CBS News

CBS News reporter, Steve Hartman, profiled the surprising friendship between Jameel McGee and Andrew Collins. McGee was exonerated after spending four years in prison following a wrongful drug-dealing conviction. Collins was the arresting police officer who falsified the report against McGee. Collins would later be caught and would serve a year and a half in prison for this and other crooked actions. (I’ll leave the discussion of the discrepancies of their sentences for another time.) After their releases from prison, both men returned home to Benton Harbor, Michigan and ended up working at Mosaic, a faith-based employment agency.

At Mosaic, Collins confessed and apologized to McGee. McGee graciously forgave him. When Hartman asked McGee if he forgave Collins for Collins’s sake or for his own sake, McGee said, “For our sake,” meaning for the sake of the whole world that desperately needs grace. McGee cited his Christian faith as reason for his gracious actions. The men are now friends and speak publicly about the power of forgiveness.

This forgiveness surprises us because in the moral calculus of the world, McGee had no real reason or demand to extend forgiveness to Collins, who unjustly ruined his life. Most people would see nothing wrong if McGee maintained a grudge against Collins. This story has popped up in several places in my Facebook news feed and some readers have criticized McGee, saying he showed weakness or perpetuated injustice by forgiving Collins. McGee’s grace is alien in a society that keeps long accounts.

Since McGee roots his forgiveness of Collins in his Christian faith, those of us in the Church should find this act especially beautiful, but not unforeseen. McGee aligned himself with God’s kingdom and that is wonderful. We ought to celebrate this forgiveness as an example of God breaking into our unforgiving world. This is a sign of our new Easter reality. I’ve read and watched the story several times with gladness and gratitude.

At the same time, McGee’s act ought not shock us in the Church the way it has shocked the rest of the world. Forgiving our enemy is one of the essential practices of Jesus’s followers. We need to hear and celebrate stories of when such forgiveness happens, but the good news is that McGee is no alien. He has been transformed by the power of Jesus’s grace and love. The Holy Spirit can change each one of us to be as forgiving and loving as McGee has been toward Collins. Stories of this nature ought to be common in our faith communities. If they are not common, we need to take a hard look at ourselves and wonder why the story of a Christian man forgiving his enemy would be so shocking to us.

The response from the Church should not be one of, “I cannot believe such a thing has happened.” Rather our response should be, “Yes, we recognize this act as coming from the God we worship. We joyfully celebrate such a beautiful and wonderful extension of grace. It is what we expect from our sisters and brothers in Christ.” The way our brother Jameel McGee acted is the way Jesus calls all of us to act. That is a beautiful invitation.