I am sorry for eating all of the chocolate
in the shared snack box.
Sorry is a word which has great power. I am always encouraging my young son to say
sorry. If he is screaming because he
can’t get what he wants, and his parents are refusing to give him what he
wants, then we are stuck in a bad situation.
When he says sorry for screaming unreasonably, we can reset our
relations and move forward. But my son
is a very young child. In the adult
world, should we let people say sorry when they have done something wrong, and
let that apology erase their misbehaviour and reset relations?
A story in the news recently about some
Christian nuns – female officials of a church – who stole 500,000 dollars made
me think about saying sorry. The two
nuns were working as the head-teacher and teacher at a Christian school run by
the local church. They managed to steal
tuition fees and donations from the school’s bank account over a period of
around ten years. They used the money to
fund gambling trips to Las Vegas. Have
you ever noticed that people who cheat their companies out of huge amounts of
money often seem to lose most of it gambling?
Maybe they just get used to taking risks.
Usually when people are caught stealing
500,000 dollars, they are arrested and sent to jail. But in this case, the religious school was
quoted as saying that, “while the police have been informed, no criminal action
will be brought.” The priest in charge
of the nuns’ church was quoted as saying, “The sisters have expressed to me and
asked that I convey to you the deep remorse they each feel for their actions
and ask for your forgiveness and prayers.”
In other words, they said sorry so we are not going to punish them.
If the nuns were two years old, that would
be a sensible response to their crime.
But they are adults. They must
have known that by stealing the money, students at the school would lose
out. Perhaps the school couldn’t afford
improved textbooks or a school trip. And
more importantly, punishment is not really about getting revenge on the
criminal. It is about setting an example
so that the same crime is less likely to happen again. If two other nuns with a gambling habit read
this story, are they more likely or less likely to steal, knowing that they can
just say sorry and all will be forgiven?
Ps. Dear wife, if you are reading this,
could you put some more chocolate in the shared snack box?
Vocabulary:
to erase something – to completely remove
something
misbehaviour – bad or actions
tuition fees – money paid for a student’s
lessons
a donation – money given as a gift or
charity
“no criminal action will be brought” – We
will not try to have [them] punished by the courts
to convey something – to express; to make
known
remorse – deep regret or guilt for one’s
actions
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