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PEACE
EDUCATION
Some
reflections on working with adults in the Northern Irish context of violence
André
Lascaris
Dominican
Theological Center, Nijmegen
The
Northern Irish conflict can be interpreted as an anachronism. This is true in
many aspects. However, in the last ten years we were confronted with many 'anachronistic'
conflicts: in former Yugoslavia, in Rwanda, Algeria, Colombia, and Afghanistan,
to mention only some. In our postmodern times the division of the world into two
rather neat halves with two centers of power has gone, the nation state is
weakening and in many societies the social glue seems to be losing its cohesive
force. We have to live together in pluralistic societies in which we are all a
minority at times. Wars between states become less likely, but civil wars are on
the increase. Terrorism becomes a power against which the traditional armies and
their weapons are quite useless in spite of many technological developments. The
ancient laws concerning the protection of women and children in wartime are
becoming obsolete. Women are invited to get involved in the armed forces. The
child soldier is a well-known phenomenon. In our western society a child's world,
which exist in isolation from the adult world, is no longer a possibility.
Some lessons learned in dealing with the Northern Irish conflict might
turn out to be worthwhile taking up in other situations. In this paper I reflect
with the help of the mimetic theory on peace work done by some Dutch people on
behalf of Northern Ireland between 1973 and 1992. The Northern Irish conflict as
such is not the subject of this paper; the mimetic interpretation of this
conflict was admirably covered by people such as Duncan Morrow and the late
Frank Wright (Morrow. 1995; Wright. 1987 and 1996). I concentrate on the
educational aspects of Dutch peace work done in the Northern Irish context. Here
it suffices to say that the Northern Irish conflict is not a religious one,
though religious labels are being used. It is a conflict between two cultures,
an Irish one and an Anglo-Saxon or British one.
1
Dutch Peace Work on behalf of Northern Ireland
In
1973 I was invited to become a member of staff of a conference for influential
Northern Irishmen in the Netherlands. Glenn Williams, then secretary general of
the KEK (Conference of European Churches) had asked the Dutch Council of
Churches whether it could do something on behalf of Northern Ireland. After some
consultation Williams asked the Dutch adult education center 'De Haaf' to
accommodate 'mixed Roman Catholic and Protestant Irish groups in a quiet and
spiritual atmosphere'. The director of this center, Aat van Rhijn, a
Presbyterian minister, asked me to participate in the conference because he
wanted a Catholic priest to make the Roman Catholic Northern Irishmen feel
represented on the staff.[1]
A laywoman, Hermine Keuning, was the third member of the staff. The Dutch
Reformed Church provided money. In April 1973 a visit was made to Belfast and
contact was established with the Irish Council of Churches; it soon became our
Northern Irish counterpart.
In September a first conference was held, quickly followed by a second
one. From participants of the first conference a new request for a conference
was made and after this one even more conferences were organized, altogether 18
between 1973 and 1983. We worked with neighbourhood groups, politicians,
paramilitaries, social workers, police officers, adult educators, social workers,
journalists and editors, catholic and protestant clergymen. In the conferences
of the protestant politicians and the clergy it was not possible to have a mixed
group; we had to be content with having some either Catholic or Protestant 'observers'
at the conference.
In the late seventies the security situation in Northern Ireland improved.
The necessity of traveling to the Netherlands to have a conference became less
evident. Because our work remained in demand, we organized weekends in Northern
Ireland itself from 1981 onwards, mainly in Corrymeela, an ecumenical adult
education center near Ballycastle.
Money was coming from several sources, but mainly from the Dutch Reformed
Church. To handle the money well we decided in 1975 to become a trust: the 'Dutch
Northern Irish Advisory Committee'. It was typical of this trust that its
constitution stipulated that no conference or any other activity could be
undertaken without the consent of the Northern Irish members even when the
latter happened to be numerically a minority. The Northern Irish members were so
to speak the employers, the Dutch members were the employees, they run the
conferences and provided the money as well. In this way meddling in Northern
Irish affairs by the Dutch members was prevented. The membership of the
committee changed a couple of times. In 1992 the committee was dissolved: it had
run its course, people in Northern Ireland took over the work with a new
organization 'Understanding conflict... and finding ways out of it'.
