A friend of mine used to be a counseling instructor, and she once had a student that was very resistant to the approaches that she was teaching, and this student believed it was all overcomplicating the simpler solution found in the Christian emphasis on forgiveness. To the non-Christian, this single-word solution for problems feels like a bit of a frustrating, incomplete, philosophy of anything, but sometimes you do have to admit that the whole point of modern restorative justice is an elaborate effort in forgiveness. But even if “forgiveness” was self-explanatory, it could still not regulate the potential use of itself as a pathological, subjective, moral license. So, forgiveness has its limits, in spite of much to recommend it, like the South African process.

Credit to Erika Jordan for making me think about it today. https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSaAY1bKB/