Lesson video

Hi, my name is Ms. Beeman, we're on lesson 10 of 14 and today's lesson will be talking about forgiveness.

So, in our lesson today we're going to be learning about Christian attitudes towards forgiveness.

We're looking at a case study within Christianity of a woman named Maureen Greaves, who forgave her husbands killers.

Be learning about Islamic attitudes towards forgiveness and looking at the case study of Samera Alinejad, who forgave her killers of her son.

So, before we move on, it is important for me to say that the lesson we're about to complete contains reference to the murder of family members.

For some people, this will be a sensitive topic.

If that applies to you, you may want to do the rest of this lesson with a trusted adult nearby who can support you.

Let's make sure that we are ready for our lesson, please.

So you'll need a pen or a pencil, a piece of paper and a different coloured pen ready for corrections.

You're also going to need to make sure you've got a nice, clear, quiet working space.

So no, no TV, music, turn that off for me, please.

Turn the notifications on your phone off, or put your phone to one side if you're not using it for the lesson.

And then also making sure that you've got a nice space to work in.

If you need to get yourself set up by getting any of those things, than please pause the video now and then un-pause when you're ready to move on and we'll start looking at different views of forgiveness.

Okay? Thank you, hopefully we are ready to move on.

Let us start off with a definition then.

When we talk about forgiveness in this lesson today, we'll be talking about forgiveness is where you show mercy pardoning someone for what they have done wrong.

Essentially saying to someone "I forgive you" is saying that you've shown them mercy.

You're saying that what they've done, you've acknowledged is not okay but you've said, "It's fine, I forgive you for what you've done".

Please, can you make sure you pause the video now and write down this definition for me? Okay.

If you've written down the definition.

Brilliant, thank you so much for doing that.

What we'll do now is I want to get your opinion.

First of all, forgiveness is a topic which is, there's quite a lot of detail in it.

And there's also quite a lot of things I think people say like, "Oh, okay.

Yeah, I understand.

Christian believes this, Muslims believe this".

But actually it's thinking about the specifics of what this looks like in practise can sometimes be quite hard.

So I want us to get thinking about this first, before we look at any of the views.

So I'm going to disappear to ,um, then question you.

So I want you to watch, oh I didn't have to disappear.

But, oh well, that's fine.

I want you to complete the following question.

Spend about three minutes on this.

Do you think you could ever forgive someone who murdered a close member of your family? And then I want you to explain your answer.

So I know it's a really, really horrible and not very nice topic to think about.

But I really want you to consider how you would feel if this happened to you, and how you would respond about this idea of forgiveness.

Do you think you could ever forgive someone? You need to explain your answer.

Of course, there's no right or wrong answer with this.

No one can tell you how you should be responding in these sorts of situations.

But I do want us to keep, to start thinking about it.

So pause the video, write down your thoughts, un-pause when you are ready.

Okay.

I'm going to appear again so you can see my face.

Oh there we go.

So we're going to start with Christine views on forgiveness now.

So Christine views on forgiveness, um, I feel a fairly clear.

But we need to link into why, tho, that Christians believe it's so clear.

Now Christians believe that forgiveness is the centre of Christianity.

And much of this is based on the idea of Jesus dying on the cross for th hume, for the sins of humanity.

Christians, believe that God was, was willing to forgive every human sin by sacrificing Jesus.

And therefore, if God was willing to forgive all of that, which is a huge, a vast number, because humans just will naturally sin.

Then humans should be willing to forgive within their own lives.

They believe that Jesus is the model for all Christians, the perfect example of, of, of how to behave during their life and that Jesus showed compassion, forgiveness, talked about reconciliation, talked about compassion.

And therefore Christians believed they have a duty to forgive people.

Not just that it's encouraged, not to say "oh it will be a nice thing for you to do".

That Christian say, if God has no limit on his forgiveness, then we as human beings should look to forgive others too.

However, Christians would say this doesn't mean that they shouldn't be punished.

It's saying that criminals should still receive some form of punishment, because that's justice, as well as being forgiven.

God is just, and therefore some form of puf, some form of punishment has to be given.

But alongside that punishment should be this idea of forgiveness, reformation, helping someone to get better in their life to improve their behaviour.

So for Christianity, the majority of Christians say forgiveness is a duty.

Now that is difficult, no Christian would say that is easy.

They would acknowledge that it's very difficult in some, some very challenging situations to say that you should forgive.

But many Christians say coming with forgiveness then is this idea of peace and calm, and you're not then keeping vengeance or anger within your, within your heart.