Our
work was done on the basis of the tradition of Dutch adult education. The
starting point of this kind of work is the conviction that every adult is
responsible for his or her learning process. The facilitator initiates this
process, guards it and tries to shape it. The goal of this learning process is
to enable a person to make a contribution to social change and to the
improvement of the situation in which he or she finds him/herself. The person is
him/herself part of this process.
The learning process takes place in a group. This group represents to a
certain extent the social and personal situation in which the participants are
living. It is not an arbitrary group such as a school class. It is composed of
people who share a similar situation and have the same interests. Though some
input from outside the group may be desirable or even necessary, the group
itself is often quite knowledgeable. The greater part of any conference is used
to communicate to one another the knowledge that is contained in the group
itself. The facilitator uses different methods to bring this knowledge to the
surface and to promote the exchange of facts, emotions and experience. Every
participant shares responsibility for what happens in the group.
The learning process starts by analyzing and defining the common
questions and problems of the participants. In this they are already taking
their responsibility both for the learning process and for their social and
personal situation. The process demands a certain distance from the situation in
which the participants live. They leave their home and work for some days and
come together in a conference center. They must have an issue, a subject or
theme that to some extent unites them, and some awareness of what they want to
learn; in the process itself the more concrete aims of the learning process may
change. The participants should feel free and secure; a general rule is: 'everything
said in this room remains in this room'. The conference center must provide a
hospitable environment. At such conferences the informal part is at least as
important as the official programmed.
The facilitator ought to provide sufficient information for the
participants to analyze the situation and to find ways to deal with it. Input
from outside the group may be indispensable. The facilitator must have some
insight into the situation from which the participants are coming. An intake
interview and some general exploration of the situation may be required. However,
he or she is learning too; the facilitator is not supposed to have a complete
analysis of the situation or to be able to offer solutions. This may even hinder
his/her listening to what the participants have to say. At the end of the
conference the participants evaluate what they learned and try to find ways of
applying their knowledge to the situation where they come from.
1.3
Running a conference
This
educational model was used for our conferences. The issue was always the same:
how to promote peace in Northern Ireland. The participants left their country:
the security situation often demanded this, but it was part and parcel of the
learning process as well. In this way they were able to look at their situation
from a distance and to reflect on their responsibility in this violent
predicament. Our - certainly at the
beginning - very limited knowledge of the ins and outs of the Northern Irish
society turned out to be a great asset. By posing our 'stupid' questions the
participants were forced to profoundly reflect on what was self-evident for them.
Going to the Netherlands appealed to the Northern Irish because 'King Billy',
William of Orange, king of England, is a part of Northern Irish history and
mythology. (Most Dutch people are hardly aware of this.)
Being abroad (often for the first time), having been invited free from
charge, the working method and above all the presence of the staff made it
possible that the Catholic and Protestant participants could have talks, even
confrontations, without a polarization that would have made the progress of the
process impossible. Feelings of resistance among the participants were used by
the staff to bring about change. The fact that the Catholics often used an Irish
passport to come to the conference and the Protestants a British one gave an
opportunity to reflect on what identity entails.
We always started the formal part of the programmed by a lecture by a
high Dutch civil servant on the way the three groups within Dutch society
(Protestants, Catholics, liberals/socialists) had succeeded to live together as
'three peoples rolled into one'. The way Protestants, Catholics and liberals/socialists
formed their 'pillars' in Dutch society never failed to evoke amazement and
often gave to the participants the feeling that the way Catholics and
Protestants are living together in Northern Ireland is not all that bad, at
least not in more peaceful times. Depending on the composition of the group we
invited more lecturers, organized meetings with politicians, high police
officers, representatives of local authorities, media people, neighborhood
workers etc. We always made one or more trips to a place of interest for the
group. The purpose never was to show off - look how civilized our police are and
how sophisticated our politicians are - nor to suggest that Dutch solutions for
Dutch problems could be of use for Northern Ireland. Lectures and trips provided
a mirror by which the participants could analyze their own situation and were
stimulated to find their own solutions. The Dutch way of doing things was
presented as a way of dealing with 'social conflict and social change' - the
title of our first conference.
