Apologies: When They Are Warranted and When They Aren’t

We are hearing a lot about apologies these days—calls for them, balks at them, praises and rejections of them. And that’s had me thinking a lot about apologies. As we looked at last time, it’s important to distinguish what we mean by the words we use, so before we get into the meat of this post, it will be helpful to define “apology.”

It seems to be a common belief that to apologize for something means merely saying, “I’m sorry.” A quick internet search will show the definition as being to “express regret for something that one has done wrong.” But as I learned from my parents growing up, a true apology is much more than saying “I’m sorry” or feeling bad for doing something wrong. To apologize, I was taught to say, “I did [this thing], and it was wrong because of [this reason]. I am sorry I did [that]. Will you please forgive me?” In other words, a full apology involves stating what you did that was wrong, showing that you understand why it was wrong, rejecting that wrong behavior, and asking for forgiveness.

Notice that inherent in this conception of an apology is the fact that the person apologizing has personally committed the offense. On a practical level, then, it is actually impossible to apologize for something someone else has done. We can express sadness over the actions of someone else and sympathy with those who were acted against; we can even work to combat the negative effects of someone else’s actions and to prevent such actions from happening again, but we are not able to literally apologize.

With this understanding of what constitutes an apology, we can move forward in looking at whether an apology is warranted in certain situations. The headliner in our current days is calls for people with light skin color to apologize to people of dark skin color because light-skinned ancestors enslaved dark-skinned ancestors in the United States. Based on the definition of an apology that hinges on personal responsibility for one’s own actions, we can see immediately that it is impossible for 21^st-century Americans of Anglo-European descent to apologize for things that their ancestors did to the ancestors of people of African descent. The ancestors are the only ones who can apologize for their actions, and they are dead.

This is (one reason) why I do not ask the people of Salisbury, North Carolina, to apologize for the imprisonment and mistreatment of my Union soldier great-great-great-grandfather Vasa in the Confederate prison camp that existed in their town. This is why I do not demand (or even ask or wish for) an apology from my Japanese friends for Pearl Harbor, nor do they demand one of me for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is why I do not need an apology from my British friends for their 17^th-century countrymen’s fighting against my ancestor Edward in the War for Independence, nor do they ask for one from me for the defeat their county suffered at the hands of mine.

“But slavery is different,” some might argue, “The effects of slavery are still being felt today.” I would not disagree that slavery’s nasty effects are still lurking among us, but I would also suggest that so are the effects of every other situation just mentioned. Families were forever changed by these events that altered the paths their descendants would take and have affected each of our lives today in ways some of which we can see and some of which we are unaware. So if 21^st-century individuals should (and were able to) apologize for slavery of Africans in the United States, there are a host of other groups that should be apologizing to a host of other people as well.

For the sake of discussion, though, let’s say for a moment that these apologies were possible. If apologies by descendants of offenders are warranted to descendants of the offended (and by offended I mean those who had a wrong act committed against them, not those whose feelings are bruised), it is still logically unworkable for this to take place. First, to know who should apologize and to whom, it would require every person to trace their entire ancestral tree to find every possible person who was an offender/offended. As someone who studies and practices genealogy, I can tell you this is possible in some cases but is extremely difficult and time consuming even in those cases where it is possible.  

The next problem arises when it is discovered (as is the case in many situations) that a single person is the descendant of both an offender and an offended. Taking slavery in the United States as an example, one person may be descended from both an enslaved person and an enslaver, either in the most well-known cases of white men impregnating black women they had enslaved or in lesser-well-known cases of black men enslaving other black men. Or one person may be a descendant of both an offender and an anti-offender, such as those who are descended from both an enslaver and an abolitionist. Using the Civil War as an example, there are countless dual-descendants like me who had ancestors on both sides of that bloody conflict. There are also many, like me, who have both Native American ancestors and colonizing ancestors.

Not only does this reality of mixed heritage—which is much more common than people seem to like to admit—make it difficult to identify who should apologize to whom, it reveals that pitting ancestral sides against each other literally pits individuals against themselves. We can see, then, that apologies from 21^st-century individuals to other 21^st-century individuals for actions in which they had no part are literally impossible, and even if possible, are unrealistic.

But—it does not then follow that 21^st-century individuals have nothing to apologize for.

Each of us alive today should be careful that we do not take the unreasonableness of unwarranted apologies and use it as an excuse to avoid examining our own hearts, minds, and behavior for wrong attitudes, thoughts, and actions. Just because we have not enslaved our fellow humans does not mean that we are automatically guiltless toward them, and we would do well to spend time before the Lord in humility, asking Him to shine His spotlight in our hearts and reveal to us anything we need to apologize for and repent of (i.e. forsake and turn the other way from).

For example, we need to ask ourselves: Do I think less of people because of the color of their skin? Do I think less of people because of the way they talk? Do I think less of people because of their level of education? Do I think less of people because of their beliefs? And do I treat them differently as a result? If the answer is yes to any of these questions, then repentance is in order.

Or to get a little more specific . . . As a person with light skin, do I assume when I hear about a certain crime that it was committed by a person with dark skin? Do I assume dark-skinned people all have the same political views? When I see negative behavior, do I think, “Well, of course they did that—they’re black”?  Do I think that dark skin is an indicator of a low work ethic? Do I think that dark-skinned people don’t value family? Do I think that a dark-skinned person must hate me because they’re “black” and I’m “white”? Do I think that people who live in poor communities, regardless of their skin color, are necessarily lazy and less intelligent? Do I think that people who have more wealth than I do, regardless of their skin color, are necessarily stodgy, conceited, out-of-touch, or corrupt?    

As I have been examining my own life, the Lord has shown me how often my first reaction to someone I do not know is to put them in a stereotyped box and then be pleasantly surprised if they show themselves to be different from those negative stereotypes, or similarly, to have low expectations of a person I do not know because of the color of their skin, the way they dress, or because of their socioeconomic status (either lower or higher than mine). This is wrong because it assumes the negative about a person and does not look for their individuality; it evaluates someone based on (often incorrect) generalizations rather than on a person’s unique merits; it defeats a person before they even have a chance to prove themselves; it places more value on a surface-level feature of a person than it does on their character and heart.

I have asked the Lord to forgive me for ever having this view of His image-bearing created beings and have begun to check myself as soon as negative assumptions pop into my head. In His grace, the Lord is helping me change, and I pray that we are all willing to admit where we are wrong, to see the ugliness inside of us (because we all have it), to truly apologize, and to submit to the Lord’s redeeming work in our lives.

For those of us who are followers of Jesus, let’s not let preoccupation with apologies we shouldn’t or can’t give blind us to the apologies we should and can. Let’s not try to avoid the refining work of the Holy Spirit in our lives as He sifts out the dross and makes us more pure that we may better bring Him glory and be more winsome in pointing others to the goodness of His forgiveness and grace. Regardless of the color of our skin, we all have this one thing in common. To paraphrase John Newton, former slave trader and author of the hymn “Amazing Grace,” we are great sinners, against God and against each other, but—praise God—in Christ we have a great Savior who redeems and restores us and makes us one. 

PC: Pam Galagan. Used with permission.