Forgiving, when it hurts like hell!

By Robin Sam

I was on a train idly looking out the window on Feb 10 when a woman sitting beside me broke the news. A 15-year-old school student had stabbed a teacher to death in Chennai for reprimanding him. My ears perked up at the mention of Chennai. I was nearly 700 km away from Chennai and about to get down at my station. Although the newsman in me woke up because it was an incident that happened in my city, it soon crept back into the innards of my mind. I read the news report in detail only three days later when I returned to Chennai. By then the slain woman teacher, 39-year-old Uma Maheswari, had been buried. Reporting on the funeral service, one of my former colleagues, Daniel George, wrote a poignant news story in The Times of India on Feb 14.

The report said:

“When a teacher pulls you up for not performing, it’s not putting pressure on you but an encouragement to do well in life. She loved her students more than she loved her children. I appeal to all parents to spend quality time with their children, shower them with love and affection as material things are immaterial in life.”

That was 16-year-old R Sangeetha, daughter of slain school teacher M Uma Maheshwari at a memorial service at St Marys Anglo-Indian Higher Secondary School.

A student of class 11 of Ebenezer Marcus Matriculation Residential School in Ambattur, Sangeetha was a picture of maturity and composure four days after a 15-year-old student stabbed her mother to death in a classroom. Accompanying her was her 12-year-old sister Janani…

“Six days a week she spent time with you and only on Sundays I got to see her,” Sangeetha said, as many in the gathering fought tears. “This is an incident which can never be wiped from our hearts, but it is my duty as a daughter to live by the ideals my mother lived for. She was highly religious and spread the word of Christ and lived according to the Bible. Everyone, please keep us in your prayers.”

It was a moving sight when tears rolled down the cheeks of a few students when the hymn ‘How great thou art’ was sung.

Perhaps, you are wondering what makes even adolescent boys resort to such mindless violence. What is it that gnaws at our boys and girls that they don’t see the big picture but wilt like pale flowers at the first rays of a harsh sun? You can blame it on stress, a word unheard of in the last two decades. To the believer, however, it should not come as a surprise because he needs to discern the signs of the times. Loss of love and affection is foretold in the perilous times that we live in.

To blame every ill that plagues the society on Godlessness may sound like an oversimplification of the Gospel, but that, sadly, is the fact.

Turn with me to 2 Timothy 3:2-5: “For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power…”

The God’s Word Translation of the same passage puts it even more directly: “People will be selfish and love money. They will brag, be arrogant, and use abusive language. They will curse their parents, show no gratitude, have no respect for what is holy, and lack normal affection for their families. They will refuse to make peace with anyone. They will be slanderous, lack self-control, be brutal, and have no love for what is good. They will be traitors. They will be reckless and conceited. They will love pleasure rather than God. They will appear to have a godly life, but they will not let its power change them.”

A Christ-less society is a hopeless society.

What struck me most about the Chennai incident was not the brutality of the boy but the grace with which R Sangeetha, the slain teacher’s daughter, addressed the issue. In her appeal to parents, she came up with a three-point solution to tackle adolescent angst: 1) Spend quality time with your children 2) Shower them with love and affection 3) Teach them material things are immaterial in life.

I salute the 16-year-old girl for the testimony of her deceased mother. Even when she herself was trying to come to terms with the sudden and irreparable loss of her mother and grapple with the newly created void in her life, she paid rich tributes to her mother and lifted up the Name of Jesus Christ.

Of course, we have seen it earlier in Gladys Staines’ life.

In 2003, when the Designated CBI Judge M N Patnaik handed out the death sentence to Dara Singh and sentenced 12 others to life imprisonment for killing the Australian missionary, Graham Stuart Staines and his two sons, Gladys Staines, widow of the slain missionary, had said something similar and profound.

“I have forgiven the killers and have no bitterness because forgiveness brings healing and our land needs healing from hatred and violence,” she was reported as saying in a report in The Hindu on Sept 22, 2003.

“God in Christ has forgiven me and expects His followers to do the same. The Bible says: ‘To whomsoever you forgive their sins will be forgiven.’ Therefore, in the light of eternity we all need forgiveness of our sins to enter heaven.”

How was it possible for Sangeetha and Gladys Staines to forgive those who had snatched the lives of their loved ones? Forgiveness can only come when one is truly in Christ.

Psalm 65:3 says: ‘Though we are overwhelmed by our sins, you forgive them all.’

Forgiveness comes from the realization that we ourselves were sinners once, justified by the blood of Jesus Christ (Romans 5:9) and the firm belief that God is sovereign and nothing ever happens in our life without His knowledge.