On Sundays both a catholic mass and a protestant service were celebrated;
all participants were invited to take part in both services but everybody was
free to decline.
1.4
Dealing with conflict
At
the beginning our knowledge of conflict theories was limited. Our purpose was to
find a common ground between the participants. Can you as members of the same
neighborhood find a common ground in providing playing fields for children and
social centers? Can you as members of paramilitary organizations, which have to
make money to help out prisoners wives, have a common interest in the process
of building up cooperatives? Don't you have the problem of unemployment in
common? We slowly realized that having something in common is the root of
violence as well - why have a conflict if you have nothing in common? We learned
to distinguish between 'associated' (almost messianic) peace and 'dissociative'
peace - in other words, separating the conflicting parties as much as possible.
A solution to the Northern Irish conflict seemed out of the question, but would
it be possible to regulate the conflict? For a brief period we tried to look for
common symbols, only to soon discover that symbols are of major importance in
Northern Ireland and continually are the object of rivalry.
In our visits to Northern Ireland in preparation for our conferences we
learned that the more sophisticated the struggle against terrorism became the
more sophisticated the terrorists became. We noted the weakening of the
political center and the rise in power of the extremes, especially when some
action or political move seemed to bring some victory to either Catholics or
Protestants. We became aware of the strong emotional bonds people in Northern
Ireland have with the word 'community'. We discovered that many people in
Northern Ireland had much to lose when peace would come: subsidies for
businessmen, impressive technical tools and high salaries for policemen,
interest from the international press for politicians, full churches for the
clergy. It dawned on us that at the same time we were dealing with two
minorities and two majorities in Northern Ireland: the Protestant majority in
Northern Ireland is a minority in the whole of Ireland, the Catholic minority in
Northern Ireland is a majority in the whole of Ireland. Moreover, while the
Catholics do not have any doubts about their Irish identity, the Protestants are
uncertain about what their identity as loyalists - loyalty to the British Crown
- entails. Generally they feel more threatened and on our conferences they were
more defensive than the Catholics. All the Churches in Ireland - so we learned -
seem to stand for morality rather than for a spirituality of liberation. They
all tend to be rather fundamentalist, either concerning scriptural exegesis or
dogma. Though the representatives of the media claimed that they were only
reporting events, it became clear to us that the media are a part of the
conflict; the terrorists are aware of this and often plan their killings at such
a time that a full report could be expected. At one time we were present at the
moment that the coffins of two young men, victims of a sectarian killing, were
carried out of their houses to be brought to church for the funeral: the women
and children standing in the door, the men guarding the street. We 'saw' the
division into gender, the women ruling over the house, the men guarding the
public space. We always had very few women at our conferences and we now
understood why. Subsequently we succeeded in organizing some study days for
women in Belfast. Partly through them we discovered that the relationship
between mother and son is more important in Northern Ireland than the one
between wife and husband. All those insights were taken up in our running of the
conferences.
From 1978 onwards we came into contact with the work of René Girard.
From about 1981 the mimetic theory became an integral part of our work. It
placed all those insights we had gathered into perspective. We saw the mimetic
theory 'in action' in front of us: mimesis, the mimetic desire, model/obstacle,
differences, rivalry, escalation, contagion, Scapegoating. The theory made us
aware of the mythologies of the Irish struggle against Britain and of the partly
pagan and partly Christian background of those mythologies (Kearney, 1978). One
of the most striking examples is the poster of the Irish nationalist P. Pearse,
lying in the lap of 'mother Ireland' with the republican tricolor in her hand,
which was spread around Dublin after his execution in 1916. This picture is a
clear reference to both Christ and to the strong desire to shed one's blood for
'mother Ireland' and to become one of Ireland's heroes. The sacrificial
character of the spirituality and theology of the Churches in Northern Ireland
became clear to us. The mimetic theory helped us to read Scripture with new eyes
and to interpret religion, as among other things, a way of finding peace in
society. This is very relevant for Northern Ireland where church going and
religious symbols are still very important.
