The Church of England uses a communal prayer of penitence. Worshippers confess that they have sinned against their fellow humans through thought, word, and deed, as well as through weakness and our own deliberate fault. It knows the different ways we can hurt each other. Those born of malice are no less damaging or requiring forgiveness than those who have been careless.
Many of our personal contributions to systemic injustice are becoming more obvious as we live in a period when personal contributions are becoming more obvious. The new age of enlightenment has illuminated many dark corners that society has failed to notice. Cricket has just gone through a punishing month. The English game admitted that its anti-racism stance wasn't worth the T-shirts it was printed on after Azeem Rafiq's testimony. Australia's then-captain admitted sending sexually explicit messages to a colleague. The sport's administrators have scrambled with little dignity to contain the aftermath of both cases.
Rafiq wanted to expose the culture of which individuals' actions were a part. The fact that he was undermined with the revelation of antisemitic messages from his past is indicative of our default position, to respond to calls for societal change with charges of hypocrisy.
Each new culture war requires a forensic dig through social media. The need for justice, education and understanding that has inspired such powerful movements as Black Lives Matter and the #MeToo movement is detracted from by each corresponding "Gotcha" moment.
itudinal and behavioural changes in our society are very rapid. Generations Z and Alpha will grow up with a deeper understanding of how ingrained the human instinct to "other" one another is in our political systems and social networks. This is a good time to think about your age.
How many of us can honestly say we haven't laughed at comedy based on stereotypes, like our parents laughing at funny foreigners in 70s sitcoms or Rachel sniggering at the word "homo" in Friends? It is possible that people who used to call each other retards or gay back in the day would not repeat those words today.
We are living in an era where we are being asked to listen and learn in ways that we have never done before.
Having good intentions and being decent in our individual encounters is not enough for many. We are living in an era where we are being asked to listen and learn in ways that we have never done before. If it were easy to admit and apologize for our actions, we could have solved some of the problems. Even saying sorry for the smallest things can be hard to do, especially under the scrutiny of social media.
It is possible to feel horror for the victims of injustice, but also feel sympathy for those caught in the spotlight of their own mistakes. Maybe that is not an altruistic feeling. It was born of the surety that some of our own past thoughts, beliefs and utterances might not be up to snuff.
It feels as though we are living in a world of destruction. In our moral panic, we sacrifice our scapegoats and revel in other people's downfalls, even though there are few enough of us with clean hands. The harder it is for everyone else to own their mistakes, the more loudly we exercise our judgement. If we are trapped in a circle with guns to each other's heads, we can't progress. We have to find a model that tempers justice with mercy. We need to be ready to forgive so that we don't get into so much trouble. We need to make space for grace.
We have to admit that we are all vulnerable to human nature and human flaws. Understanding how or why someone said or did something wrong is not the same as condoning it. Changing our behavior is the most important thing we can do. If we don't fear lifelong judgment and don't feel like we're being unfairly blamed, we're more likely to make good on our promises.
Many of the rituals that allow us to acknowledge communal wrongdoing and encourage us to seek corporate forgiveness have been removed from our secular society. Many would choke on the hypocrisy of the religious establishment's position when they know that many of them have been implicated in oppressive systems of their own. Maybe we have struggled to replace them with something else that can relieve our collective guilt.
We pointed out the mote in our brother's eye. We can hold corporations and other organizations accountable for actions and behaviour that are not in the public eye. The mea culpas done by PR departments these days seem to sound more like liturgy than legalese. Our sport did not welcome you and our game did not accept you as it should have done, according to the press release. It could have been with an amen at the end.
Emma John is a writer.
