Crazy?

In the most recent tragedy down in South Carolina (and isn't sad  we have to qualify it?), there has (again) been finger-pointing at mental illness as the central issue. Yes, of  course, he was crazy, or (to paraphrase Lewis Carroll),  he wouldn't have done it. But there is a problem with such an obvious observation.

• First of all, ascribing this tragedy just to mental illness paints anyone with any sort of psychological problem with the same stigma. When it is pointed out that one out of every four people has to deal with some form of emotional issue, and that covers everything from depression to psychosis, we get a different and less scary perspective. Actually,  very few seriously mentally ill people are any risk to others. To themselves, perhaps. but they can be so scared of others they would avoid any contact sooner than seek them out to harm them.
• Second, this speaks far more to our own fears than it does to anything to do with those who struggle with mental illness. We see stories of phobias, delusions, loss of contact with reality (the vast minority in the field), and we worry that we might have something like this happen to us. We have a bad day, or even a  bad year, and we feel as though we are going crazy, so someone like Dylann Storm Roof becomes a shadow we desperately want to pretend isn't there.
• Most important, the people who suddenly want to focus on mental health are more probably looking for an issue to distract us from looking at the self-evident causes for such tragedies. Racism. Guns. System-wide inequality. (Feel free to add anything I've overlooked.) I do not mean that mental health is not an important issue, nor to pretend someone like Mr. Roof isn't mentally disturbed. But when we focus on that one thing as the only motive, we tend to ignore the broader issues.

It would be a wonderful world if we could act from our rational selves. We were all created in God's image. We've just forgotten that. And in our frantic attempts to recapture what we have lost, we fall into a self-centered view of the world, where we resent others for not doing and being what we want. them to do or be, So when we come up against anyone whose skin is a different color from ours, or who speaks a language we are not familiar with, or whose culture is not in sync with ours, we are so frightened by this threat to our world-view that we  feel a need to eliminate it.And that, my friends, is my suggestion as to the root of the problem.

Forgive and forget?

"So I should pick and chose whom I should forgive?" she asked. It was another turn in what had been a complicated and difficult interchange between us. She has her own reasons for holding high the banner of forgiveness (which, after all, is an essential and central part of Christianity.) And she was asking (actually, I am paraphrasing her words) an important question: do we not follow a faith where unconditional and immediate forgiveness is expected of us?
The problem arises not in forgiveness, as tricky as that might be in itself. It is what we should do next, after forgiving. We  can note that, whenever Jesus forgave, He always did so in context: go, but don't do it again. You got into this because you didn't know. Make reparations to those you have hurt. Get yourself back on a better spiritual path. In other words, Jesus put a sort of price tag on forgiveness: personal accountability
There wasn't anything He  couldn't accept. The infamous "unforgivable sin" is commonly seen as one where the person saw no sin, did not see a need to be forgiven. He hung around sinners, tax collectors and other people frowned upon. In fact, He seemed to prefer their company.
But what  of us? There are those who repeat the same  dysfunctional patterns over and over and over. Yes, we are told to forgive "seventy times seven," a metaphoric number of that time for "infinite." But do we have something we cannot let go of? Many have wounds so deep they seem sure to never heal.
Saying we forgive in such situations may seem appropriate but not always realistic. To quote the Bard, "My prayers fly up, my thoughts remain below. Prayers without thoughts do not to heaven go." Or must forgiving and forgetting go together? What if we claim forgiveness, but forgetting remains out of reach?
And what if the one we must forgive denies any such? Or has passed beyond any point where direct forgiveness is  moot?
Maybe we need to look differently at forgiveness? Maybe it need not be a way of absolving someone of what was done but a way of setting ourselves free? Too often forgiveness (as Jesus hinted in His Prayer) becomes a continuation of the same tug-of-war that that sin/trespass/debt was to begin with?  But if we are to let go, move on, stop this spiritual power struggle, then we need to use words of forgiveness. "I forgive" becomes "I'm free of this."
And we must do as  much for ourselves as those who hurt us, Too often those who have been through a traumatic time will take on the responsibility, as though the abused child "asked for it," or the rape victim was dressed wrongly, or the soldier caught in a firefight should somehow have prevented it. True, we do have responsibility for much, but no one willingly steps in harm's way.
To answer the original question: yes, we choose when and whom to forgive. Not that we are picking whom to forgive, but that we are choosing. Not some  automatic unconditional, universal forgiveness; that's God's job. But making a personal decision, one that we may revisit over and over.