This brought about a change in the goals of our conferences, especially
of those in Corrymeela center: the introduction of the mimetic theory itself
became our educational goal. We offered this theory as a possibility of
reflecting on the Northern Irish conflict. We were able to convince high police
officials that there was a strong similarity between policemen and terrorists
and together we tried to find a way out. During the last years of my activities
in Northern Ireland I was active in working with groups reading scriptural texts
because some of them are used as shibboleths and are as such a part of the
conflict (Lascaris, 1993).
What
were the results of our work? It is difficult to measure this. How does one
register a killing not executed, a brick not being thrown, an increase in mutual
understanding? Some results were very visible: a community center set up, a more
balanced way of reporting 'incidents', a smoother running of a peace group. In
1975 the Feakle cease-fire came into being as an indirect result of our third
conference; a participant, the Rev. Bill Arlow, initiated those peace talks on
the basis of his experience of the dialogue between Protestants and Catholics in
this conference. People learned to listen to and to respect those from the other
side of the divide. People changed and got a different perspective on the
so-called 'troubles'. How this worked out in their individual lives and in their
contribution to society cannot be recovered. The decision of people in Northern
Ireland to continue our work in a new way was perhaps the best result of all.
We who ran the conferences were immensely enriched. We learned a great
deal intellectually. Being touched by the suffering of people in Northern
Ireland enriched our humanity. We met many people from very different walks of
life and every meeting was a challenge, a confrontation, and an enriching
moment. The peace work done on behalf of Northern Ireland left many traces in my
theological work.
Some conferences were close to a disaster. In one or two conferences,
both in Holland and in Northern Ireland, the so-called key people did not turn
up. The secret conference with the paramilitaries in November 1975 - some of the
participants were high ranking in their organizations - went well though we did
not succeed in bringing about much informal contact. At the end someone,
probably the second in command of the Ulster Defense Association, leaked to the
international press. Though everybody stayed and the conference continued it was
not possible to achieve anything and to initiate a similar conference later. The
journalists of the 1983 North-South Communications conference lost interest when
in the middle of it all Margareth Thatcher called for new elections. The Roman
Catholic clergy conference (June 1977) failed, partly because of a lack of
freedom in the group in which no one dared to take the risk of being seemingly
disloyal, partly because they felt attacked by being confronted with the Dutch
Catholic Church. We as a staff lost all credibility in their eyes when they
thought they heard a Dutch protestant lady using the word 'contraceptives'
though she only said 'family planning'.
Another recurrent problem was that afterwards several participants soon
changed job or got another position or rank; this happened especially to social
workers and police officers. They needed all their energies to adapt to their
new job and lost somehow what they had discovered and learned on the conference.
We often lost contact with them.
Looking back, we do not have the illusion of having made a major
contribution to the peace process in Northern Ireland, but we sowed some seeds.
One of the limitations of this kind of work is that it is impossible to keep
track of the participants of a conference. This is not even desirable: people
have to go back to their own situation, of which we do not form a part. Not
being native English speakers and not having grown up with the fact that in
Northern Ireland the same words often have a different meaning for Catholics and
Protestants, we sometimes overestimated the possibility of finding a common
language. We clearly underestimated the strength of the mimetic relationship
people have with the group they come from: their loyalty to the group and to the
past - often invisible and unspoken -, their fear of being seen as a defector by
family, friends and colleagues.
Peace work is a serious business but we had our hilarious moments as well.
At the first conference part of the luggage arrived one day late so that
Protestants had to make use of 'Catholic' shavers and Catholics had to wash with
'Protestant' soap. After that we prayed before every conference that the same
thing would happen again and sometimes the Airways complied. A Catholic priest
and a hard line Orange lady getting lost together in the village helped the
whole group to cement together. We were impressed by the protestant politicians
who refused consistently to drink alcoholic liquor until after the conference we
found numerous whisky bottles under the beds - all of them empty.
In
the second part of this paper I offer some reflections on Girard'_ view on
education, our educational work on behalf of Northern Ireland, the usefulness of
the mimetic theory in conflict situations, peace education in teaching
institutions, the mimetic character of justice and the limits of peace education.
