Archive for March, 2012
I would like to teach forgiveness to some people, but I find that they are not receptive to the idea that forgiveness is worthwhile. How do I proceed, given their resistance?
I have three points for you to consider.
First, because forgiveness is ultimately their choice, if they are not ready to proceed, you should honor that.
Second, a person’s rejection of forgiveness today is not necessarily his or her final word on the matter. So, be aware of changes in attitude.
Third, there is nothing wrong with occasionally discussing forgiveness, bringing it up in conversation, as long as you do not push an agenda. Conversation concerns at least two people and their worlds. If your world includes forgiveness, then sharing that world with others is legitimate, again as long as you are sharing who you are and not using this in a manipulative way. Who you are may play a part in whom the other will become as you share this aspect of yourself.
Restorative Justice Program Helps Mother of Deceased to See Killer’s Humanity
The Mirror newspaper of London – Grace Idowu lost her son to a knife-attacker in South London and as part of a restorative justice program, she recently visited in prison the teenage boy who took her son’s life. Mrs. Idowu reported that she was surprised to see a remorseful, sobbing boy in front of her. She was able to see his deep regret and when he asked her to forgive him, she did.
She imagined he would be a monster. Most parents would never want to take a second look at the person who took their precious child away from them. But Grace, 52, made the bold decision to go and visit Elijah Dayoni in prison after he brutally knifed her 14-year-old son David to death.
And today she insists she has totally forgiven Dayoni for what he did… and wants to help him become a better person.
A Critique of the Prologue to PBS’s New Film
In April, a new documentary will be shown on PBS television: “Forgiveness: A Time to Love and a Time to Hate.” This raises a central question: Is there ever a time to hate? Surely there are times when people hate, but should we set aside a time for hating? The subtitle of the film suggests an affirmative answer, but what good has hatred ever delivered to the world? Do those who crafted this title mean, instead, that there is a time to seek justice? This is self-evidently true because justice is a central virtue, perhaps the central virtue according to Plato. The subtitle, then, is muddled in its meaning if the writers confuse hatred and justice.
The film has a “prologue” for viewing. “Forgiveness is elusive,” the narrator says as the opening statement of this prologue, suggesting that we cannot find its core meaning.
“There is no consensus about what it is,” the narrator of the prologue proclaims with firm confidence. A Socratic dialogue would lead us to ask: “Does this imply that the “meaning” of forgiveness has no consensus?” Further, we need to clarify: “Does this mean that the actual differences are centered in the people, who possess ‘differences of opinion’ about what forgiveness is, or is the ‘meaning’ of forgiveness itself relative and ultimately lacking in any true consensus across the globe?”
“However you define forgiveness….” is yet another statement, bringing home the relativist assumption. There are many “opinions” brought forward in the brief prologue. None are examined. The impression, then, is that forgiveness itself is “elusive.” An issue not even remotely assumed in the prologue is this: Might the problem of a lack of consensus exist in the people themselves, who may not have thought about and experienced forgiveness deeply and over a long period of time? If Socrates assumed his own ignorance at understanding the objective nature of justice, which he did in The Republic, why do not the speakers in the prologue to “Forgiveness: A Time to Love and a Time to Hate” do the same thing? We are in an age in which the individual speaker has the power. Socrates assumed just the opposite.
In our blog post of March 17, 2012 (scroll down to read), we made the point that there are cross-cultural and cross-time meanings of forgiveness that strongly suggest a core meaning to what the narrator calls an “elusive” concept.
In the movie, The Paper Chase, Professor Kingsfield proclaims to his first-year Harvard law students: You come in here with a head full of mush….and you come out thinking like a lawyer. If the prologue is prelude to the rest of this symphony of ideas on forgiveness, we predict this: The viewer who has thought little about forgiveness will come to the film with a head full of mush……and, if he or she absorbs the film’s message without strong rebuttals, will leave with a head full of mush. We shall see.
When I think about it, I have a long list of people to forgive, starting from childhood and moving up to the present in my adult life. It all seems so overwhelming, With whom should I start and why? How can I get organized as I forgive in this way?
This is a common and important question. It is important because to organize all of this information is not simple. In my new book, the Forgiving Life (particularly Chapters 8 and 9), I systematically walk you through this process of getting organized in the way you request.
Here is the gist of those chapters. First make a list of people, from the family in which you grew up, who have hurt you. As many times as they were seriously unjust to you, list those incidents as best you can. Then move to peers and school experiences, then to adolescence, and into adulthood with work and relationship experiences. List each incident of considerable injustice as best you can.
Then start in the family of origin (where you grew up) because it is there where you may have established your own pattern of behavior. I recommend that you do not begin forgiving the one person for the one event that was most challenging for you. Start smaller and learn to forgive before moving up the scale of hurt to the one person and one event that caused you the most hurt. From there, move to schooling or peers, whichever needs your forgiveness work the most and again follow the same pattern. Start with the smaller issues and work up to the larger. Eventually you will come to the present day where you may have to forgive a partner or someone else close to you. You already will be strengthened by all of the prior work and so this new task will not be the huge challenge it might have been, had you not built up your forgiveness muscles first by forgiving people from your past.
Respect or Love?
When we forgive, what moral principle should underlie the forgiving response? Would it be better to approach each person with respect or with love or perhaps with some other moral quality? A case can be made for respect because we can more easily offer this to all whereas love is not that easily given through our anger. For example, we can show respect for a hard-driving boss even when we feel no love for him or her at all. Thus, respect covers a variety of circumstances and hurts, whereas love does not.
On the other hand, love is the higher principle because it includes respect and then goes beyond it to serving in mercy. It reaches farther and challenges us more deeply. I think that the response of love goes farther also in its effects. We can give respect at a respectable distance. A hand shake out of respect is not the same as letting someone into our world and caring about him or her.
Other moral responses do not go as far and as deeply as love either. Tolerance can be a rather cold approach, patience by itself can be almost neutral, and a spirit of cooperation can have a “What’s in it for me if I do cooperate?” ring to it. None of these go beyond love as a way to forgive.
Although more difficult than all the rest of these, I opt for love as the underlying response to forgiveness.
Why? Because respect might keep the world safer, but love changes the world for the better.
