Struggling with Forgiveness: Stories from People and Communities

A.J. Pell is rector of Christ Church in Hope, B.C., editor of the
Canadian Evangelical Review, and an instructor of Liturgy, Anglican
Studies Programme at Regent College in Vancouver, B.C.

As David Self makes clear early on in Struggling with Forgiveness,
people find forgiveness easier to talk about than to define. Most of the
book consists of short first-person accounts of people struggling both
to forgive and to be forgiven. The contributors are people in everyday
life hurt by sexual abuse, family betrayal, or workplace politics;
people caught up in the troubles of Northern Ireland; and, finally,
Canadian Aboriginals damaged by the residential school system. These
accounts are honest, blunt, and self-searching. After each of these
sections, Self reflects on forgiveness and its connection with guilt,
shame, anger, and reconciliation. The final section is the author’s
simply stated account of “Forgiveness in the Christian Gospel,”
where he presents the biblical pictures of forgiveness and reflects on
how these pictures relate to the book’s personal accounts.

The one weakness is the section entitled “Truth and Reconciliation in
South Africa.” Here, in lieu of personal accounts, there is an essay
by the author. The result is to make the reader feel distanced from what
the situation may have to say about forgiveness. It is through personal
immediacy that this book speaks to the mind by also speaking to the
heart.