2.1
René Girard and education
René
Girard did not write much on education. According to him children are not able
to make a distinction between what should or should not be imitated. Children
simply imitate. I agree so far. The teacher is pleased, he says, about the
progress his pupil is making until the moment the pupil seems to surpass the
teacher: then the teacher will become hostile instead of helpful (Girard, 1978,
314-315). Here Girard seems to rely on his experience of the relationship
between a supervisor and a research student in university or even to refer to
Socrates and the Socratic tradition. However, this is a very restricted view of
teaching that is rightly criticized (Haas 109-118). Most teaching happens in
groups. The pupils imitate one another more than that they imitate the teacher.
When the class or group is insecure it is more likely that one of the classmates
is scapegoated than the teacher. The teacher is far above them as an 'exterior
mediator' or a 'transcendent figure'. A good teacher will accept it as one of
his tasks to keep order and to prevent such hostile rivalries between his pupils
that chaos abounds and teaching becomes impossible. She/he may try to promote
rivalry in order to challenge everybody so as to get better teaching results but
he/she will know that there are limits to this. Skilled teachers will be aware
of the disastrous consequences for pupils who are being scapegoated by their
classmates and will do their utmost to prevent this happening. The teacher will
take care that the subject matter remains in the center and will offer
interesting material so that he/she acts as a facilitator rather than presenting
him/herself as a model to be imitated. The pupils will imitate the teacher by
concentrating on the skill or subject that is being taught.
Moreover, in many schools pupils work in small units in which cooperation
rather than competition is promoted. This kind of teaching makes the children
partly responsible for their learning process and for the learning process of
the group. They are free albeit within limits to learn in their own way. The
pupils thus are placed on the road to adulthood. The child discovers that
something outside and above him/herself - in this case the subject matter and
the learning process - is desirable rather than to become like a fellow child or
like the teacher and to end up in rivalry.
We may mourn the loss of close educational relationships between teachers
and pupils and between parents and their children. In many families children
have their own TV-set, computer and computer games. Parents hardly know what the
children learn at school, watch on TV and the Internet and which games they play.
However this loss may be a profit as well. Children will have more models to be
imitated and, though it may take more time to become an adult, they will have
more space to make choices and to be free from double binds; they will rival
less their parents and teachers. They may become more creative. This creativity
that originates in the meeting with a variety of models will be much needed. For
in our postmodern time education cannot pretend to prepare pupils to enter a
world, which is more or less like the world in which their parents and teachers
live. The world in which they and their children will live may be very different
and reveal great ruptures with the past.
In today's world the personal integrity of parents and teachers is at
least as important as their educational skills. If parents and teachers who try
to live in a responsible way become worthwhile models to be imitated, their
children may be able to view themselves as active, historical subjects and to
accept their responsibilities for peace, justice and the preservation of life (Vriens
410; Haavelsrud 264). After all, the latter is the true purpose of any education.
Looking
back at our conferences, it was possible to work with rival parties within one
group because there was some kind of 'transcendence' or 'exterior mediator'.
This 'transcendence' was formed by several different factors. The whole process
was initiated and guarded by an 'exterior mediator': the invitations came from
abroad, a staff composed of foreigners who lived outside the conflict, going
abroad in exile so to speak, meeting people who did not always understood and
spoke English and had to be interpreted, the learning process, discovering new
methods of learning, being confronted with the strange solutions of a foreign
country to regulate its conflicts, meeting with strange, even shocking habits
such as eating raw herring, discovering they have quite a lot in common over
against those foreigners and their culture. It was not an evil 'transcendence':
a hospitable place to stay, a staff that guaranteed security so that it was
possible to speak in relative freedom, people who were interested in the 'troubles'.
Even when we worked in Northern Ireland being foreigners was an asset: we
remained almost literally 'exterior mediators'.
The staff was of course scapegoated but this was a cultural event, not a
personal one. It drew feelings of insecurity, hostility, respect and
gratefulness towards itself and made it thus possible for the group to work
together in relative peace. It was not possible to drive this 'scapegoat' out
with verbal or even physical violence because the distance between participants
and members of the staff was too great. Moreover the staff always pointed away
from itself towards the responsibility of the group and of each participant for
social change in Northern Ireland.
