It is said in Romans 12 that forgiveness and humility in the face of unforgivable violence shall stun and inflict a moment of pause upon the offender, “heaping burning coals on their head”. Such wise scripture was surely on the mind of the Anabaptist Dirk Willems, who now found himself fleeing the law in the cold winter of 1569.

Just moments before he had escaped his prison in Guelders by tying together rags into a rope, and rappelling down onto the now-frozen moat. Willems began a hobbled and slippery sprint across the thin cracking ice, his malnourished body not too heavy for the ordeal. The same could not be said for a pursuing well-fed prison guard, who fell into the ice and quickly began to sink. Struggling and gurgling the icy water, the guard yelled and begged for aid, which came from the quick hand of none other than the outlaw—Willems. A life for a life, the guard expressed his desire to allow Willems to be set free. But his superiors reminded him of his oath to uphold the laws of God and of the Emperor, and he relented to his duty. Rather than the Church and Empire being left with coals upon its head, Willems would soon find coals under his own restrained feet: convicted of heresy, and scheduled for death by fire and stake. A strong wind whipped the flames to his side, ensuring a long and torturous death that burned his legs to ash while leaving his torso in tact. His screaming pleas to God for death were so loud that neighboring villages were disturbed by the sound. Eventually his captors relented at the sight and sound of the suffering, and dispatched him with the sword.

At the heart of Christianity lies the concept of mercy and forgiveness. It is the Lord’s mercy which spares the wretched sinner from his overdue damnation; it is the forgiveness of the Almighty which elevates beasts of nature into eternal sanctity. At the moment of his own torment, the son of God pleads “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do”; and it is an onlooking much-mythologized centurion who feels the coals upon his head, remarking in a moment of introspection that his crucified man was surely righteous. As it was in all preceding religions, man is called to be like his gods, and so the righteous are called above all else to forgive: to forgive his enemy, forgive his transgressors, forgive his murderer—just as the Lord had done so, and far more.

Yet, forgiveness can be a dangerous thing; and much is up for interpretation. Indeed, Willems had learned as much from the works of his Christian executioners. This dance between the laws of this Earth and the call before Christendom to transcend them is a perennial struggle. Religious calls to higher ideals may bear the fruit of enlightenment, but nature is no docile mother, and is certain to bite back. Sometimes that bite which grants immortal martyrdom is the point, and here I am writing about Willems’ immortal foolishness. But for those of us not interested in our own execution, for those of us who are concerned with the laws of man and of Earth and their inheritance across the continuing ages, the call to forgive must be looked at more carefully.

The obvious and essential contradiction of the matter, one which confronts the affairs of the Church directly, is that a universalization of an ethos of unrestrained forgiveness makes civilization impossible. Criminals will always be set free, debts will always be absolved; goodness shall find no incentive over evil. The crevices of the Earth itself could split open, and the outpouring of demons would only find forgiveness. Of course, this is obviously not the position of the Church or for most Christians for that matter, and it has far more nuanced approaches to how we are to deal with evil. Yet, the perennial struggle between two opposing values marches on… eternal love on one hand, the sword of authority on the other.

In our day and age we are all too familiar with this struggle and its consequences; it is plastered in every paper and broadcasted from every television screen. There was the rather well-known case of Travis Lewis, a 16 year old black boy who murdered Sally McKay and her nephew in cold blood and lit the house on fire. Sally’s daughter, Martha, believed in forgiveness and second chances, advocating for his release and even giving him a job. Lewis would soon stab Martha to death as well, fleeing on foot and drowning to death while pursued by police. However, Martha was Buddhist, so we can scratch this off in a conversation about Christianity, saving the soteriological similarities between Buddhism and Christianity for another time. There is another example however—far more horrifying and archetypical—involving a Faith Green, the daughter of a pastor. Her faithful-servant of a father had spent years praying and advocating for Gregory Green of Dearborn, MI, who decades prior had stabbed his pregnant wife to death in front of their children. Faith, through her father, came to forgive, and love, Gregory—eventually marrying him and having two children. 6 years into the marriage, Gregory sedated the entire family with carbon monoxide and shot them each in the head.

