Repentance and Forgiveness in Sexual Abuse Cases
My biggest frustration with being Mormon at the moment is how little the people who surround me understand the conditions of repentance, and how different that is from receiving divine forgiveness.
Repentance is the process through which a person makes an honest moral reckoning of their own actions and takes full responsibility for those actions. Not just before God, but openly with others as well.
Forgiveness is the absolution of sins by God, in exchange for full and sincere repentance. That is the condition upon which you receive repentance from God.
God does not forgive people for heinous sins when their repentance is unreal or unfinished. He has no obligation to do so.
Let's talk about this in the context of sexual assault and rape. Because "how can God possibly forgive rapists and sexual predators in a way that would ever be fair and just to their victims?" is a question I've lived with my entire life, long before I ever had the words.
Victims of sexual abuse live with the consequences of those actions for a lifetime. The idea that their abusers could apologize to God once and be forgiven is a farce. That's not justice. That's not repentance.
How is repentance measured then? How does God measure the sincerity of someone else's repentance?
One word: Restitution
To whatever degree their victims suffer, abusers have to personally give that degree of restitution to their victims if their repentance is going to be real and just. That's before forgiveness, whether from God or from the institutional church, can even be on the table as an option.
God is not stupid. He is not mocked by abusers who care more about avoiding the consequences of their actions than the harm they've done. Abusers who are repentant don't deny the harm they've done. They don't expect cheap forgiveness because repentance is not a cheap experience—not for Christ who made it possible, and not the innocent person he suffered for.
If you advocate for easy forgiveness and repentance for rapists and perpetrators of sexual assault, you've imagined a God who would allow mercy to rob justice. Such a God wouldn't be worth the price of the paper his name is printed on.
There are a lot of bishops, stakes presidents, and abusers who are going to be in for a rude awakening when they see God turn away countless men who were formally "forgiven" by the Church for abuse. God is not bound to accept fake apologies and shoddy repentance, just because a church leader declared a predator to be in good standing. There is no power in that declaration except what God will accept, and he does not accept liars into his kingdom.
Repentance and forgiveness are two of the great Christian imperatives. We cheapen them at our own peril. We lift up counterfeits to them to the detriment of our own souls.
