the little mouse Autumn, 2002
The word redemption is so value laden that I want to be careful
in writing about it. In the mythology of western religions it is
bound-up with grace and the act of a deity giving forgiveness to
humankind
collectively (or certain privileged groups) or in some instances to
individual
persons who make some act of contrition, often the sacrifice of an
animal
in the old testament.
I can think of three narratives (stories) about redemption;
1) redemption by a God,
2) redemption within/by one's community, and
3) with oneSelf.
We can suppose that each of those three aspects are tended to by a different type of professional or profession. I find also some confusion here and I want to suggest that not one of the above narratives are replacements for the other two although there can be some overlapping.
The first is the traditional authority of the holy man, be it a priest, rabbi or shaman telling the rest of us what God wants from us. The second jurisdiction, the community or social network, is that of the criminal justice system, and the third, while being in the final analysis very personal, is the job of we who perform talking therapy.
I am not a linguist, but I recall that redemption has to do with
paying
a price or purchasing forgiveness and a cost. The price/cost can
range from paying money to performing some kind of work. I think
that when the price is behavior or public service the cost works
better than when it takes the form of fines, penalties, and
dispensations.
Although I do not endorse the powerlessness of the Twelve Step
approaches, I like and frequently use the steps that deal with
forgiveness
and making amends. Those are
Step 4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Step 5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
Step 8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
Step 9. direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
I think most of us need some help in following and carrying out those four steps. We need a teacher, a guide, an elder, sponsor or someone to steer us through the process in a good way so that the goal of redemption with our community is reached.
Another way to look at this is that we need someone to hold us accountable. Few people are able and willing to hold themselves accountable. If we all did, there would be far less harm done. But reality is that we cop out, slip up, and jump at opportunities without considering the consequences. Most of us at some time have tried to get away with something.
In teaching I present the process in three steps.
1. Experiencing and expressing regret for harm that I have done.
2. Acknowledging the harm to those I have harmed (except when that will cause harm further). This requires at least one human witness.
3. Making amends.
I think that making amends is the step that is closest to the meaning of redemption and I think that it is most effective when the spiritual, social, and personal realms are all addressed; maybe even combined. I bet we have all have known a person who, having paid their "debt to society," is unable to forgive her or him Self. Maybe we can refer to that as an overactive conscience?
The opposite extreme is the person of under-active conscience who forgives Self too easily and does harm repeatedly. I accept that making amends is intending and doing behavior aimed at righting whatever harm a person has done.
The second area of redemption is in the experience of one's community and means that the members of the community forgive and accept the doer of harm back into the circle. Maybe you will agree that the performance of some doing (besides doing time) is necessary to become redeemed back into one's community. In our culture we have it backwards; the community does harm (punishment) to the offender. The punishment often takes the form of jail, prison, fines, probation, parole, and on occasion, public service. I suggest that we have it backwards and the healing outcome is about the same as if we chopped off a hand. Two harms do not undo each other. They create greater harm!
Another form of harm that I believe is institution- alized in our cultures is shaming. Have you seen movies or old pictures of a pilgrim or puritan from the pre colonial days of America locked in the stocks? Stocks used as a social penalty, to shame and humiliate a person who had broken a rule.
I find shame and humiliation confusing. They are kindred feelings that can arise from internal and external sources. In the first case, I may make a mistake and feel shame and humiliation without anybody ever knowing what I have done although I probably will not suffer too much from my self-imposed shame and humiliation.
A more intense version happens when somebody else treats me with shame and humiliation. This is much stronger and I may hide out to avoid the feelings from my community. I presume that the intention of the community is to teach me not to do whatever I am being shamed and humiliated for having done. Most parents use them to shape the behavior of their children. But shame and humiliation have consequences.
Consider the little boy on the playground during recess who gets hurt and begins to cry. Chances are the other boys will tease (shame and humiliate) him for crying and he will learn that boys do not express pain. Later on when he is an adult he may withhold expression of discomfort and pain out of fear of humiliation at the cost of physical and emotional damage to himself and maybe to relationships.
