There's a range of things that the world needs and wants. It includes kindness, compassion, peace, justice, patience and so much more. Sometimes I think that what is most needed is forgiveness. Forgive us our sins, for we forgive everyone who does us wrong (Luke 11:4). However, it is worth thinking what forgiveness really is.
With his former role as Chair of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Desmond Tutu is perhaps better qualified than most to comment - "Forgiveness doesn't mean pretending things aren't as they really are. Forgiveness is a recognition that there is a ghastliness that has happened. Forgiveness doesn't mean trying to paper over the cracks. Forgiveness means that both the wronged and the culprits of those wrongs acknowledge that something happened. There is necessarily a measure of confrontation. People sometimes think that you shouldn't be abrasive. But sometimes you have to be to make people acknowledge that they have done something wrong" - "God Is Not a Christian" (Rider, 2011), p. 38.
Forgiveness isn't about making things nice. But it is about getting on with things as they are.
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