Every culture is based on violence. Education is a cultural activity. It
may make a contribution to the transformation of society, but it cannot place
itself outside culture with its violent past. By being transferred to a place
outside their country, people were partly placed outside their culture. Their
language, customs and identities traveled with them, but a small distance was
created over against them. Dutch society may be as violent as the Northern Irish
one, but it was different. The adult education center 'De Haaf' provided a
'spiritual' place where at least people were aware that there is a promise of a
world to come without violence. In Northern Ireland the adult education center 'Corrymeela'
tries to be such a place. Such places always have difficulties to balance
accounts for they do not fit in in our society. Having such centers offers rich
opportunities of making a contribution to social change.
2.3
Usefulness of the mimetic theory
Our
work suggests that interventions, based on the mimetic theory, that promote
peace and overcome conflict can be made on a personal level. Because individuals
change groups may change as well. Institutions, how unassailable they look like,
are populated by individuals and can be changed too, though the road may be long
and weary. We soon discovered that it was possible to convince, for example,
high police officers to do something unexpected so as to break the vicious
circles of violence, but concerning decision making they were always dependent
on many other people, such as British and Irish politicians, who again felt
dependent on other politicians and on the electorate. The practical effects of
peace work based on the mimetic theory are thus limited, at least in the short
run. However, this is probably true of any peace work. In the gospels Jesus
shows himself to be a master in the application of the mimetic theory and in
finding paradoxical solutions, but his success was very limited in his lifetime.
2.4
Peace education at school
As
far as I know peace education is not a regular teaching subject in schools and
universities anywhere in Europe. When peace education takes place explicitly, it
is nearly always as part of the curriculum of religion, history or sociology.
Racism may be a special theme within a larger subject. Other themes may be:
information about a conflict such as in Northern Ireland, political and economic
relationships, and the richness of cultural differences. On the basis of my work
in Northern Ireland I suggest that teaching the mechanisms of conflict and
violence and especially the mimetic theory should form the heart of any peace
education. It may well have an immediate impact. Children have to deal with
conflicts all the time, conflicts with fellow pupils, with teachers and parents.
Scapegoating in the class may easily occur. Many children carry weapons with
them at school because somehow they feel threatened or they hope to make some
impact on their rivals. They are confronted with violence in the streets. Where
religion is taught the gospel stories can contribute a lot of educational
material. Religion has more to offer to peace action than mere motivation (Jeurissen.
1993). For teachers in religion this has the extra advantage that they can show
that those stories are often about conflict and peace and as such can teach us
something about conflict in today's world.
2.5
Justice and forgiveness
Reflecting
on our work in Northern Ireland, I have come to the conclusion that the source
of violence is the thirst for justice. People always try to justify their use
of violence by appealing to their right to restore injustices done to them
in the past or in the present. Justice reveals itself to us as mimetic reciprocity.
Children and adults alike want to pay back both the good things received and
the injuries incurred (See: Boszormenyi Nagy). We always are involved in a
kind of accountancy. When the child's debts to his parents and other members
of the family or when their debts to the child are not settled in childhood, all
the people involved will try to take this out on other people, their partner,
their children, on colleagues, neighbors and strangers. The latter become
their scapegoats by which they try to find inner peace and justice. The
dimension of justice is fundamental for human life in such a way that when something
goes wrong between people, it always entails the question as to whether
justice was done. Justice and injustice trickle down into the deepest layers
of a person and either cleanse or poison the source of life. In case of
injustice all other relationships are disturbed, those with oneself, with
other people and with God.
Justice is based on mimesis. The mimetic character of justice is well
expressed in the ancient formula 'you shall give life for life, eye for eye,
tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, bruise for bruise,
wound for wound' (Ex. 21:23-25). Originally this 'law' already regulated
violence and set bounds to it: the victim is not allowed to ask for more than
the eye, the tooth or the hand he lost himself. In the Old Testament revenge - a
word that is much closer to 'justice' in biblical Hebrew than in modern languages
- only entails the death of the perpetrator in the case of murder, of
manslaughter and of bearing false witness that results in the death of the
accused. In all other cases the perpetrator is not punished with bodily
harm but has to pay a fine and make good the damage.
Justice is fundamental to human life. If justice is impossible, life
becomes meaningless. Violence is the denial of the right of existence; somehow
this right has to be restored. The rightful demand that justice should be done
often results in a new act of violence. A circle of endless retaliation starts.
