The Evangelical Alliance has designated today as National Forgiveness Day; and it's a lovely idea. It lies behind our own Day of Atonement that we observed a fortnight ago. Of all biblical ideas, forgiveness is the most radical antidote to hate.

I remember the day, back in 1999, when I first sensed its urgency. I was visiting Kosovo at the end of the NATO campaign. You could feel the tension. A few months earlier the Kosovan Albanians had fled for safety. Now it was the other side, the Serbs, who feared for their lives. As I stood in Pristina amid the wreckage of war, I realised that only if the Serbs and Albanians could forgive one another and act so as to be forgiven, would they have a future. If not, they would replay their centuries old hostility to the end of time.

Forgiveness is a religious concept. It comes from the idea of a God who loves us as a parent loves a child. In fact the biblical word for mercy, rachamim, comes from the word rechem meaning a womb. What it means is that once a wrongdoer has apologised for his act and done all he can to mend the harm, we draw a line over the past and begin again. One of the most magnificent examples is at the end of the book of Genesis where Joseph says to his brothers who once sold him into slavery: You intended to harm me but God has turned your intentions to good. With that one act of forgiveness he puts an end to generations of sibling rivalry.

Forgiveness is the only way to live with the past without being held prisoner by the past. Why then is it so difficult? Because it conflicts with our sense of justice. Wrong has been done to us; therefore we feel that it should be avenged. When that wrong is historic, we feel that loyalty to our people demands it even more. Forgiveness can seem like a betrayal. That is why it is so hard.

Why then is it necessary? Because we have a duty to the future as well as to the past - to our children as well as to our ancestors. Long ago Judaism's sages said that God sought to create the world on the basis of justice alone but He saw that it could not survive. That is why He gave us the ability to forgive. In our private lives, and in conflict zones throughout the world, we need it now.

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