Photo: Ava-Verino/flickr
Forgiveness and sustainability
A look at the meaning of forgiveness
In a recent discussion of sustainability a Friend suggested that she needed forgiveness and not sustainability in her life – which provoked the following thoughts. This seemed odd!
How on earth can forgiveness and sustainability be related – for they seem to live in differing universes of discourse? This propelled the writer to think about a question: what is the meaning of forgiveness? Or what does forgiveness involve?
The Russian philosopher Nicolas Berdyaev wrote: ‘True spiritual regeneration imperatively demands the restoration of the universe to men and women and of men and women to the universe and to God.’ Writing in a virtually non-scientific age, Alexander Pope wrote:
‘All thing are parts of one stupendous whole
Whose body nature is and God the soul.’
Science in the twenty-first century has confirmed part of this. We are part of one stupendous whole, parts of a material, biological and spiritual whole.
Forgiveness is not simply being let off the consequences of naughty behaviour or the making of an apology. Forgiveness involves the restoration of relationships and, in this context, the restoration of our cosmic relationships. As organisms we take from the universe those things that we need in order to live. We imbibe energy and matter for all of our purposes.
Non-human organisms do this and ultimately die and decay and there is no waste. But humans imbibe energy and matter in an utterly reckless way and the world is drowning in a sea of waste. There is a sense in which we need the forgiveness of the universe as well as the forgiveness of God.
The ways in which energy and matter are extracted from the universe and moved around the world belong to the domain of work in which all honourable people are involved and this is the point at which all considerations of behaviour leading to forgiveness and sustainability begin.
It is easy to despair. The world appears to be galloping at top speed down the road to ruin and all that we can do is to follow what insights we have and leave the rest in the hands of God.
We need to be aware, and informed, and not judgemental towards those whose ways appear to differ from our own. Our individual needs differ. Circumstances change. There are so many variables in our individual lives that judgement is ridiculous.
Finally, let us not be killjoys.
