Forgiveness or Revenge?

Greetings to you at Rosh Hashanah. For Jews this is the “head of the year,” the Festival of Trumpets, a new year for people and legal contracts, and it leads to a time of seeking forgiveness.

During the Days of Awe – the time between Rosh Hashanah, September 29, and Yom Kippur, October 7 this year -- a Jew “tries to amend his or her behavior and seek forgiveness for wrongs done against God and against other human beings. The evening and day of Yom Kippur are set aside for public and private petitions and confessions of guilt.” Yom Kippur is the most holy time for Jews.

Forgiving is very nearly a holy act. Those raised in the Christian trahttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifdition are taught to forgive. Jesus had instructed his disciple Peter that we are to forgive many times, seventy seven times (or “seventy times seven” times). (See Matthew 18:22) In fact, the story tells us that we can never stop forgiving others who sin against us. Nor should we shy away from seeking others' forgiveness. We pray that God will “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive others...”

On August 26, during the last days of Ramadan this year, the New York Times published an article entitled, “As Qaddafi Forces Retreat, a Newly Freed Imam Encourages Forgiveness.”3 David D. Kirkpatrick wrote about Sheik Abdul Ghani Aboughreis, an Imam who had called his congregation to participate in the Libyan uprising. He was soon imprisoned by the loyalists to Gaddafi. Now that he's been released, he's calling for Libyans “to forgive each other, to make sure to leave it to the law and not take revenge on each other.”

To repeat: This Imam is telling his fellow citizens to forgive and not seek revenge.

Will his call be heard? We can hope that it will, and we can look around us and see what our neighbors in this country might do if called upon to “forgive” those who attack/attacked us. In fact, we saw some of those neighbors on September 11, the 10th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade center and the Pentagon, come together in volunteer efforts to assist fellow citizens who need some help. But we saw or heard of others decrying that behavior, demanding more militaristic demonstrations and actions. Those demands hardly look to me like forgiving behavior. They look (or sound) to me more like desire for the revenge the Imam urged his followers to eschew.

Again: What are we children of Abraham taught? In chapter 32 of Deuteronomy, (“The Song of Moses”) at verse 35 God says, “Vengeance is mine, and recompense...” And Paul repeats this message in Romans 12:19.; and in Romans 12:20, Paul restates Proverbs 25:21: “If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink.” In chapter 42, verse 43, of the Holy Qur'an it is written, “To endure with fortitude and to forgive is a duty incumbent on all.”

So let's leave revenge to God. Let's learn from those teachings, and focus on forgiveness.