Author Archive: doctorbobenright

I am the adult child of an alcoholic father and so I have my scars, both emotional and physical. When I went to my minister for help, he said I should work on forgiving my father. When I went to a counselor who calls herself a “spiritual healer” she said that I have nothing to forgive. She said it will take some time for me to develop sufficiently to really understand and accept this as true. She said that my minister is not developed enough to see this truth. I am confused by the two very different messages. Can you help me understand and move forward?

Your minister and the “spiritual healer” have conflicting views of how the world works. They cannot both be correct. Let us start with your minister. He will tell you that there is such a thing as sin, or offense against God. God has standards of right and wrong and when the standards are broken, not only is there offense against God but also against our fellow men and women. The offenses against people are injustices, not sins against other people. Moral virtues have been created by God (your minister will tell you) as ways of dealing with offenses against other people. Two primary virtues are justice and forgiveness. When a person sins against God, he or she usually commits an injustice against persons, and we try to right the wrong by engaging in the moral virtue of justice. We try to deal with the consequences of injustice through forgiveness. Thus, justice (righting a wrong) and forgiveness (responding to the consequences of injustice) exist side by side.

The “spiritual healer” seems to espouse New Age beliefs. The gist is that love is at the center of the universe and it so dominates that there is no sin because there is no God-as-a-person (or as a trinity of Persons). If there is no personified God, then there is no sin (because there is no divine Person to go against). If there is no sin, then there is no injustice. If there is no injustice then there is no need of forgiveness. What, then, of all of our disappointments with how others act? Those misbehaviors are actually mistakes (according to New Age beliefs) coupled with our mistaken notion that the person has sinned and been unjust. One is to see mistakes where your minister sees sins and injustices.

Here now is your dilemma: Do you think it is a good idea to say that all of your father’s behaviors toward you, which scarred you both physically and emotionally, are mistakes on his part? Do you think it is a good idea to say that your seeing injustice in your father is a mistaken thought on your part? If so, then the burden is on you to change your thought. If the “spiritual healer” is incorrect, then you will be fighting against your natural inclination to label as unjust what your father did to you. You will not have recourse to forgiveness.

You cannot choose both world views without living a contradiction. You now have a fork in the road of your life’s journey.

In the “Your Forgiveness Stories” section of this website, a person recently told her story and then asked IFI this: Recently, I began listening to a CD that contains a forgiveness prayer. Like I said, I believe I have forgiven. I just want to make sure that the forgiveness is total. I want to be set free. I want complete peace. Is there anything else I should do? What do you think about this situation and what do you suggest?

If you are concerned about whether or not you have forgiven, please consider filling out the Personal Forgiveness Scale, which you can find in Appendix C and Chapter 11 of the book, The Forgiving Life. The chapter gives you directions in scoring the scale and instructs you on your degree of forgiveness. If you are not satisfied with the score, then please turn to Chapter 10 of the book and do the exercises there that should help you to forgive more deeply. We wish you the very best in this important journey.

The Clash of Cultures: Forgiveness vs the Culture-of-Me

As I sit here watching a Major League baseball playoff game, I am fascinated by the commercials—yes, the commercials. The fascination arises from the observation that virtually every commercial is about wonderful “me”—rewards cards, get more cash back, eat fattening foods just because.

I began to ask myself: Will people who view this stuff end up being better persons as a result of spending time this way? I do not think so because the focus is exclusively on “me,” “me, “me.” It is a self-absorbed world of diversion.

Forgiveness is a culture unto itself when placed next to the world of the commercial. Forgiveness asks of us. It demands. It requires discipline and self-sacrifice. It clashes with the “cheese cake bites” in the commercial.

If we spend, say, 70% of our time in the culture-of-me, how will this affect our understanding and practice of forgiveness? Could all this time in the culture-of-me dull us to the importance, beauty, and challenge that is forgiveness? I think so. If we have the chance to drown our sorrows in the culture of consumption, why then venture at all into the culture of struggle that is forgiveness? And what if we spend 90% or more of our time in the culture of consumption, is there then any hope for the flowering of the counter-culture of forgiveness?

We are in a clash of cultures and I wonder to what extent people know that. “Letting it go” or “just moving on” may be the easier way to go when we are not encouraged to truly forgive from the heart, in service to the one who hurt us, with an eye toward the betterment of that person.

How can we allow ourselves time in the culture-of-me without being consumed by the consumption? How can we step into the culture of service and not think it too difficult or too “out there” so that we return frequently? Or better yet, how can we step into the culture of service and bring the moving van and stay there?

Perhaps the first step is to realize that we are in a culture-of-me. Then we have to decide if we wish to live out our lives there. We really do have a choice.

Dr. Bob

After 60-Year Sentence, Murderer Asks Forgiveness from Victim’s Son

Sacramento Bee (California) – While being led away to serve a 60-year sentence for murder, the convicted man, Sergio Gomez, turned to the murdered man’s son and asked him for forgiveness. The son, Alejandro Davila, embraced Mr. Gomez and wished him the best, adding, “someday I’ll be able to forgive him.”

It looks from here that Mr. Davila already is well along the path of forgiveness.

Read the full story: “South Texas man asks victim’s son for forgiveness”

Why the Book, The Forgiving Life, Is My Most Important Work to Date

Twenty-eighth year. Since early 1985 I have been thinking about the topic of forgiveness. I have thought about it in the area of psychology, then more specifically in developmental, clinical, and counseling psychology. Then I have thought about it more broadly in the areas of psychiatry, social work, law, education, and philosophy.

The journey has brought me into the restorative justice movement, the peace movement, the battlefield, the clinician’s office, and the classroom. It has brought me to the Balkans, Belfast, Brazil, Bogota, Dublin, Firenza, Liberia, Padua, Roma, and beyond.

I have written so much on the topic that I cannot keep track of it all—articles for publications in Jerusalem, South Africa, Australia, Rome, America.

No publication, no thought, no application to hurting lives is higher than my most recent book, The Forgiving Life. Here is why: I wrote it from the heart, a heart that has close to three decades of experience with the term forgiveness.

I have come to realize that forgiveness is so much more than a merciful act toward someone who was unfair. To forgive is to embrace, embody, and then to personify forgiveness in one’s life–and then to others’ lives. To forgive is to touch the lives of the hurting, including the one who hurt you. Forgiveness is actually cultivating a life of mercy and then to leave a legacy of love in the world, a world that sometimes attacks and tries to kill love. The love I consider here is not, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “sentimental bosh.” No, it is the kind of love that is strong and in service to others. It is the kind of love that abides in the heart and does not come out only on special occasions. It is the kind of love that becomes part of a person.

The Forgiving Life is basically a Socratic Dialogue, in the spirit of Plato’s writings, in which two good-willed people grapple with the notion of forgiveness until they understand it as best they are able today. The dialogue is between Sophia, who has a lot of forgiveness miles on her, and the feisty Inez who wishes to cast off the shackles of fear and anger.

The dialogue has allowed me to go considerably more deeply into the topic of forgiveness than ever I have done before. The dialogue, at the same time, makes it my most accessible work, available to anyone who wishes to spend a bit of time with this life-giving topic of forgiveness, and perhaps to allow that topic to transform one’s life.

I am indebted to Plato for showing me the way to accessibility. I am indebted to Aristotle for showing me what the moral virtues are, including forgiveness. Thank you, gentlemen. I hope you are proud that your ideas, from over 3,500 years ago, are living, although imperfectly, in my heart as I pass on your legacy in the hope of passing on a legacy of love and forgiveness to others.

Dr. Bob