Reconciliation is a beautiful thing. After a bitter struggle, if the two sides can regain trust in each other, reconcile and live in peace, it is the greatest example of redemption imaginable.

What makes reconciliation so difficult is the necessity for truth, the requirement that what causes the pain between the parties is addressed, so that there can be real resolution of the bitter conflict.  Without truth, reconciliation is one side agreeing that anything bad that caused the strife is better forgotten than actually addressed and rectified.

Certain things can’t be rectified without tremendous willingness to forgive on the side of the person wronged. No matter how great the willingness, truth is always an essential ingredient of real reconciliation.  Without an honest back and forth there can be no real meeting of the minds, no chance for true redemption.

If I lynched your brother, no matter how badly I felt about it afterwards, I still lynched your brother.   If we want to have reconciliation and I insist that at the time I lynched your brother I was completely right to do it, that story will never be reconciled with what you need after I lynch your brother.  

If I tell you to get over that unfortunate thing that happened to your brother, (distancing myself from my actions with the passive voice, as first year law students are taught to do when they have to admit an inconvenient fact), we have nothing: no truth, no reconciliation.

We can’t heal from an injury inflicted by someone else unless that injury is addressed, unless we have some assurance going forward that the same actions that caused the injury won’t be repeated. Humans usually get very defensive after they lose control and do something atrocious, they would rather not look squarely at something terrible they may have done when they lost control. 

Much easier to forget, justify, split hairs about it, tell you to get over it, blame you for being unforgiving if you don’t get over their little mistake or their long pattern of consistently similar little mistakes.

When the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa worked, former apartheid torturers cried in guilt for what they publicly acknowledged they’d done to their victims. Sometimes the victims would be so moved by the showing of remorse that there would be tears all around and actual reconciliation in the face of deep, deep regret, after honesty that had to be painful as hell, but no real peace comes without truth. 

The harder that truth is to admit, the more essential it is that it be sincerely acknowledged aloud for peace to follow.  Without truth, reconciliation is as empty as any political slogan you can think of.