Abayateye: Forgiveness sets us free and gives us peace

The events of 9/11 continue to resonate among the most diabolical devastation mankind has ever known. Our world, and rightly America, has been greatly changed since that day.
On that fateful morning in 2001, not even the thousands of miles between America and my small hometown across the Atlantic Ocean in Ghana, and the typical childhood naivety, was enough to shield me from the raw and deafening impact of the tumbling Twin Towers. TV channels were replete with images of disoriented, wailing victims of the new reality and it became clear that one man masterminded this act. Osama bin Laden’s face quickly emerged as the face of evil, the face of terror haunting the conscience of us all.
Two thousand nine hundred and ninety-six —- that’s the total number of innocent people dying that day, including first responders, the faces of good. Only 19 of the angels of evil who hijacked and redirected American Airlines flights 77 and 11, respectively, to these towers died that day. Evil was real and it appeared to have overcome good.
These assaults were not only against America but against the world and all lovers of freedom and tranquility. After all, al Qaeda and its ambassadors chose New York City for a reason; the city is the best example of the proverbial ‘melting pot’ where people from different backgrounds coexist. In fact, citizens of 80 other nations died with Americans on that day, and this is not to water down the fact that Americans bore the greatest brunt of this carnage.
I’ll say as a prelude that evil should be punished. That is a necessary fundamental for a more perfect and peaceful society, because to be silent in the face of evil is to take the side of evil in itself. It is, however, mind-boggling that our approach to dealing with this particular evil since 9/11 has seemed counterproductive. These approaches have not only destroyed relationships between different members of our communities but also empowered wicked men by giving them exactly what they wanted.
I can imagine how difficult it would be to ask the victims of 9/11, or the victims of the April 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, or those affected by the 2015 San Bernardino attack or even the Orlando nightclub shooting in June this year to forgive. All this evil sprung from the foundation that 9/11 has laid, and being hateful, bitter and vengeful may sound better alternatives than forgiveness.
Actually, some people would say that demanding retribution and destruction to our enemies is the best means to attaining true peace — and even recommend doing so using whatever means necessary.
Unfortunately, identifying and punishing enemies through whatever means has brought our societies more damage than good. Today, we allow the government enormous powers to invade our private communications and activities, we’re involved in costly wars that don’t seem to end, we experience longer queues at our airports and allow ourselves to be subjected to stringent security searches, some very humiliating, and, of course, we deport more immigrants in droves than ever. The idea is that all these will make our communities safer and more peaceful.
But let’s be real with ourselves: Do we really feel safer now than before?
Rather than safety, we have communities and societies plagued by fractured relationships. We seem to have directed our anger, not at the actual forces of evil that need punishment, but at all people who we think don’t look or sound ‘American’ enough. Usually these are people that look different from us, people that mostly share similarities in religious beliefs and national origin to the enemies. They become proxies here at home in our search for retributions and revenge.
Somehow, our methods seem to encourage the so-called ‘homegrown terrorists’ than they discouraged them. Hardly a month goes by without some crazy gun-wielding guy in the news killing innocent citizens.
Have we become too focused on punishing ‘our enemies’ that we forget the importance of forgiveness? The price of unforgiveness is not only physical but also emotional death. As Lewis Smedes would put it, “To forgive is to set a prisoner free and to discover that the prisoner is you.”
On Sunday when we celebrated the 15th anniversary of Patriot Day, I hope it was not only a time for us to reflect on the loss of 2,996 innocent lives in New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia, all in a day. I hope it was also a time we reflected on how much our societies have changed since that day and how much we continue to lose financially, socially and emotionally as we try to punish the perpetrators. I hope we also had a chance to reflect on forgiveness as an alternative virtue.
The forces of evil will have us fighting each other, but let us show that forgiveness is a greater human virtue than vengeance and retribution. That will not be an easy route, but it is a proven route, and one that most of us have tried in our personal relationships.
It will take time to build but will sure help us change our opinions, break the social barriers we’ve erected among ourselves in our communities and help us build new structures upon which true peace and success will rest.
In the end, we should agree with John Connolly that evil is self-destructive and that, no matter how hard evil tries, it will never win. We should not be the victims of this self-destruction because as a society we possess more good than evil.

Philemon Abayateye is a third year PhD student in the Department of Geography and Planning.