In John D. Caputo’s What Would Jesus Deconstruct?, Caputo relates Jacques Derrida’s concept of gift to the New Testament concept of forgiveness. He notes that, in the New Testament, forgiveness is uneconomic and mad–that is to say, it is not an exchange of debts and credits.

Caputo rightly expresses that the Christian Right (as well as Jews) has typically put conditions on forgiveness. In this economic view of forgiveness, forgiveness has four steps:

Forgiveness requires an expression of sorrow, the intention to make amends, a promise not to repeat the offense, and a willingness to do penance. If someone meets all four conditions then they have earned forgiveness. We owe it to them the way the bank owes us the deed once the mortgage is paid off. A deal is a deal.”*

But Jesus turns this concept of forgiveness on its head in Matthew 5:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Or as Caputo puts it,

“If you love those who love you, what good is that? It makes perfect sense. Even the mafia does that. The unaccountable excess of love is felt when you love your enemies, when you love the unlovable–those whom it is unreasonable to love–which is the madness of the kingdom, which follows the nonprincipal of nonsufficient reason! Just so, the unaccountable excess of forgiveness is felt when we forgive precisely those who do not meet some or all of the four conditions, who are not sorry, do not repent, and do not intend to mend their ways. That is, genuine forgiveness is offered unconditionally, not the subject to meeting any or all of these four conditions, exactly the way Jesus prayed for the forgiveness of the Roman soldiers. Just so, we often speak of things that are unforgivable–the Holocaust, say, or the atrocities of American slavery or apartheid, or the several attempts at genocide we have witnessed in the past century. But would not such unforgivable things be the very subject matter of genuine forgiveness?”**

Can you imagine a world where we actually followed Jesus’s teaching on forgiveness instead of our hearts?

* 73-74
** 74