However, it is possible to renounce taking revenge and instead to forgive. The
victim cannot be forced to forgive for this would be another act of violence.
Forgiveness is rather a liberating vision to be offered to the victim. Actually,
many victims do forgive, often surprisingly so.
Violence becomes superfluous when forgiveness is a real possibility.
Forgiveness is an antidote to violence. In both the Old and New Testaments
injustice is not an isolated act of some individual; injustice is a word
that denotes a broken and unjust relationship. Forgiveness is not a feeling
but is the creation of a new set of relationships. It is saying to the
perpetrator: in spite of what you have done to me and in spite of my anger and
grief and though I hope to never meet you again, go in peace and lead a fruitful
life. Forgiveness is re-creating the world, putting an end to violence, bringing
about new and just relationships.
In and after the exile forgiveness increasingly became a central
theme in the Old Testament; we do not know why this is so (Koch 184-206). The
Old Testament is convinced that forgiveness can be granted, albeit on certain
conditions: justice has to be done and justice entails reciprocity. The guilty
person has to admit his or her guilt, must make good the damage and has to
pay an extra one fifth of the value of the damage to the injured party.
Subsequently, receiving forgiveness is confirmed in a sacrifice in the
temple (Lev. 6:1-7) (Sanders. 1992. 47-145).
Jesus was one of those wandering preachers who hoped for a restoration
of Israel. For him, as for every Jew, sinners were people who violated the order
of justice and made human life meaningless. In this Jesus did not differ from his
contemporaries. Modern scholars agree that Jesus only departed from the religious
and social practice of his time in one aspect: he forgave unconditionally
(Sanders. 1985; Dunn). He granted forgiveness so that people would change their
ways. This seems to be a minimal change; most scholars note it but do not realize
that this is the turning point between Old and New Testament. Jesus, for example,
accepted tax collectors - they were both political collaborators and
extortionist - into his group that was supposed to be the image of how the new
and restored Israel should look. Many tax-collectors were excluded from
the believing community for ever because they were not able to fulfill the
conditions laid down in Lev. 6:1-7.
Granting forgiveness, and above all unconditional forgiveness, is beyond
ordinary human possibilities, for human beings grow up and become adults
having learned to act on the basis of mimetic reciprocity. Anthropologically
speaking Jesus refers to the situation between parents and infant: in this
situation an infant is cared for without demands on him or her to pay back
this benefit in any way.
From a theological point of view unconditional forgiveness sets people
free from violence. Injustice is not responded to with violence according to the
law of reciprocity. A new set of relationships is created.
Therapies can empower people to manage once again their lives after
terrible traumatic events, but they cannot give people the ability to forgive.
It is impossible to require the power of forgiveness by education or by doing
a therapy or by forcing oneself to it because the Church tells you to do so.
In preaching the emphasis is often placed on the fact that God forgives people;
this is true and it often becomes a stepping stone to the gift of being able
to forgive. However, the ability to forgive unconditionally is the greatest
gift of the gospel to this world. It is the true antidote to violence.
Nations as such cannot forgive, but individuals can, and thanks to
mimesis they can inspire other people to forgive as well so that an influential
group emerges that is able to forgive and can change the course of history of a
nation though it may well a minority group. In Northern Ireland forgiveness is
slowly appearing on the religious, social and political agenda (The Faith and
Politics Group).
2.6
Limits of education
Education
will not save the world for it is itself a cultural reality. In Northern Ireland
both parties use it as an instrument for the preservation of their social and
religious order. Both culture and education have to be transformed; this can
only happen in a long process of social change. People may think that peace
education is superfluous when a social conflict has been regulated and seemingly
'peace' has descended on the land. The institutes that provide peace education
may belie this work through their institutional violence and the violence of
teachers and pupils. The ability to forgive may be a theme of discussion in
teaching but education cannot give this ability. Peace education can give to
people insights into the mechanisms of violence, make them reflect on their
cultural and social situation and try to convince them to take their
responsibility for peace. However, this modest contribution may be worthwhile
devoting one's life to.
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E-mail adres auteur a.lascaris@hetnet.nl - Dominican Study Center for Theology and Society
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