COP 70x7: The Forgiveness Album (Matt 18)

by Lowell Bliss, Director of Eden Vigil Institute for Environmental Leadership

Former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is retiring after 17 years in parliament. Let us forgive him for hurting us.

One of my recent essays is “Eight Things I Discovered About Loving Your Enemies at COP28” which features a moral framework (provided by Jesus in Matthew 5 and Luke 6) and a strategic framework (provided by Martin Luther King). At one time, Morrison would have been listed as a climate enemy under the category of “Obstructionist Government” or “Powerful Denier.” Australia’s Climate Council characterized the track record of the Morrison Government, at the time of COP26 in Glasgow, as “blocking global collaboration on climate action; promoting the extension and expansion of fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas; and refusing to step up and set ambitious climate goals.” They claim that, of all Paris Agreement signatories, Australia sat at “dead last” when it came to its new emission reduction targets.

“Impactemies” is the name I gave to climate enemies like Morrison who, whether he ever gave any intentional thought to a nation like Kirabati, nonetheless was impacting that low-lying island nation with Australia’s emissions and obstructionism. Kirabati is 5,032 kms off the northeast coast of Australia. In the Pacific Ocean, that’s surely close enough to make them neighbours. Scott Morrison did not love his neighbours who are being impacted by sea-level rise.

The only reason that I, here in Canada, stumbled on Morrison’s exit speech was that he has two daughters who are Swifties, and so do I. Taylor Swift was in Australia on her Eras Tour, and Morrison apparently took on a challenge from his daughters to include the names of every single Taylor Swift album in his speech. He begins, “It is true that my political opponents have often made me see RED, often when subjected to the TORTURED POETS who would arise to attack my REPUTATION. In response, I always thought it important to be FEARLESS and forever hold my silence and allow those attacks to become FOLKLORE.” Even at his most cutesy, his frame is one of battle and attack. Whether you’ve ever thought of him as an enemy, he’s thought of climate activists as one. He concludes with a few more Swift song titles thrown in to delight his daughters: “You see I’m actually a true “New Romantic” after all, and I can assure you there is no “Bad Blood” as I’ve always been someone who’s been able to “Shake It Off.” No bad blood? What were you just saying at the beginning of your speech? And while we might be jealous of his personal ability to “shake it off,” his tenure felt like a shakedown of the Australian economy by the fossil fuel companies, and his treatment of the Paris Agreement as it went into full effect in Glasgow feels like Shaken Baby Syndrome.

In Matthew 18, Peter the disciple comes to Jesus and asks, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answers, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times [or seventy times time].” (Matt 18:21-22 NIV). Perhaps as per Amos 2:6, three acts of forgiveness was enough to fulfill the Hebrew sense of requirement. Peter surely thought he was being liberal in proposing seven times. But then Jesus must have blown Peter’s mind by multiplying seven by seventy. I also wonder whether Jesus wasn’t flipping an old reference from the Torah on its head. In Genesis 4:24, Lamech boasts to the two women in his life by saying, “If Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech seventy-seven times.” While Lamech delights in multiplying vengeance against his enemies, Jesus calls us to multiply our acts of forgiving.

We dare not be flippant when it comes to discussing forgiveness, particularly as we encounter more and more people who are victims of devastating climate change impacts, fellow humans who have lost family members, homes, property, health, and livelihoods to typhoons, floods, and droughts, etc. And some of our neighbours are direct victims of climate enemies, such as those killed or dispossessed in the Amazon or Nigerian river basins. Maybe you or someone you love is among that number. If so, I am sorry. As you pursue forgiving, I can do no better than to recommend that Desmond Tutu and his daughter Mpho be your teacher. Their book The Book of Forgiving proposes a fourfold journey of telling the story, naming the hurt, granting forgiveness, and renewing or releasing the relationship.

I, however, am looking for a spiritual discipline that I can deploy in even chance encounters (usually through my news feed) with, for example, a retiring Australian prime minister who refuses to treat, except with frivolity, the legacy of his climate change impact. It’s an election year in my birth country, the United States, and I confess to looking for spiritual tools just to keep my sanity resilient. For example, last week I encountered a story about how the State of Oklahoma assesses an extra charging tax and registration fee for anyone who owns an electric vehicle or a hybrid. The argument is that this income replaces the gasoline tax that helps fund highway maintenance, and that everyone should pay their fair share. But in Texas, for example, the charging fee is roughly double what other drivers pay at the petrol pump. Consumer advocates label the fees as “punitive” (the language of attack and harm.) Now, this was just a brief encounter with a news story, I don’t own an EV, and I haven’t driven in Oklahoma for over a decade. Why did this unsettle me so? But rather than try to figure it out, or hold it at arm’s length, why not just forgive the lawmakers of Oklahoma and move on with my day? The news story also sparked a memory from 2015, nine years ago, when James Inhofe, Republican senator from Oklahoma, brought a snowball onto the floor of the US Senate and claimed that it proves climate change is a hoax. I could just say under my breath, “I forgive you too, Senator Inhofe,” and find some new energy to do the work of keeping his ilk out of office.

The formula that I use for a quick movement of forgiveness is one that I learned from Ronald Rolheiser’s book Sacred Fire. Rolheiser calls it the fifth commandment for mature living: “Forgive—those who hurt you, your own sins, the unfairness of your life, and God for not rescuing you.” Later he restates this as “the major task, psychological and spiritual, for the second half of our lives is to forgive: we need to forgive those who have hurt us, forgive ourselves for our own failings, forgive life for not being fully fair, and forgive God for seemingly being so indifferent to our wounds.” Admittedly, that final phrase about “forgiving God” may land on your ear as presumptuous, but for Rolheiser, forgiveness is not a matter for judges and adjudicators, as if we had that role over others, including our enemies or God. Forgiveness is a practice for lovers and neighbours, of which God is both to us. But that seems like the topic for another newsletter, or at least for a recommendation of the Tutu and Tutu’s and Rolheiser’s excellent books.

Desmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu, The Book of Forgiving, San Francisco: HarperOne, 2015.