On a Saturday in May, my son received a phone call from a stranger. He was in the middle of running some errands and picked up quickly, without seeing who was calling.
The caller proceeded to convince him that he had missed an obligation to serve on a jury. Because of this “federal offense,” he would need to pay a fine. What’s more, if he hung up the phone, he would be found by federal marshals and arrested immediately.
The caller was smooth, quick, and assertive. He had an answer for everything, and he was insistent that there was only one way to right this wrong: my son should deposit thousands of dollars into a certain account, accessible via a bitcoin machine nearby. After nearly three hours on the phone, my son finally freed himself from this fraudulent tyranny, but not before he had lost most of the money he possessed in this world.
You may be scratching your head at how this could occur, and believe me when I tell you, it was a surprise to us as well. These things seem to happen so fast, and the callers are so slick and aggressive, that even a financial columnist was recently tricked out of tens of thousands of dollars.[1] It is always a pressing matter; it can only be solved with cash; the callers portray themselves as benevolent advocates, interceding for you and taking your part. Add to that the fact that our son is on the autism spectrum and struggles with conversation anyway, and you have the perfect recipe for a crime. The callers must have congratulated themselves on finding him.
After the dust settled, a debt remained. Where there had previously been money (credit), there was a void. My son called the bank and, quite literally, asked for their forgiveness. He filed a police report, seeking justice. In the end, because the criminals were well-practiced, the crime was virtually untraceable, and neither forgiveness nor justice was granted.
To be clear, the forgiveness that my son sought was not on his behalf, but on behalf of the perpetrators. He had done nothing wrong, but he was the one left with the debt. Any forgiveness granted by the bank would ultimately be extended to the wrongdoers, but our son would at least be restored to financial wholeness.
This episode was a good reminder to me that forgiveness is more than a restoration of normalcy. Before restoration can occur, one of the parties has to take on the debt. In my son’s case, there were two possibilities for this action: the bank could take on the debt created by the crime, or the victim could own it. Because a wrong was done, and a debt was created, there is no scenario in which there isn’t some kind of absorption of the debt.
In his excellent book Forgive: Why Should I and How Can I? Tim Keller states:
To forgive is to:
(a) name the wrong truthfully as indeed wrong and punishable (rather than merely excusing it), but also to
(b) identify with the perpetrator as a fellow sinner, to
(c) release the wrongdoer from liability from personal payback by absorbing the debt oneself (rather than merely pardoning), and finally to
(d) aim for reconciliation and the restoration of the relationship that was broken by the wrong (p. 204).
In this definition, justice and forgiveness are both present. We see that forgiveness must include some acknowledgment of injustice. It is best when the acknowledgement resides on both sides: both wrongdoer and victim understand the injustice. In that case, there is repentance, acknowledgement, and forgiveness granted. Is it cynical of me to say that I believe most situations don’t work out this way? Frequently, the victim must absorb the wrongdoing and attempt to move on.
In circumstances in my own life when I struggle to forgive, it is often because I am pushing against this relationship between justice and forgiveness. In refusing to forgive, I’m often making this mistake: I believe that it will achieve justice. In clamoring for justice, I cling to unforgiveness and refuse to absorb the wrong. But unforgiveness does not achieve justice. They are two different things.
In one way, this clarity is freeing. Forgiveness does not mean we ignore the wrong done. On the contrary—forgiveness demands that the truth be told about wrongs done, because wrongdoing incurs debt. It is only when we tell the truth about the debt that we can begin to absorb it.
This is all very clinical when put forth in these terms; the truth is messier. Forgiveness is often a long, arduous work, full of missteps, trips, and hang-ups. Often we must navigate the reality of forgiving while still maintaining boundaries to protect ourselves and others. And the forgiveness that is demanded from a person who insists that no wrong has been done is the most costly of all.
Here we can find solace in the superiority of Christ’s gift to us: Jesus achieved forgiveness through justice. The message of the cross is one that transcends both categories. In His death on the cross, the Son of God was both just (perfectly so, without malice or wrongdoing) and the justifier (able to absorb the wrong on our behalf) (Romans 3.26).
[1] Charlotte Cowles of New York Magazine’s website The Cut tells her story in a 2024 article, “The Day I Put $50,000 in a Shoe Box and Handed It to a Stranger” here: https://www.thecut.com/article/amazon-scam-call-ftc-arrest-warrants.html]. While the article is behind a paywall, interviews with Cowles can be easily found online.
The featured image, “November Lamplight in London,” is courtesy of Lancia E. Smith and is used with her glad permission for Cultivating.
Kelly Keller writes the weekly Substack On the Common, encouraging Christians to labor for the flourishing of their homes, churches, and communities. She is the Managing Editor of Story Warren, as well as a contributor at The Rabbit Room, The Gospel Coalition, and Risen Motherhood. She has her BS in Elementary Education from Messiah University and has taught various ages, but her favorite was worldview and literature with high school students. The “gap” in her resume is actually a window of eighteen years of homeschooling, which she recommends as an effective, though demanding, way of expanding one’s home library.
When she’s not behind her laptop, Kelly enjoys live music, baseball, reading great books, and traveling with her husband, David. Kelly hails from beautiful snowy New England, but after nearly two decades in North Carolina, she feels right at home.
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