Timely Lessons In Forgiveness Response To President’S Sins To Be Revealing, Clergy Says

The Rev. Ken Krall’s sermon at St. Peter’s Catholic Church last weekend was all about forgiveness - and he wasn’t even thinking about the president when he wrote it.

Instead, Krall was thinking about the Gospel parables of the prodigal son, the lost sheep and the lost coin - standard Scripture verses read in many of the nation’s Catholic and Protestant churches last week.

The lesson couldn’t be more timely.

Religious leaders are espousing forgiveness as a spiritual response to President Clinton’s sexual escapades and lies.

Christians believe that if a person is contrite and begs for forgiveness, God will grant it. Most denominations also teach that believers should mirror God’s response.

Jews are focused on the same topic as they prepare for High Holy Days, during which they set straight their relationships with God and fellow human beings.

“If you ever needed the concept of forgiveness, it’s now,” says Sister Monica Ann Lucas, director of chaplaincy at Sacred Heart Medical Center. “And it’s something that we will have to reach down into the bottom of our beings to do.”

The White House scandal reveals more about our spiritual state as a nation than it does about our leaders, says the Rev. John Repsold, pastor at Fourth Memorial Church in Spokane.

And it’s more than just lax sexual ethics, although that’s a big part of it. It points to a society that has forgotten how to forgive and be forgiven.

Forgiveness “is a tool for dealing with our own bitterness,” Repsold says. “And it brings about healing.”

Most Americans have allowed the courts to overshadow the role of repentance and forgiveness, miring people in vengeance and grudges that can last a lifetime, spiritual experts say.

Just look at Watergate. Because former President Richard Nixon resigned without taking responsibility for any wrongdoing, the public as a whole couldn’t forgive him.

“It took 20 years for the country to recover from that,” Repsold says. “It would have been a lot easier if there had been an opportunity to grant him forgiveness.”

While it’s possible to forgive someone who hasn’t asked for it, it takes a conscious effort and it’s much harder.

Pastors, rabbis and counselors say they see the consequences of the inability to forgive every day. Spurned lovers remain bitter and unable to enter new relationships. Victims of abuse turn into abusers. People who commit astonishing acts of violence won’t take responsibility for their actions.

“The tragedy is you have a person who has already been wronged, who is then eaten away by his own bitterness,” says the Rev. Ken Onstot, pastor at Hamblen Park Presbyterian Church. “The inability to forgive makes them suffer for the wrong that has been done.”

In recent weeks, Clinton has provided an object lesson in the do’s and don’ts of begging for forgiveness.

“It’s an act that we have not seen in public for a long, long time,” Lucas says. “This man’s life - it’s like opening him up and his sins are there for all the world to see.”

Clinton’s Aug. 17 televised speech on the Monica Lewinsky matter - where he spent more time attacking independent prosecutor Kenneth Starr than apologizing for his own behavior - was a good example of what not to do.

But his address at the annual White House Prayer Breakfast a week ago, in which he apologized for sinning and deceiving the American people, hit the target.

“I’m not sure if your guts were exposed that you’d get it right the first time either,” Lucas says.

When it comes to Clinton, it’s important to distinguish between forgiveness and a pardon, religious leaders say.

“Forgive, but not forget,” Lucas says. “He might have to be censured, punished, impeached. But we still have to forgive him.”

Different faiths emphasize different aspects of forgiveness, but for Christians and Jews there are two parts to the principle.

For the person receiving forgiveness, “it means being released from a past that you can’t change, so you can enter into a new future,” Onstot says.

For the person doing the forgiving, “it means giving up the right to be resentful,” he says.

Equally important, particularly for Jews, is to distinguish between sins against God and sins against fellow human beings.

“I can’t ask God to forgive me for what I’ve done to my fellow human beings,” says Rabbi Jacob Izakson of Spokane’s Temple Beth Shalom. “Conversely, I can’t ask human beings to forgive me for what I did to God.”

Clinton has to answer to his wife and daughter, and to Lewinsky, for the affair, Repsold says. And he has to answer to Congress for any crimes he may have committed.

The American people have the authority to forgive the president for the lies he told in public, but not for the affair, Repsold says.

The latest polls, which show the public willing to keep Clinton in office, suggest that some Americans are willing to forgive. But it’s possible they are just not willing to acknowledge the gravity of Clinton’s moral transgressions, some pastors say.

“There has to be a clear sense that what happened here was wrong,” Onstot says. “I’m more concerned when there are a number of people saying it doesn’t matter.”

This sidebar appeared with the story: Different teachings Every world religion has a tradition of teachings and practices for dealing with sin and wrongdoing. Jews spend their High Holy Days assessing their spiritual lives and begging God and humans for forgiveness. Jews teach that only the person who was sinned against can grant forgiveness. If the sins were against God, then only God can forgive them. Buddhists and Hindus do not believe in forgiveness as a religious practice because they do not believe in judging the acts of others. Rather, both religions teach that every person’s karma is affected by the way he lives his life. People’s transgressions will come back to haunt them, if not in this life, then in another. Christians believe that Jesus died so that the sins of humans would be forgiven. Followers of Jesus are called upon to imitate that practice by forgiving others. Muslims believe that if a sinner admits his sins, repents and changes his life - before he is caught or on his deathbed - God will forgive. Accordingly, the Koran says that any social sanctions should reflect God’s actions by offering those who honestly repent a less severe punishment.