So for many Christians centre of Christianity, Jesus, the model for all Christians taught love, compassion.

That there's no limit to God's forgiveness.

There should be no limit to a human's willingness to forgive, but this does not mean that that criminal shouldn't be punished because that is justice for someone who's punished.

But of course, as we know within Christian thought that those types of punishment, are things like prison and not corporal punishment, which doesn't ,um, practise compassion.

What I'm going to do with you now, is I'm going to give you two verses within Christianity.

And I want you to link these to the Christian ideas of forgiveness.

So we're really want you to unpack what you think those verses are saying.

Don't worry, I'm going to give you answers afterwards.

We'll talk through why that's the correct answer.

So I'm going to disappear so we can do that.

And I'm going to give you the two verses then we'll practise thinking about "What does this actually mean about forgiveness?" You can do it! Let's go.

For the first one is, um, actually let's pop my face back up.

I didn't realise I could, ah there we go.

See that's better.

Isn't it? So I can leave.

I can give you the example and you can see me at the same time.

How lovely.

So, um, to complete the following question, spend about three minutes on this.

So the verse I want to have a look at is, "Forgive them, Father.

They don't know what they are doing." which comes from Luke, I want you to explain for me what this shows Christine's about forgiveness.

To give you some specific context, This is what Jesus says on the cross before his crucifixion.

before he dies, essentially forgiving or asking for forgiveness for those who put him to death.

So I want you to link this for me please.

Tell me what this shows Christians about forgiveness.

I'd like you to pause now for me and then un-pause when you're ready to go through the answer.

Okay? Should we have a look at the answer? So Christians believe this passage shows that God has no limit to his willingness to forgive and that Jesus died on the cross to forgive everyone's sins.

Essentially, Jesus is the model here in saying that he wants his killers to be forgiven.

And therefore Christians would interpret it saying, "if Jesus wants to forgive and God is willing to forgive, then humans themselves should have no limit to their forgiveness too." Let's look at verse two.

So the verse ,um, that I want to have a look at is this one.

where someone asked Jesus, "how many times do I have to forgive him? Seven times? No, not seven times answered Jesus, but 70 times seven." Now this verse in Matthew is Jesus responding to a question about how many times should I be willing to give someone? I want you to see if you can think for me, um, write down what you think this shows Christians believe about forgiveness.

Spend about three minutes on this.

Think about carefully, What this is saying about how often Christians should be willing to forgive.

So pause the video, write down your thoughts un-pause when you're ready to move on.

Oh, where's my face gone? Hang on.

Just put that back up again.

Having a bit of camera issues today.

There we go.

So, answer to what this quotation means then.

So the quotation, "how many times do I have to forgive him? Seven times? No, not seven times answered Jesus, but 70 times seven." Now traditionally Christians would interpret this passage to mean that you should forgive limitless times.

So essentially what Jesus is suggesting here is you should be willing to forgive as many times as is needed.

And so when his disciples ask, how many times do I have to forgive him saying, is it just seven? Jesus is implying no limitless amount.

We're now going to do some longer questions, to test our understanding.

So I'm going to disappear and give you some instructions.

I'd like to pause the video on the next slide to complete your task.

I'm going to give you some questions to answer, and then we'll go through those answers together in a moment.

So the questions here are all true or false questions.

So for each of those statements, want you to decide whether it's true or false, but then also make sure we've explained why.

So copy out the statements, decide whether it's true or false, then give me a reason why for each of them please.

So can you pause the video now for me? And then un-pause when you're ready to go through corrections.

Okay, can you please make sure you've got different coloured pen out ready for corrections? If you're not quite finished, then you can rewind the video, continue with the questions and then un-pause when you're ready.

Ah, but let's get on different coloured pens out.

Let's go through corrections.

So for the first three, "forgiveness is not an important part of Christianity" is false because it said to be at the centre of Christianity because Jesus ,the example for Christians, died to forgive sins.

"Many Christians believe there's a limit to the amount of forgiveness which they should offer" is false because they believe that there's no limit to God's willingness to forgive.

And Jesus taught to forgive 70 times, seven times.

"Many Christians believe Jesus didn't show much forgiveness in his own life." Is false because on the cross while dying, Jesus said of those involved in his death, "forgive them father".

Can you please ,um, pause the video.

Make corrections if you need to, then we'll go through the next three questions.

Okay! Four, "many Christians, believe you should only forgive those who ask to be forgiven." Is false because Jesus forgave, those who didn't ask for forgiveness.

Forgiveness is for the victim too, it helps them to move on in their life to past resentment.

