Forgive and .....

I was very moved this morning by a TV interview with a girl who'd been raped.

She talked about her desire to meet the rapist to, as she put it, 'see the human' in him. She spoke about how important it was for her to look him in the eye. She has met and forgiven her attacker and was asked if that was for her, or for his sake. She didn't actually answer that as the interview went off in another direction. For me it was clear from the little glimpse of a life an interview gives that she has come to a place of peace with what happened to her, and I imagine forgiveness has been part of that process for her. 

It was the phrase about seeing the 'human in him' that made me think. We are very quick to label people who do great wrong as 'animals'. Somehow that allows us to de-humanize them, allowing us to say what we want and desire awful things for them; generally not care about them or what happens to them. Maybe it is too difficult to accept some people as human because then we have to acknowledge them as one of us - and where would that take us?

I just know that the choosing to forgive process, though perhaps difficult and costly, is the best way forward to a life free from bitterness and the chains that hold us to those who wrong us. 

In doing that, perhaps we are acknowledging the 'human' in the offender - the God-created humanity gone wrong - the human being Jesus died for.