Great literature can teach us a lot about life.
Take for example, Hamlet. There is a scene in it where Claudius contends with
his guilt for killing his brother, Hamlet’s father. There is honest regret in
his words and a desire to pray to God for forgiveness. He states his moral
dilemma thus:
Then I’ll look up, my fault is past.
But, O, what form of prayer can serve my turn?
“Forgive me my foul murder?”
That cannot be for I am still possessed
of those effects for which I did the murder.
My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.
May one be pardoned and retain the offense?
In other words, he realizes it is useless to pray
for forgiveness when he is unable to let go of what he has gained by his
brother’s death. He then goes on to say that perhaps man’s justice might let
him get away with it, but God surely sees through his lack of repentance.
Actually, Claudius sees God as the sterner judge,
but He is far more merciful than man can be. For as Claudius speaks, Hamlet
looks on, planning to kill him where he kneels. Hamlet is now convinced that his
uncle has killed his father. He sees Claudius seemingly at prayer, seemingly
contrite, and pauses. He does so not out of pity but with the thought that if
he kills him as he is praying for forgiveness, he will be forgiven and go to
Heaven. Hamlet does not simply want to kill his Uncle, he wants to make sure
his Uncle spends eternity in Hell for his crime.
No, it is far wiser to depend on God’s mercy than
man’s. But Claudius realizes even God will not extend mercy to one who yet
retains the rewards gained by his crime. Even someone so horrible as to engage
in regicide and fratricide can yet see this clearly.
Let’s for a moment extend the story into the
hypothetical. What if both Claudius and Hamlet survived to have descendants?
Would the children of Claudius be without sin if they too held possession of
the crown and the castle that by rights belonged to Hamlet and only came to
them through murder? I was never fond of the Biblical passage that talks about
God “visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the sons to the third and fourth
generation” but it seems appropriate in this circumstance. What was unjustly
taken will be a source of contention until the crime no longer rewards the
guilty.
I think about this when hearing people so lightly
dismiss the past injustices suffered by others. “African Americans were
slaves,” they say, “but that was a long time ago. No one alive now experienced
that.”
But an injustice must not merely be undone but
rectified. Atonement must be made or it will hang over even generations that
had no part in it. For if they are still possessed of the effects of their
ancestors’ crimes, can they be forgiven by God let alone man?
But perhaps your family came to America after
slavery was outlawed. You possess no land that was farmed by slaves. Surely you
owe no debt.
Yet the land you now own was once the land where
others lived. They did not leave voluntarily. Because of the sins of others,
you now have what you have. So long as you participate in the spoils of a sin,
you share in the guilt.
Even if you are a poor white person with no land
and little wealth, you share in the guilt of those who have unjustly taken from
others. The phone you use contains minerals mined by children in Africa. The
food you eat was farmed by itinerant labor. The beans that make the coffee you
drink were picked by exploited peasants. Much of the clothes you wear were made by children or by those whose ability to earn a living will be used up at an early age.
But let us put aside the question of what we owe
to our fellow man and to man’s justice. Let us ask what debt we owe to our very
planet. How can we claim to own what we have obtained by her rape? The crimes
we are committing now will be paid for by all our children, who will never share
in the wealth we created by our planet’s destruction. What possession is worth
retaining in the light of the punishment we will pass on to our children’s
children? How can we hope to gain God's forgiveness, let alone theirs?
Our choice, as it was for Claudius and as it
would have been for his descendants if he had had any, is a choice between seeking
God’s forgiveness and keeping all we have acquired through theft and murder. As
Claudius realized, it is not an easy choice. In his case, it would have meant
abandoning his crown, his wife, his wealth, his renown. In our own case...well, that is what we must decide. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer
would say, there is no cheap grace, no easy path to God’s love.
It is surely the easiest path to say we need not
account for sins of the past, sins committed by those long dead. But until those
who continue to benefit from such crimes make an earnest attempt to redress
them, an earnest attempt to foreswear all that we possess through those crimes, even
if they were not committed by us, we will of necessity continue to participate
in those sins. As with Claudius’ and Hamlet’s hypothetical descendants, that
which was taken by the father must be defended by the son, one generation to
the next. Until the day that God’s or man’s judgment is exacted.
The choices are stark. Claudius’ choice was
between repentance or continued killing. If Claudius had passed his ill-gotten
gains to his children, he would have passed along with them the need for
generations of subjugation of those who were dispossessed. Our choice is not so different. The path forward will
not be easy—as it has not been easy for generations of those who sought forgiveness
while possessing the offense—but it is not obscure.
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