"Many Christians do not believe in punishing criminals." Is false because punishment can be a part of change or reform.

However, punishment just for the sake of causing suffering is not good.

"Many Christians think the first aim of punishment is retribution." Is false because many believe reform is the first aim of punishment.

Again, if you need to make corrections, can you please pause the video now.

Make those corrections, and then when we have finished those corrections we're going to move on to look at some case studies of those people who were willing to forgive, in both Christianity and Islam.

What we're going to look at now is the case study of Maureen Greaves, a Christine who was willing to forgive her husband's murders.

Now of course this is, could be a sensitive topic for some, so if you have not got a trusted adult nearby I don't need think that would be a good idea.

It would be a good idea to get a trusted adult.

So Maureen Greaves ,um, her husband Allen in 2012 on Christmas Eve was on his way to play organ at midnight mass at his local church.

On his way there, he was attacked, uh an unprovoked attack by two local men and they left him for dead.

Three days later, Allen died in hospital.

And of course his family heartbroken, and Maureen says that she was by his bedside praying.

And she sort of had this, sort of like realisation that she had to forgive her husband's killers.

She said, you know, I know that Allen would have forgiven, it's near Christmas time.

And that forgiveness will help me feel, get rid of all this pent up anger and frustration and vengeance.

She said, then no good will come of this, this anger I'm feeling and this upset and hurt.

So she chose to forgive her husband's killers.

Even though of course, Alan did nothing wrong.

It was unprovoked, he didn't deserve it.

But she said that she felt so much better after forgiving her husband's killers.

And she said that she still wanted justice.

So she still wanted them to go to prison for what they've done.

But she also wanted to know, let them know that she had forgiven them.

And a year after his death, the community got together to pray for Allen at the site where he was, was killed.

But also to pray for her husband's killers as well that they could find peace with what they had done.

So I think there's a really strong example of where it must been very hard for Maureen to forgive what happened.

She'd lost her husband.

It was unprovoked.

He'd done nothing wrong, but she said, you know, I know that God would want me to forgive.

I know that Alan would have wanted me to forgive and not to carry around all this hurt and anger.

So what I'm going to get you to do, is just do a couple of quick fire questions.

Just to just recap the story of Maureen and her willingness to forgive her husband's killers.

Maureen forgave, her husband's killers.

Is that true or false? Three.

two.

one.

Good.

That is true.

Maureen did forgive her husband's killers.

Maureen did not believe her husband killers should be punished at all.

Is that true or false? Three.

two.

one.

That's false, She still believed it was right to punish them for them to go to prison for what they'd done as a form of justice.

But she didn't believe that they, they shouldn't have been forgiven.

Well done if you've got those questions correct.

But now we're going to have a look at Islamic views on forgiveness.

Now we're going to look at Islamic views on forgiveness and you'll see, and we'll be able to compare in a moment, the difference between Christianity.

There is a slight difference.

Now, when we talk about punishment within Islam, in reference to forgiveness.

In Islam, punishment is to satisfied, satisfy the victim in society is the idea of a form of justice.

It's payback for what someone has done to a victim or victims family or to society.

Cause the idea then, that punishment is all about justice and unlike Christianity, ,which says, alongside punishment should be forgiveness.

Islam says that forgiveness has no role in the punishment part.

The idea here is that Islam says punishment is punishment to serve justice, as retribution, as a deterrence.

Um but forgiveness doesn't have to come alongside that.

Forgiveness in Islam is important though, it is an important concept.

So Muslims believe they need to ask for forgiveness from Allah for things that they've done wrong, they need to um, they can forgive others, but the most important things that they accept and believe that Allah, one of the 99 names of Allah is "The Merciful".

And that Allah is the person in charge of forgiving people.

And so forgiveness is encouraged, not required within Islam.

Many Muslims say it's important for individuals to seek forgiveness from Allah, for things that they have done.

Especially for unforgivable crimes that humans cannot forgive such as shirk, So equating something as the same as Allah.

But it is not up to an individual human to forgive another, unless they want to.

Sharia law does offer an opportunity for people to forgive.

So with forgivable crimes such as murder, the victim or the victim's family can choose to forgive instead of the death penalty, but that is up to the individual discretion of the person.

What I want us to do now, is to compare Christian and Islamic views on forgiveness.

So we'll just spend about five minutes on this question for me, please.

So I want you to explain how Islamic views on forgiveness are different from Christian views on forgiveness.

So pause the video now for me please.

Write yourself an answer, un-pause when you're ready to go through it with me.

