184. Forgive Us

**John Dickson** (0:00)
Hey, just to let you know that in this episode, we discuss abuse and its effects. So some may want to give this a miss. Stay safe.

**Amy Orr-Ewing** (0:10)
The major argument against the Christian faith that I experienced articulated by people coming from that mindset, you know, more from the left was this idea that we don't care about harm and injustice enough, because forgiving is letting people off, and a genuine justice movement would never do that, because to let someone off would be to minimise harm, abuse, whether that's slavery or homophobia or colonisation, or, you know, racism or whatever the, you know, the harms that one cares about are.

**Taylor Swift** (0:51)
You know, people go on and on about, like, you have to forgive and forget to move past something. No, you don't. You don't have to forgive, you don't have to forget to move on. You can move on without any of those things happening.
You just become indifferent and then you move on.

**John Dickson** (1:06)
That's Taylor Swift on CBS Sunday Mornings back in 2019 She's been called a lot of things in her career. One of them is queen of the grudge banger. She sings Revenge better than most people. Her song Look What You Made Me Do says, I've got a list of names and yours is in red, underlined or endgame. I bury hatchets, but I keep maps of where I put them or this one, the smallest man who ever lived. Ouch. What a title. It says, I'll forget you, but I'll never forgive.
Now Taylor Swift is much loved here at Undeceptions. So socials, Sophie and producer, Kaley are parsing every word I'm saying right now. This whole opener was of course, Kaley's idea. But what they don't know is that I too love Taylor.
In fact, every year I have a Muso's party in Sydney with my buddies, and we work our way through our favorite songs, like 30 song set list where we do all the singing and play all the instruments. Just last Friday night, a few days ago, Taylor Swift's Shake It Off made an honorable appearance at this party. My daughter Josie was on vocals and some friends, shout out to Kate and Ness, joined her. In fact, I have proof here. I don't know if I'm going to break copyright rules here, but...
Just so it's worth it, you are breaking copyright. We can't.
Yeah. So, but surely what we can, but surely we can do a fun thing.

**Kaley Payne** (3:10)
We can show you doing it, but we will not be playing the song.

**John Dickson** (3:16)
Anyway, Taylor Swift's message in some of these songs is unmistakable. You don't have to forgive. You don't have to forget. And you can move on with your life without forgiving the wrongdoer. She's tapped into something sort of deep in our culture at the moment. We live in a pretty unforgiving age. We prize accountability. We archive every offense. We cancel and we condemn. And forgiveness seems weak and unjust. And that creates a problem for Christianity, because as most people know, Christianity has a bit to say about forgiveness, theological forgiveness, God forgiving us, and sociological forgiveness, us forgiving others.
So what does forgiveness actually mean? How does it work? Does it work anymore? Does it involve forgetting wrongs, trusting someone again? And can you forgive someone who just isn't sorry? What about profound evil and injustice? Can you forgive that?
The Christian emphasis on forgiveness has shaped our civilization. But does it still make sense? I'm John Dickson and this is Undeceptions.
Each episode of Undeceptions we explore some aspect of life, faith, history, science, culture, or ethics that's either much misunderstood or mostly forgotten. And with the help of people who know what they're talking about, we're trying to undecieve ourselves and let the truth out.
Amy, you say we live in an unforgiving age. What exactly do you mean by that?

**Amy Orr-Ewing** (5:52)
Well, I think we all can see around us just whether it's looking at the increase in estrangement in families or whether we're looking at kind of council culture and its various iterations. That's a moving feast, but the sense that...

**John Dickson** (6:12)
Well, that's left and right.

**Amy Orr-Ewing** (6:14)
Yes, absolutely.

**Amy Orr-Ewing** (6:16)
Yeah. Council culture perhaps on the left, cruelty culture on the right, where there are vendettas in play, where there's a sense that unless you agree with me and you're in my tribe, you're dead to me.
And that feels like a different situation than, say, six, seven, eight, ten, a hundred years ago, where language of forgiveness and redemption, the possibility of giving someone a second chance was far more common, and obviously influenced by Christian faith in Western culture.