‘Not seven times, but seventy-seven times’.
Everyone has to confront the issue of forgiveness sometime. Forgiveness is a lovely idea until we have someone to forgive! In the end it’s a decision. We know the theory, but there comes a moment. In 1943 Eric Lomax, a British army officer, suffered severe mistreatment in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Thailand. Fifty years later he decided to return to the place of his torture to meet and be reconciled with his brutal torturer Nagase Takashi. When asked to explain his magnanimous gesture he replied, ‘sometime the hating must stop’. A contrasting reaction comes from a Jewish inmate who survived Auschwitz concentration camp. When reflecting on his ordeal with a former colleague many years later he proclaimed defiantly that he would never forgive the Commandant of the camp. ‘In that case’, replied his friend, ‘he still has you in prison’.