge us, in due time, to forgive and live.