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You've done very important work in the area of forgiveness. And with your daughter, I've written a book of forgiving. You maintain that forgiveness can be given regardless of any response from the perpetrator, regardless of asking for forgiveness or saying sorry. But God seems to need us

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to confess our sins to be forgiven. How do you reconcile that apparent paradox? It is so easy for the victim to remain in their victimhood. Uh If you were to have to depend on the perpetrator, uh you know, he could, he or she could hook you

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onto that dependence. And, and the point is that one is saying you can offer the gift, it is up to the perpetrator to uh receive the gift. You remember, I mean, this extraordinary thing that happened on Good Friday. And isn't it extraordinary that our Lord said,

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forgive them? They, they had not even asked for forgiveness. He said forgive them. And then he added a, a an excuse for them. They don't know what they are doing, please forgive them. And we are those who are seeking to walk in the footsteps of this

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Lord who who says the the offer of forgiveness is something like you're sitting in a dank room and the curtains are drawn and the air is foul. There is clean air outside, there is light outside, but you have to open the windows and apprehend receive the

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gift. It would be unconscionable really uh for as it were my spiritual condition of being willing to forgive, to depend so utterly on whether the perpetrator did do what they wanted to do or not, right? So you obviously see free will as very important. Um because

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you said that God prefers us to be free in hell, rather than compelled to be in heaven. And so I was wondering how you justify giving forgiveness to somebody that doesn't necessarily want it. It's, it's as much for you. Yeah, the the victim as for the

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perpetrator, it, it speaks of our interconnectedness. I can't be human on my own. I need you as much as you need me for us to make up what is lacking in each, in each of us. So can God forgive us if we don't want that forgiveness?

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God is always ready to. Yes. Uh And part of the anguish and the pain that God experiences is, is, is that was for so ever snubbing God, thank God. The omnipotent is utterly utterly impotent. If, if, if one of the, I mean, it's, it's incredibly humbling

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to think that God does have this amazing reverence for the gift that God has given you. And me, uh, that even God can't ram down our throats what we wouldn't want to receive freely because fundamentally utterly we are persons. God takes that incredibly seriously. Yeah. Yeah.

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The reverend Judy Nicholson lost her daughter in the terrorist attacks in London in 77 and she felt she couldn't continue in parish ministry because she struggled so much to forgive her daughter's murderers. She said she wasn't sure she could forgive on behalf of somebody else. Uh

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The wrong down to her daughter, is it possible to forgive on behalf of another person when you, when you think of us as community? Um And you say, you look at what's happened in the holocaust, there is a sense in which because we aren't, we aren't

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just individuals who stand out on their own. We always are communal, you know. Uh And so there is a sense in which we become representative, that's what happened in South Africa. Um When see, and Nelson Mandela says, we've got to move uh choosing the path of

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forgiveness, reconciliation uh rather than the path of retribution, revenge. Um And we, we want to come along with him and most say yes, in a sense, yes, we are saying we are are forgiving perpetrators who, who killed people in Sharpeville, uh people who killed Children in

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the Soviet uprising in 1976. And, and all of the people who were tortured uh who can't speak for themselves. But who would I think ultimately have said yes, for the sake of our people, we, we see you as our representatives and you can speak on our

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behalf. The point was we were saying we want to make some kind of break with this awful past, let us be able to begin, but we can't do that without an acknowledgement of the past. And that is what we tried. But you, yes, you have to

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be in a way, very, very humble, very honored that you could be seen as being representative of the many, many, many uh millions out there who were treated as if they were nothing. Something else you've talked about is very important in the first step of forgiveness

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is telling the story of your own hurt. I suppose there's no one to tell or suppose doing that would cause disproportionate harm. Does that mean that the forgiveness is sort of arrested and can't yet happen? I, I don't think, I mean that we can uh look

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at these things uh so utterly rigidly. You, you've got to, you've got to be flexible, remembering that we are dealing with human beings. You know, we're not dealing with ciphers that you must always respond in this way. Uh You're saying that phone, the vast majority of

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us, it is important that you acknowledge for yourself too, that such and such happened, it can be abominably bad um as it can be. I mean, when I think when say a woman is raped. Mm. Many times why the, they don't even manage to go and

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report to the police is they just can't bear even the thought of this happened to me and, and, and yet to be able to live, one has to admit it does happen. Just picking up on that example, suppose something like that has happened to a woman

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and she wants to forgive, but she can't cope with the trauma of facing the person who did it? Is it possible to forgive if you, if you can't face the perpetrator or you can't put the relationship back where it was? It's, I mean, you know what

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I say, be who you are. You can't be who you are not and you are put together in a particular kind of way and you have your own sensitivities and, and it's marvelous that you would, even after that kind of trauma have said I do want

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to forgive. But I really know, I know I couldn't possibly be able to stand and, and be in the same physical space? Yes. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's wonderful. Uh and the perpetrator has to acknowledge that this is part of the consequence of what they

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have done. Now, one other thing I, I wanted to ask your help with, I sometimes find it difficult to forgive myself for things, particularly, for instance, if I've made decisions for my Children and they haven't turned out, right. What advice would you give me, if I'm

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struggling to forgive myself, we, we are very, you know, and, and we, we probably do need to be brought down a few pegs, you know. And remember you are not omniscient. No, he is very wise. You are not omniscient and what you did, you did in,

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in good faith, you didn't do it so that deliberately, it got them into trouble. You had hoped that it would be a AAA good piece of advice that would have ended with a good result. But no, uh we, we are getting there one day in the

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wonderful future that God has in store for us. We may get to the point of being very close. I don't think we will ever be omniscient actually, you know, not even in heaven. No, no, no. We, we, we will forever remain creatures, finite creatures. Um Who

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and this is, this is the wonder of heaven. You see it is that we will keep discovering new aspects of the beauty that is God and in heaven, I will say, and, and you say, yes, did you see that aspect of the beauty of God? And

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you say, you say no, when you say, did you see? And I said, no, I hadn't. And, and we will be, it'll be all these extraordinary discoveries of the God who is God utterly without beginning and without end. And you and I will be growing in

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our apprehension of this beauty that is called. But we will always be creatures. Hm.