The
second great power of forgiveness is that it can loosen the stranglehold of
guilt in the perpetrator.
Guilt does its corrosive work
even when consciously repressed. In 1993 a Ku Klux Klansman named Henry
Alexander made a confession to his wife. In 1957 he and several other Klansmen
had pulled a black truck driver from his cab, marched him to a deserted bridge
high above a swift river, and made him jump, screaming to his death. Alexander
was charged with the crime in 1976—it took nearly twenty years to bring him to
trial—pleaded innocent and was acquitted by a white jury. For thirty-six years
he insisted on his innocence, until the day in 1993 when he confessed the truth
to his wife. “I don’t even know what God has planned for me. I don’t even know
how to pray for myself,” he told her. A few days later, he died.
Alexander’s
wife wrote a letter of apology to the black man’s widow, a letter subsequently
printed in The New York Times. “Henry
lived a lie all his life, and he made me live it too,” she wrote. For all those
years, she had believed her husband’s protestation of innocence. He showed no
outward sign of remorse until the last days of his life, too late to attempt
public restitution. Yet he could not carry the terrible secret of guilt to his
grave. After thirty-six years of fierce denial, he still needed the release
only forgiveness could provide. (Philip Yancey, What’s So Amazing about Grace?),
100.