Arguably, it is largely from Christian ethics that our wondrous elites derived this misfortune of “restorative justice”, however improper that interpretation under Christian terms actually is. The reply from contemporary and historical Christians, as you have probably seen, revolves around the point that is essentially this: “The individual can forgive as he pleases, but it is incumbent on the state to enforce the law blindly”. Supporters of this line of thinking point to an inscription upon an executioner’s sword from 17th Century Germany, reading “Wan ich Das Schwerdt thu auff heben so / Wunch ich Dem armen sunder das Ewege Leben,” which translates to “When I raise this sword, so I wish that this poor sinner will receive eternal life.” Though this inscription says little about “forgiveness”, the illustration is that the sanctioned form of forgiveness is purely interpersonal, between the offended party and the assailant. It is to be differentiated from justice which, in either its worldly or supernatural form, is ultimately left to the higher powers of the state and God, respectively.

To be sincere with you, I do not understand the point of these distinctions. The pre-Christian world did have a general respect for the dead (as seen in the gods’ disapproval of Kreon’s refusal to properly bury his enemy Polynices, for example), this general sentiment I understand. But this is a far cry from this sight of the family of dead victims groveling, crying, and even hugging their loved one’s murderer. Further, while I understand there are technical scriptural and theological justifications for it, the act of spiritually-outsourcing “true justice” seems pointless to mention while an authority is actively carrying out a justice of its own. Aside from this, I must remind us all that we are forgetting what is arguably one of the most important aspects of punitive and preventative theories of the application of law to begin with: shame.

There is a shame that comes with being known as a criminal: someone who cannot pay his debts on time, cannot remain decent in public, cannot be trusted to not enter a state of random and senseless violence. They are, as the institution of prisons officialized, set off from common and decent society for its own sake. Much of the psychological hardwiring we possess regarding crime is that we do not want to be humiliated as criminals. There is something about being forced to pull over, prostrate all of your identification and paperwork, and speak in nice and respectful tones—all while traffic passes by glaring at you—that the $120 speeding ticket doesn’t fully capture. You’ve been caught, and the actual punishment to come later only serves to redouble that sense of shame.

Now, what do we get in a society that forces itself, in what can only be described as humiliation rituals, to absolve individuals of much of that shame without qualification? There is something utterly revolting about the image of a teary widow and mother finding it in herself to forgive her husband’s killer, often even before he has shown signs of remorse or rehabilitation. At this moment above any other, we as a society should be priming the reality where the criminal gives himself up entirely, not only to the state but to those he offended. He should be subjected to the glaring downward stare of the victim, who then offers their price for restitution. It is precisely at this moment where the victim instead takes on the humiliation for themselves, and states: “your price is nothing”. Even as the state is attempting to deliver justice, the allegedly distinct action of interpersonal forgiveness has to a significant degree stripped it of exactly that function.

It is no wonder that we exist in a society where to be a criminal is no longer shamed nearly as much as is necessary: this ritual of humiliation, perhaps in a way not too dissimilar from Christ, draws the shame away from the criminal and onto the victim. In our case it is not shame and suffering onto the son of God sent down for this task and no other, but onto grieving widows who must find creative and humiliating ways explain to their children what happened to their father. We cheer for it nonetheless, implying through incentive that this is the correct and expected behavior. Who wouldn’t want to be like Christ?

It is in these moments of questioning that I tend to draw the wheel back, and look for comparative answers in older thoughts. The call to humility and forgiveness is perhaps the single most distinguishing aspect of the ethical values between Christendom and its preceding pagan existence. Forgiveness played a minimal, if not entirely nonexistent, role in the daily life of the antiquital Roman or seafaring Saxon. Here, shame played a much more elevated role: honor was the animating force of pre-Christian ethics.