Okay, ready to go through it? Brilliant.

So I've got here, and this doesn't have to be word for word like mine, but it might be helpful to sort of take some parts from it.

So in Christianity, forgiveness is a requirement and obligation, within Islam forgiveness is not a requirement, but instead it is something which is encouraged and is important.

Allah can forgive anyone, who's truly sorry.

So the idea here is this clear idea Christianity is an obligation.

In Islam it's encouraged, but not a requirement because it's ultimately down to Allah to forgive people who are truly sorry.

What we're now going to look at is a case study within Islam of a woman called Samera Alinejad who forgives her son's killer.

So in 2007, Samera's son Ballal, is uh sorry.

Start that over again.

Cause I've got the names confused.

So in 2007 Samera's son, Abdollah is killed by a teenager called Ballal, they're both teenagers.

Um.

And according to Sharia law, um he is, can be executed for this crime because he, because that is the punishment for murder in Sharia law.

Samera says, yes, she is happy for him to be executed as compensation as retribution for the damage that Ballal has caused her family.

And, um, Ballal is on essentially death row waiting for execution for seven years.

In those seven years, Samera doesn't change her mind.

She's absolutely 100% sure that she wants her son's killers to be execute, killer, to be executed.

The day before the execution is said to take place, uh Samera can't sleep.

She's finding it really difficult, and she's even thinking, should I be forgiving Ballal for this? And she says, no, I've not changed my mind.

Her husband says that it's down to you.

You decide what you think is best for you and fought for, um, justice for our son.

And seconds before Ballal is about to be hung.

So he's standing on a chair and it's part of, um, Sharia law that it should be Samera who pushes away the chair, which would leave then Ballal to be hung or hanged.

Um, seconds before she's about to push away that chair she has a change of heart and she goes, I can't do it.

Instead, she slaps Ballal around the face to essentially sort of let out that frustration, that anger, that she feels towards him.

BUt says, I don't want him to be executed.

So the execution is halted Ballal is instead sentenced to prison.

And Samera says in that moment, she felt like weight was lifted.

She felt like she was finally at peace, for seven years She was so caught up in this anger that she felt towards Ballal for killing her son, taking taking son's life.

And she says in that moment, everything, all of that went away and she felt so much better.

So she's an example within Islam, as even in those examples where it is down to the family of the victim to decide, that she changed her decision and she decided to forgive.

And that would have been very difficult after seven years of of getting herself ready for thinking yup, this, he's going to be executed that's justice, she changes her mind.

So we can do some quick fire questions, based on what we've just looked at.

Um just to base on, just making sure we understand what happens in Samera's story in reference to her son.

So let's go.

The killer of Samera's son was due to be executed.

Is that true or false? Three.

two.

one.

Good.

That is true.

So he was due to be executed, Samera This was her decision according to Sharia Law, she says yes, she would like him to be executed.

Samera initially wanted her son's killers to be executed.

Is that true or false? Three.

two.

one.

Good.

That is true.

Initially she does want his, the son's killers to be executed.

Samera did not change her mind about wanting her son's killer to be executed.

True or false three.

two.

one.

false.

She does change her mind in the last seconds before the execution is set to take place.

Well done.

If you've got all of those questions correct.

Now we're going to move on to simply saying thank you and wrapping up our lesson.

Okay.

I want to say a huge big thank you for taking part in our lesson today.

Hopefully you've learned a lot about, lots about Christianity and Islam on forgiveness.

So key things just to recap.

Christianity, majority of Christians believe that forgiveness is a duty.

Something that Jesus modelled himself in his life, died on the cross to forgive humanities sins.

This idea of limitless amounts of forgiveness.

In Islam it's encouraged, but not demanded of people to forgive.

And the idea of punishment and forgiveness is sort of separate things.

It's ultimately down to Allah to forgive those people.

We've looked at two case studies as well.

I think they're really, really good examples to use in exam questions.

You don't always have to be including verses from scripture or exam, or teachings from scripture or paraphrasing stories.

What you can also include are these ideas of case studies, because they are examples of Christians and Muslims who in practise have shown what it is like to forgive.

Especially for Christianity, it's an example of where it's a duty to forgive this person.

And Maureen, really felt like she had to forgive to sort of let go of all that anger.

And although in Islam, this idea that forgiveness is encouraged.

Samera's story is a really good example of Someone who forgave and felt better for it.

but of course she was not expected to.

So huge thank you for our lesson today.

I hope you've really enjoyed it.

And I hope to see you again soon.

See you later.