"To forgive is to blame," says Miroslav Volf in his treatise on Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace. The ongoing battle between grace and justice can become an endless cycle of ever increasing accounts of victimization and justification. "To forgive is to blame, not to punish," says Volf. "In forgiving, I absorb the injury."
Tolstoy says, "by forgiving a person one swallows evil up into oneself and thereby prevents it from going further."
I ask the question, can this be done? Maybe personally? What about entire nations and cultures? Is our quest for revenge out of our woundedness creating an endless cycle that keeps evil front and center?
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