We all do bad things.  We hurt those we love and we’re all familiar with the sensation of trying to make up for it.  That action, atonement, making amends for a wrong, is some of the hardest work we ever have to do.

I have attempted atonement in many ways, I’ve confessed, apologised, performed acts of kindness. I’m sure we all have. We write contrite letters and make extravagant promises to reform but the nagging suspicion that all is still not well often remains with us, gnawing and uncomfortable, an intangible dis-ease that we cannot shake.

What’s missing from our efforts to atone for our mistakes is right there in the word itself though.  We can’t atone, literally become ‘at one’, when someone is unwilling to be reconciled, to become ‘at one’, with us.  For atonement to work, we have to be forgiven.

Christians recognise that atonement and forgiveness are intimately connected. God’s forgiveness of human sin, and Jesus death on the cross – his act of atonement for human wrongdoing – are practically inseparable. Without the cross, forgiveness would be impossible.  But equally, without forgiveness, that cross would be pointless. Both are vital.

Desmond Tutu, the great former archbishop of Cape Town, has thought about this harder than most.  As chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission he recognised that, in South Africa, any attempt by the white community to repair the damage done by apartheid would be futile unless accompanied by the possibility of forgiveness.  “Without forgiveness,” he said, “there’s no future”.

In my life, I have struggled to atone for my own wrongdoing, especially in my marriage.  I know what it is to be both forgiven and unforgiven and I know that Tutu is right.  Without forgiveness, I can try to atone until I’m blue in the face but it will be in vain.  With it, my necessary attempts to repair what I’ve broken might, finally, bear fruit in reconciliation, wholeness and peace.

I post this with some reservation, and I am fairly sure I was wrong to broadcast it, as it seems to place responsibility for my healing on someone else’s shoulders. Some broken things are not able simply to be repaired; and that is my burden and no-one else’s.