ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, October 13, 1996 TAG: 9610120013
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: the back pew
SOURCE: CODY LOWE
"I'm sorry."
It's one of the first phrases we teach our children to say.
They are words we will need all our lives, simply because we humans are bound occasionally to do something - intentionally or otherwise - that hurts or offends someone else.
Not only is it the polite thing to do, but we have a moral obligation to seek forgiveness when we've wronged someone - and an obligation to offer forgiveness when it is sought of us.
A couple of weeks ago, the country got a "Skin Bracer" lesson - "Thanks, I needed that" - on the subject of forgiveness. It came from a Florida man who became a friend - perhaps the only friend - of a man who once tried to kill him.
Chris Carrier was only 10 in 1974 when David McAllister tried to murder him after Carrier's father fired McAllister from a job.
In revenge, McAllister carried the boy into the Everglades, stabbing him with an ice pick, burning him with cigarettes, and shooting him in the head. Carrier was left for dead, but after lying unconscious for six days he was rescued and survived.
Carrier was blinded in his left eye, but otherwise said he bore no scars from the ordeal. He even said it was probably harder on his parents than him because it happened so fast and he was out of it during the week they fretted over his whereabouts.
McAllister, contacted last month by the original detective who covered the case, confessed to the crime from a nursing home bed where he lay, blind, bedridden, apparently friendless.
Carrier, now married and the father of two, went to visit the man soon after the detective found him. McAllister "said he was sorry, and I told him I forgave him and that from now on there would be nothing like anger or revenge between us, nothing except a new friendship."
For three weeks prior to McAllister's death, Carrier visited frequently, bringing food, books to read and prayers.
Carrier believes McAllister died knowing that he had been forgiven, perhaps for the first time in two decades at peace with himself and the man he tried to kill.
Fortunately, not all our experiences of seeking and granting forgiveness are so dramatic or traumatic.
Sometimes they are on a larger scale than others. When the Southern Baptist Convention symbolically asked for forgiveness for the sin of racism in its midst, that got attention. Though some didn't accept it or believe it, the message appeared to be sincere.
Several Christian denominations have sought forgiveness for homophobic actions and attitudes that pervaded their congregations and structure.
The question of what constitutes a proper atonement for actions that require forgiveness may still be up in the air, but the acts of confession and repentance are cathartic in themselves.
On a smaller, but perhaps more meaningful and effective scale, forgiveness is a gentle, almost automatic, token between friends. The people we love, after all, are the easiest to hurt merely by virtue of their proximity.
We take for granted a kindness. We lash out with an unmerited rebuke when we are tired or ill. We're impatient. We snap at a child who isn't acting "like an adult."
Fortunately, love carries with it the capacity to forgive as quickly as we are hurt.
When I lose my temper with one of my daughters, they invariably forgive me when I realize my mistake and ask them to grant me pardon.
When I forget to thank my wife for all the work she does around our home after she comes home from a full day's teaching and before she begins her evening preparation for the next school day, she doubly appreciates it when I apologize for that.
If a friend hurts my feelings in the heat of a discussion on politics or religion or the true nature of friendship, I should be ready to forgive that hurt when I'm asked.
We sometimes tend to put conditions on our forgiveness. We might only want to grant it when the apology is sincere enough, or quick enough, or profuse enough, or accompanied by enough punishment to negate the offense.
Chris Carrier's message to us was that the granting of forgiveness doesn't necessarily depend on any action by the offender.
It seemed that Carrier had forgiven McAllister years before his final confrontation - and friendship - with him. Carrier had gone on with his life, engaged in a Christian youth ministry, apparently come to terms with that childhood trauma and gone past it.
Carrier went into his attacker's room with a shield of forgiveness about him, and a gift of forgiveness in his outstretched hands.
As one participant in a Sunday school class I attended last Sunday pointed out, McAllister truly would have "won" if Carrier - understandably - had been incapacitated by fear or hatred or a loss of faith.
Instead, Carrier triumphed over it and led another to redemption with a big message expressed in another little sentence we also teach our children - "I forgive you."
LENGTH: Medium: 97 linesby CNB