Forgiving seems kind of superficial to me. No offense, but if I am asked to just quietly let the past stay in the past and move on, that seems hard to do when I want to get the person who hurt me to change.
Forgiveness is not the same as moving on from the past. Forgiveness, as a moral virtue (as are justice, kindness, and patience), is doing one’s best to be good to those who have not been good to us. The focus is on the person, not the event of injustice itself. As we begin to see the humanity in the one who hurt us, the unjust event begins to have less influence on our emotions. We sometimes can move on from the event if we do the work of seeing the worth in the other person, commit not to do even subtle harm to this person, and offer goodness of some kind when we are ready.
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