Author Archive: directorifi

In your book, Forgiveness Is a Choice, you say, “Forgiveness offers the best hope of creating a new fairness out of the past unfairness.”  Why would fairness be given to someone who has been constantly unfair to me over the years?

When you forgive, you reduce resentment and therefore you reduce any tendency of wanting to get even or to seek revenge.  Being fair is the right way to live, avoiding regret and guilt over acting unfairly toward others.  If you start practicing forgiveness toward the one who hurt you (presuming that you do interact with one another), then this opens the door to greater inner peace for you.  It opens the door for a genuine relationship of fairness if the other sees the great gift you are giving by offering forgiveness.  If the other sees and appreciates your gift, then this could alter the person’s behavior toward greater fairness and reconciliation.

I have forgiven my father for some insensitive treatment of me when I was a child.  Yet, when I sometimes think of my father and those times, I still am sad.  Does this mean that I have not forgiven?

Forgiveness does not necessarily take away all of the sadness because you did have a rough time during childhood.  It is part of your history and you cannot reverse what happened.  Please keep in mind that some sadness is normal.  Forgiving can help reduce the sadness, and can reduce the resentment that can accompany sadness.  Living with some occasional sadness is very different than living with the constant mixture of deep sadness and anger.

The Light of Forgiveness

This might help you understand what it is you are doing when you forgive. We are in a dark room, which represents the disorder of unjust treatment toward you. As you stumble around for a match to light a candle, this effort of groping in the dark for a positive solution represents part of the struggle to forgive. As you now light the candle, the room is illumined by both the light and warmth of the candle. When you forgive, you offer warmth and light to the one who created the darkness.

You destroy the darkness in your forgiving.

Now here is what I am guessing you did not know about the light of forgiveness: That light does not just stay in that little room. It goes out from there to others and it even continues to give light across time. For example, if you shed light and warmth on people who have bad habits, they might be changed by your forgiveness and pass it along to others in the future.

Now consider this: If you give this warm candle of forgiveness to your children who give it to their children, then this one little candle’s light can continue across many generations, long after you are no longer here on earth.

I am guessing that you had not thought about forgiveness in quite this way before.

Robert

Lately, when I have an argument with my boyfriend, I find myself bringing up old issues that I thought were behind me, for which I thought I had forgiven him.  Do you think I truly have forgiven him for the past issues or not, given that I tend to bring them up?

It seems to me that you have begun the process of forgiving, because you state that forgiveness is part of you now.  At the same time, I would recommend more forgiving work toward your boyfriend for those past events so that you can leave them in the past.  Please keep in mind that still feeling some pain from past injustices is normal.  It is the excessive anger from those incidents that you want to diminish and more forgiving should accomplish that in you.

When Evil Seems to Be Having Its Way

Lance Morrow: “Evil possesses an instinct for theater, which is why, in an era of gaudy and gifted media, evil may vastly magnify its damage by the power of horrific images.” If this is true, we need forgiveness all the more in our times.

Forgiveness is not justice and therefore focuses on effects, not direct solutions to injustice.  When injustice reigns, it surely is the duty of communities to exercise justice to counter that which is unjust.

Yet, what then of the effects of the injustice?  Will the quest for and the establishment of justice in societies suffice to cure the broken heart?  We think not and this is where forgiveness is needed for those who choose it.

Is there a better way of destroying the damaging effects of evil than forgiveness?  As a mode of peace, forgiveness is a paradox because at the same time it is a weapon, one that fights against the ravages of evil.  By destroying resentment, forgiveness is a protection for individuals, families, groups, and societies.

Robert