What Forgiveness Is Not

Commentary

Last week, we hosted our monthly Brownstone Institute Supper Club at Sovereignty Ranch. Our guest speaker was Mikki Willis, producer of Plandemic, The Great Awakening, and several other films that became touchstones for millions of people trying to make sense of the COVID-19 era.

I expected the conversation to focus on public health, censorship, and the lingering questions many people still have about those years. It did. But what stayed with me most had very little to do with science, politics, or policy. It was a conversation about forgiveness.

Mikki spoke candidly about friendships lost during COVID-19, the pain of being misunderstood, and the reality that many of the apologies people hoped for never came. There were moments when emotion caught in his throat as he reflected on people he once loved and trusted. The hurt was still visible, but so was the peace that had come from refusing to carry that hurt forever.

One of the most powerful ideas he shared was that what gives a two-dimensional image depth is shadow. Without shadow there is no contrast, and without contrast there is no depth. The same is true of life. The difficult moments, the betrayals, the losses, and the disappointments create the depth that allows us to appreciate the full picture. But we cannot allow the shadows to become the whole picture. If we focus only on darkness, we lose sight of the beauty, growth, wisdom, and purpose that exist alongside it.

That idea hit me harder than I expected.

Partly because I have watched my own brother and Mikki experience a fracture in their friendship during COVID-19 that was eventually healed. Seeing two people find their way back to one another after time and distance had come between them is powerful. It is a reminder that relationships can survive even serious disagreements if both people remain willing to do the work.

But the conversation touched something even deeper in me.

During COVID-19, I watched businesses I had spent years building disappear. I watched equity vanish. I watched plans I had worked toward for decades collapse in a matter of months. Like many entrepreneurs, I wasn’t just losing income. I was watching pieces of my life’s work slip away.

I can forgive that. In fact, I believe I have to. Carrying anger forever is a prison. At some point, it weighs more on the person carrying it than on the person who caused it.

At the same time, forgiveness and accountability are not the same thing, and I think we do ourselves a disservice when we pretend they are.

I do not want to move on as if nothing happened. I do not want to pretend businesses were not destroyed, children were not harmed, families were not divided, and fundamental rights were not restricted. I do not want us to collectively decide that because enough time has passed, the questions no longer matter.

That is what forgiveness is not.

It is not forgetting. It is not pretending the wound never existed. It is not agreeing that what happened was acceptable. Forgiveness is the decision not to allow the wound to define the rest of your life. Accountability, on the other hand, is the willingness to honestly examine what happened so that we do not repeat the same mistakes.

We need both. Without forgiveness, we remain trapped in bitterness. Without accountability, we guarantee that history repeats itself.

I am deeply grateful for what Mikki Willis brought to the world during COVID-19. His films gave many people the courage to ask questions when asking questions carried real social and professional consequences. Whether someone agreed with every conclusion he reached or not, he helped create space for conversations that powerful institutions often seemed unwilling to have.

What inspired me most last week, however, was not what he did during COVID-19. It was who he has become since. His willingness to forgive, his willingness to continue searching for truth without becoming consumed by anger, and his willingness to keep showing up and encouraging others to do the same struck me as every bit as important as the films themselves.

One of his films was called “The Great Awakening.” As I listened to him speak, I found myself thinking that perhaps the awakening was never only about government, media, medicine, or public policy. Perhaps the deeper awakening is personal.

Every hardship we experience can either become a wound we live inside forever or a lesson that transforms us. Every betrayal can make us smaller or wiser. Every loss can become an excuse for permanent bitterness or the fuel for a better future.

One of the things Mikki reminded us of is that what we see as something that happened to us can become our power. It can become our motivation. It can become the very thing that pushes us toward deeper faith, stronger communities, greater courage, and a clearer understanding of what actually matters.

The shadows are real. They always will be. But they are not the whole picture. If we allow them to be, we surrender the very gifts they came to teach us.

For me, that was the lesson of the evening. Tell the truth about what happened. Refuse to let bitterness consume you. Forgive not just for those who hurt you, but for yourself. Demand accountability when it is warranted. Then get up the next morning and keep building.

We don’t get to choose all of the shadows that enter our lives. We do get to choose what we do with them. We can spend the rest of our lives staring at the darkness, or we can use it to give the picture depth.

That feels a lot like awakening to me.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.