A short while ago, before we had heard of Jean Vanier, Peter Ball and church leaders who deliberately ignored and belittled abuse survivors, it was possible to believe in a simple version of the Church’s teaching about repentance and forgiveness.  The Church taught us all that if we truly repent, our sins are then washed away.  Some of us were also brought up on the hymn which contains the words: ‘the vilest offender who truly believes, that moment from Jesus a pardon receives.’  Suddenly we have now discovered that some good upright Christians who presumably have sought the same forgiveness as we have, have been continuously sinning with abusive crimes for decades.  The thought that such crimes are deemed always forgivable, when the evidence now points to a complete lack of remorse on the part of some perpetrators, is a repugnant one.  We feel the need of a new theology of forgiveness which will somehow face up to the reality that some Christians go on being ‘vile offenders’ even after they have uttered the correct words of confession.  The old promises that link the right words with receiving forgiveness from God does not seem to work anymore.  Whatever is true in this area needs to be re-expressed with a fresh nuance or qualification that it does not have at present. 

What the Church teaches about confession, repentance and forgiveness constantly needs to be revisited and restated.  The insights we need, will not just emerge from the re-examination of the theological traditions in these areas.  The Church also needs to be informed by experts in human psychology.   We can learn much from professionals who care deeply about the flourishing of human beings.  It was quite clear from the IICSA hearings on the Diocese of Chichester that what I shall refer to as ‘vilest offender theology’ was alive and well in certain Anglo-Catholic and Conservative Evangelical circles in that diocese.  It might almost be claimed to be one of the key elements to explain the way that this diocese, to its shame, had remained a hotbed of abusive activity for so long.   In different ways we listened to the argument that ‘the sin was confessed, forgiveness was received, let us now move on’.

Any theology that remains static and not subject to constant scrutiny is likely to become stale and not fit for purpose.  ‘Vilest offender theology’ in whatever churchmanship guise it is presented, has long passed its sell by date.  It is not that it is completely false.  More dangerously, it is at best half correct but those who sing the words do not appear to know or care which half is true.  Any future expressions of the Christian doctrine of forgiveness need to escape the bondage of such crude theology.  Teaching about such a vital topic as self-examination and forgiveness, needs to be able to resonate with modern understandings of human nature alongside the doctrine of God within the biblical and Christian tradition.

In this piece I cannot write a new Christian doctrine of forgiveness, but I can indicate a few pointers that I consider should be included.  One observation about human nature and sin that I have made in my contribution to the Letters to a Broken Church volume of essays, was to state that sin is nearly always about power abuse.  The reason for sinning, whether through theft, lying, sexual abuse or violence, is to obtain an apparent advantage or power over others.  Power is a commodity that all of us need to some extent so that we can feel alive.  A child needs acknowledgement from parents in order to flourish and establish a personal identity.  The psychological writers use the expression ‘mirroring’ to describe this process.  When toddlers pass key milestones in growing-up, they need the family audience to cheer them on and express admiration.  The small child sees the self in the mirror of parental approval and knows that he/she exists.  Any child who lacks that kind of affirmation from parental figures will sometimes learn, in later life, techniques of dominance to extract a substitute respect or feeding from weaker figures.  Such behaviour does not become less culpable because we have some insight into its origins, but at least it becomes more understandable. So, in summary, there is strong reason to suggest that a lot of evil perpetrated by individuals is an attempt to wrest back from the world the approval and significance that was denied to them as an infant or small child. 

The need to claim back a sense of power in whatever way possible, will often involve exploiting others without any thought of what they, the victims, may suffer as a result.  This deprivation model does not of course cover our attempt to understand more than a part of the evil we see in the world.  There was nothing deprived about the lives of Peter Ball or Jean Vanier.  Deprivation also does not account for the rapacious behaviour by many heads of governments around the world and the huge bank accounts off-shore that are amassed by Russian oligarchs.  Evil and greed is alive and well in places of wealth and privilege.

Every example of an evil action somewhere involves an individual (or an institution) shutting down the altruistic instinct that most of us try to cultivate as part of our Christian ethic.  Is it possible to be altruistic simultaneously with treating an individual badly or exploitatively?  How do we understand the good being enacted in the 150 L’Arche communities at the same time as the abusive behaviour towards at least six women seeking spiritual accompaniment from Vanier? I have no answer to this question, but I would always want to question carefully a situation where an individual is being honoured and praised for their work while there is little in the way of outside scrutiny.  The greatest evil in the Ball/Vanier scenario is that neither men appeared to have had any insight into the fact that what they were doing to their victims was also destructive to large numbers who looked up to them for guidance and leadership.  Some Roman emperors are said to have had in their processions a slave alongside them who carried a sign with the words ‘you too are human’.  This did not stop many of these emperors aspiring to divine status, requiring every citizen to give an incense offering as a sign of loyalty.  Self-inflation, Roman emperor style, seems to be common among the powerful.  It results in many people today dominating and controlling those around them, creating something truly evil at times.  There are theories in the literature on narcissism which explain how inflated behaviour in adults can begin early in life.  These may be caused by over-indulgent behaviour from a parent.  There is no time to explore that further here.

Studies of human nature today may give us far more sophisticated insights as to why otherwise good people fail and sometimes fail badly.  When theology on its own is unable to account for an appalling dissonance between belief and behaviour, we need to be aware of insights from other disciplines wherever they are found.  There will be no certainty in the answers we uncover in our search, but looking for some kind of Christian infallible truth in this area is a futile task.  When I think about my own failings this Lent, I like to believe that what I acknowledge somehow approximates to reality.  I would like to believe that the kinds of severe evil that harm others would be recognisable to me or those that know me.  My self-examination is never going to be perfect, but the Church should always be providing a context where it is impossible for true evil not to be visible and obvious.  In this post-Vanier/Ball era, we need new standards of self-examination and training in this for clergy and people.  This will allow them to live together in an environment that is wholesome, helping to keep out the evil of power abuse in favour of a spirit that is truly consonant with the love to which Jesus seems to be pointing us.