For the Greeks, it was κλέος, renown. For the Romans, it was dignitas, dignity. But for the Germanics we see this most clearly in the word dōmaz, which means both reputation and judgement. These words all communicate the same essential understanding of the deeply religious importance of one’s standing in society, of which the gods, ancestors, and afterlife were included as intrinsic parts. So seriously was this understanding taken that it arguably played a more important role than merely material punishment: the marker of shame upon a household and its tarnished legacy was seen as a fate worse than death, for this shame was inherited and carried beyond death into the afterlife.

This becomes more apparent when you remember that pre-Christian religiosity was neither universalist in its ethos nor dualistic in its eschatology. Pre-Christian peoples did not see each and every individual possessing the same fundamental value, nor did they believe, in turn, that each person would face the same judgement and partitioning into the same afterlives—be it Heaven or Hell. Rather, an individual’s afterlife was almost inextricably tied to his status and occupation in life. Heroes and warriors were set off from common laborers for example, and these afterlives could be navigated, escaped, or returned to in various ways. The result of this is a redoubling of the significance of honor pre-Christian cultures: it was your status and reputation that mattered, much less mere belief.

We return back to contemporary affairs. Those who suggest interpersonal forgiveness is merely that have lost sight of the importance of shame, even in a culture which has erred far too deeply onto the side its guilt-driven counterpart. Indeed, this is precisely why the Community Relation Service was established by the Civil Rights Act, and why it finds the victims and families of victims of racial crimes to encourage them into a state of humility, mercy, and forgiveness. They understand that the victim calling for peace and forgiveness greatly mutes the public response to criminality and perceived evil.

Can you not see what this is doing to us tactically, spiritually? Right at the nexus of our decision to get off of our knees, we are called back down in prayer. Precisely at the moment we begin gathering arms and kindle, we dwell on mercy and compassion. The immediate result is none other than delay, inaction, and dysfunction. The energy is sucked from our lungs by a cold torrent the second we sense a potential for ignition, and thereby we are left idle and defenseless.

I’m not going to tell Christians exactly where the line here is according to their religion because I genuinely do not know, and I don’t understand the premise to begin with. But I can ascertain that we have fallen off the tracks; not only from a Western perspective, but also from a historically Christian perspective. Indeed, Christianity was not always the “meek”, “love your enemies” flavor, and found a multitude of ways to interpret this command. One only has to look at St. Bernard of Clairvaux’s In Praise of the New Knighthood, in essence a recruitment paper for his then-fledgling Knights Templar of the 12th Century, to witness this:

The knight of Christ, I say, may strike with confidence and die yet more confidently, for he serves Christ when he strikes, and serves himself when he falls. Neither does he bear the sword in vain, for he is God’s minister, for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of the good. If he kills an evildoer, he is not a mankiller, but, if I may so put it, a killer of evil. He is evidently the avenger of Christ towards evildoers and he is rightly considered a defender of Christians. Should he be killed himself, we know that he has not perished, but has come safely into port. When he inflicts death it is to Christ’s profit, and when he suffers death, it is for his own gain. The Christian glories in the death of the pagan, because Christ is glorified; while the death of the Christian gives occasion for the King to show his liberality in the rewarding of his knight. In the one case the just shall rejoice when he sees justice done, and in the other man shall say, truly there is a reward for the just; truly it is God who judges the earth.

—Liber ad Milites Templi: De Laude Novae Militae (~1130 AD)

The ideal Christian relishes in justice and vengeance, for it is the vanquishing of evil and glorification of Christ, says St. Bernard—a fitting prophet for the coming centuries.

Perhaps it is some of this sentiment, a vision of Christianity reinterpreted under the spirit of European peoples, that is required today. We can not, shall not, allow calls to “meekness”, “forgiveness”, or “humility” go so far as to immediately render us into martyrs. The apocalypse is not coming tomorrow (that prophecy may have already been fulfilled!), and as far as we can tell we are charged with maintaining this world and humanity in perpetuity. If this cannot be accomplished, then perhaps it is far older attitudes towards honor & shame and an understanding of their relationship to culture & justice that are required.

“Forgive your enemies”, perhaps, but let that be purely between you, the enemy, and God. For justice to be effective and pure, it cannot persist as a public spectacle of ritual humiliation.

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