I’m a sucker for an apology. Kick me till I’m down, tell me my mother was an ’amster and my father smelt of elderberries, then look me in the eye and say you’re sorry, and I will embrace you (at two metres’ distance) and reinstate you as my bestie.
So when I was shown a letter from Jonathan Fletcher to a victim saying he was ‘so, so’ (double-underlined) ‘sorry’, I wondered why others – who know him better and have spent far longer with him – believe that he isn’t. Of course, none of us can ultimately see into the heart of another – only God can judge, and we must let Him do that.
But many years ago I had cause to give considerable thought to both penitence and forgiveness. My husband Shaun’s employing church, despite its clear legal obligation to house us, failed to do so, rendering our family of seven, including two with registered disabilities and one under two, homeless for the best part of an academic year. The trauma was (and remains) almost indescribable. I am still barely capable of visiting the university city I once loved more than anywhere in the world, and seldom set foot in a church building for fear of the ensuing distress and debilitating depression.
While the church was still abusing us, members frequently exhorted me to ‘forgive’. As recently as two months ago one of them described my ongoing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as my ‘nursing resentment’. (Intriguingly, Jonathan Fletcher himself called my PTSD ‘bitterness’, also clearly implying the fault lies with me.)
When I heard Jonathan Fletcher’s recently-recorded audio interview on the Telegraph website (23 March), I had the same sense of disbelief, that so far as I can see, Jesus’ gentle and radical teaching on forgiveness could be so twisted into a weapon for the further punishment of victims. ‘I’m hoping for the day when they’ll recognise my deep penitence and repentance,’ he says.
Now in general the genuinely penitent do not downplay their sins. Nor demand reinstatement without any attempt at restitution. Nor berate the wronged for failing to forgive. Nor apologise in exchange for recognition or reward.
King David, in 2 Samuel 24, is described as ‘conscience-stricken’. ‘I have sinned greatly in what I have done … I have done a very foolish thing.’
David doesn’t suggest he only sinned a little. Nor was only slightly foolish. Nor that it didn’t amount to much, was unimportant, or some people didn’t mind. Nor reference other occasions when he did good, as if this could argue in his favour. At no point does he offer any self-defence at all. David doesn’t baulk at the punishment, or plead that he doesn’t deserve it.
And he never, ever whinges to God that it’s about time he’s restored to favour, given how sorry he is. On the contrary, here is a man so devastated by his own failings that he begs God to let him, not others, take the consequences.
Compare this with Jonathan Fletcher’s description of his abuse as ‘light-hearted forfeits’ and likening it to ‘giving up chocolate’. Or claiming abuse is ‘hard to define’. (Er… no.) Or dismissing it as merely ‘spiritual’. Even positing one victim ‘had only happy memories.’
He refers to ‘the good … from all this …’ If I cause harm to you, it is not up to me – indeed, anybody – to say good could come out of it. Further, that, ‘it’s good they’ve got help to people who’ve been harmed …’ The first item in an Anglican service is taking responsibility for our own sins. Wouldn’t ‘the people I’ve harmed’ be more appropriate?
Supremely, Jonathan Fletcher trivialises his wickedness. In the Telegraph interview he likens the ruin he has brought on countless lives to advice he once gave to an undergraduate to buy an alarm clock in order to make sure he got up early for quiet times. Apparently this student said it was ‘the best advice I could have had’. But it might have made someone else feel guilty.
Painful spankings, naked contact, bullying, domineering control and life-long trauma reduced to advice on buying a clock… Does this come across as someone contrite with unbearable pain and sorrow at the terrible damage he has done?
