“Can the mouse forgive the cat for eating him?” Howard Thurman quips enigmatically at the end of Jesus and the Disinherited. If it were merely a rhetorical question, the assumed reply would be “of course not.” However, Thurman is in the middle of addressing the practice of “love” and has just made the surprising equalizing claim, “The ethical demand upon the more privileged and the underprivileged is the same” (106). Appealing to the 70x7 teaching of Jesus (Mt. 18:22), he identifies “forgiveness” as integral to his love ethic. Yet Thurman’s concluding comments are as elliptical and confounding as they are generative. Is the mouse forgiving the cat a riddling impossible possibility? How does Thurman understand forgiveness as a spiritual discipline? What contribution does his perspective make to this core theme of religious psychology? How can his moral vision help us navigate the dual pitfalls of what he refers to as slavery to resentment, on the one hand, and oppressive applications of “forgiveness” and “grace,” on the other? In both cases, “freedom” is the key link for an ethical, liberative, and honest practice of forgiveness. But Thurman also adds a theological twist that helps us clarify the meaning of the term—he points to the divine and eschatological reality of grace that effectuates forgiveness beyond any human capacity, obligation, or sentiment.
As pervasively as the full gamut of scholars, therapists, preachers, and teachers appeal to the requirements and benefits of “forgiveness,” what it concretely entails remains contested and queried. Few theological concepts have so thoroughly suffused secular therapeutic culture and popular psychology, with the aim and outcome of empowering victims. And few theological concepts have been deployed so abusively in religious settings to disempower subordinate parties and trap them in unjust dynamics and relationships. The Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy observed that “the cloudier and more confused the conception conveyed by a word, with the more aplomb and self-assurance do people use that word, pretending that what is understood by it is so simple and clear that it is not worthwhile to even discuss what it actually means” (356). Forgiveness is one such word. It is used to cover a wide range relational and psychological phenomena that are sometimes antithetical to one another, such as: canceling debts or not requiring compensation, letting go or no longer being angry, not thinking about or being affected a past harm, loving the wrongdoer, reconciling and reuniting, not being vindictive, not begrudging or resenting a person, not holding anything over anyone, not mentioning it again, covering over what happened, feelings of compassion and goodwill, the action of excusing or pardoning, setting healthy boundaries, releasing oneself from the power of the past or the perpetrator, and so on. Just as often, forgiveness is sharply distinguished from some of these same actions and sentiments. Even within the scriptures that supply Thurman’s moral vision, there are inconsistencies and intricacies difficult to tease out. How do we know what we are advising, and where is the moral exigency in disambiguating the term?
In a laconic rendering of the problem, Thurman’s wisdom circumvents some of the usual questions facing a love ethic that includes forgiveness. Instead of getting into the weeds of who and how and when and how often and in what order, he redirects our attention to two points that have little to do with the interpersonal process. Aiming to counter the “stark bitterness fed by the steady oozing of the will to resentment,” Thurman writes,
It does seem that Jesus dealt with every act of forgiveness as one who was convinced that there is in every act of injury an element that is irresponsible and irrational… In Jesus’ insistence that we should forgive seventy times seven, there seems to be the assumption that forgiveness is mandatory for three reasons. First, God forgives us again and again for what we do intentionally and unintentionally. There is present an element that is contingent upon our attitude. Forgiveness beyond this is interpreted as the work of divine grace. Second, no evil deed represents the full intent of the doer. Third, the evildoer does not go unpunished… “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord”… This is the ultimate ground in which finally a profound, unrelieved injury is absorbed. When all other means have been exhausted, each in his own tongue whispers, “There is forgiveness with God.”
Offering a close reading of this ending to Jesus and the Disinherited and setting it in conversation with Thurman’s comments in Disciplines of the Spirit, this paper contributes to current debates over the question of whether everyone “ought” to forgive and when and for whose sake and whether not forgiving is another “freedom” belonging to the dispossessed. Throughout his work, Thurman explores the question, “What is the word of the religion of Jesus to those who stand with their backs against the wall?” His teachings on forgiveness are moored to this question. Thurman appears to center his interpretation on freedom from hatred and respect for the universal image of God—that is, on practicable moral and spiritual disciplines. It is easy to miss that he also introduces a critical distinction here between the ethical and the theological, which is lacking in much religious discourse about forgiveness. Where the human may adopt a forgiving attitude or disposition, this, he concedes, will only take us so far. In the end, unilateral forgiveness is a fait accompli of divine grace alone. This is an important insight given Thurman’s broader objectives as a teacher, for it further liberates the dispossessed from the need to proffer the impossible—when the cat cannot forgive the cat for eating it. In this particular lesson, as throughout his teachings, Thurman creatively reimagines a peaceful way forward for those suffering oppression, injustice and abuse.
“Can the mouse forgive the cat for eating him?” Howard Thurman quips after making the oddly equalizing claim that “the ethical demand upon the more privileged and the underprivileged is the same.” He identifies “forgiveness” as integral to love, yet his concluding comments are as elliptical as they are generative. How does Thurman describe forgiveness as a “spiritual discipline”? What contribution does his perspective make to this core theme of religious psychology? How can his moral vision help us navigate the dual pitfalls of what he refers to as psychological slavery to resentment, on the one hand, and oppressive religious applications of “forgiveness,” on the other? His understanding of “freedom” is key to an ethical practice of forgiveness. But Thurman adds a theological twist that helps us clarify the meaning of the term—he points away from the dispossessed to an eschatological reality that transcends any human obligation or capacity.