We use same and humiliation in our criminal justice practices. The handcuffs, orange jumpsuits, isolation, and confinement all contribute to the experiences of shame and humiliation. And as I will note below, people tend not to think of consequences before they do wrong so these practices have little if any deterrent effects.
In fact, they do just the opposite of what we want. Instead of helping to solve the problem, they create feelings of resentment and of being cast out. I suggest that those feelings are already too much present in persons who are habitual harm doers. Shame and humiliation damage the personal sense of self-worth. A person with little self-worth is not likely to function as well in the community making the practice of punishing wrongdoers a viscous cycle. What is really needed is the opposite; compassion and acceptance back into good standing.
I accept that we live in a complicated society with millions of people. It is not reasonable to expect that some one who has done harm will come before a council of elders and be given some means by which the wrong can be forgiven and corrected. However, I insist that we can, need to, and mostly do not perform some rite or process aimed at
1. Educating the doer of harm to do no harm
2. Repairing the relationships with those who have suffered the harm
3. Providing means by which the doer of harm can make it right with those who have been harmed
Rather than ranting about the ineffectiveness of our criminal justice system and its effects of increasing harm rather than mending harm, let me say that I understand the task of making amends/redemption to be that of restoring (re-story-ing) harmony. The courts and prisons perform the eye-for-an-eye narrative of the blood feud which is revenge and vengeance rationalized by supporters as deterrence. I have read some research that reported that the perpetrators of wrongdoing do not consider adverse consequences when thinking about or planning criminal behavior. Some criminal acts are acts of impulse and by definition are not thought-out.
We are stuck with the reality that people sometimes do harm and that somehow we all must get on with life, spiritual, social, and personal. I accept that some doers of harm cannot be helped, that is, educated to not do harm. And we all want to be safe from doers of harm. That means as best as I can figure, keeping the unteachable doers of harm off the streets.
I have learned from tribal peoples, Native Americans, that the task of restoring (re-story-ing) social harmony after wrong has been done is a function/task of the community. Just as my sacrifice must be acceptable in the eyes of God, so must my amends be acceptable to my people/community.
Indians have various ceremonies to restore harmony and my observation is that they often include the spiritual, social, and personal aspects of forgiveness and redemption. A fine example of that process is the Navajo Sing in which a specially trained holy man is engaged to perform the ceremony, often a two or three night ceremony during which the rites are sung from memory by the singer.
A Sing is presented by the family of the person needing the restoration of harmony. The family sponsors the ceremony with food, accommodations for the larger community and by paying the singer so that the doer of harm is, in effect, supported by his or her family. I think that this form of advocacy is important in the process of restoring harmony and it says to the community; "We are taking responsibility for our relative who has done harm." I note that the Navajo Sings are performed for additional purposes such as healing diseases.
The Sing can be thought of as a reenactment of the rite-of-passage in which a child is initiated into the community of adults with all the privileges and duties thereof. In this case, the privileges and duties are being restored after the harm that disrupted them.
Bottom line for me is the understanding that we, as family and community, have the duty to be part of the process of restoring harmony when one of our members has done harm. We cannot be passive and uninvolved because the healing is for us too. It is necessary that we take action and responsibility for our people who need assistance with conscience. It makes good sense that we take an interest in restoring our harmony.
I will close with a story about a couple who were seeing a marriage counselor. He had had an affair, had confessed, and now he and his wife were in counseling to recover their relationship and continue their marriage. She was angry and hurt. He was contrite and becoming frustrated by her seeming unwillingness to let it go and get on with things. The translation is that she wanted some evidence that the wrong was righted and that he was sincere in his expressions of regret. The therapist asked what evidence she could accept that would make it right with her?
She thought for a while and answered that if he would do the dinner dishes for twenty years she would be satisfied and convinced. His response was that the affair had only been a one nighter and that twenty years was too high a price. They negotiated and I believe that they settled on something like twelve years of dish washing.