Our Forgiveness Blog
What Is Your Story?
When a person misbehaves, we so often focus only on the misbehavior and we want it stopped—now. Yet, when someone misbehaves there may be so much more to it than the undesirable behavior. Consider Jane’s story. At work she was not being productive, becoming passive toward some of the co-workers, and becoming sharply critical of others. Her unjust behavior was becoming a disruption. The manager was considering firing her. Someone in the Human Relations office decided, instead, to simply ask her: What is the recent story of your life, Jane? She started to cry because, quite frankly, no one had asked her to that point. As it turns out, her partner recently left her, her mother was suffering from dementia, and her son had a drinking problem. These are not an excuse to hurt others at work. Yet, without knowing her story, who at work could offer help? Knowing the story, the Human Relations person began a systematic forgiveness program for her, focused first on the partner’s injustice. It all started, and all began to fall into place, with one simple question: What is your story, Jane? The next time someone is annoying you, you might want to ask a similar question.
Dr. Bob
Is Self-Forgiveness a Contradiction Unto Itself?
Some say that self-forgiveness cannot exist because we cannot be our own judge and the defendant at the same time.
Yet, it seems to me that when we forgive we are never in a court of law. Instead we are in a non-judgmental area of love. If we can offer other moral virtues to the self, such as patience and kindness, then why cannot we also offer forgiveness to ourselves, a gentle loving acceptance of self, not because of the injustice we have done, but in spite of this? The “how to” of self-forgiveness is discussed briefly in this blog post: “The Toughest of All–Forgiving Oneself.”
At the same time, the critics of self-forgiveness do have a good point. We both are the victim and the offender. Therefore, we must do more in self-forgiveness than we do in forgiving others. If we have hurt others by our actions requiring self-forgiveness, then we need to go to those others and seek their forgiveness.
Dr. Bob
Does Communism Mention Forgiveness?
This is one of the few questions (received in our Ask Dr. Forgiveness section of this website) I had never considered until it was asked of us at the IFI this week. I am presuming that the question-asker is focusing on the concept of forgiving (not apologizing and seeking forgiveness). I spent some time “googling” forgiveness in communist literature, including excerpts from the writings Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and Mao Zedong. I further examined the work of Louis Althusser, an influential French Marxist philosopher. Finally, I consulted the literature on liberation theology, which has roots in the Marxist notion of freeing the poor from oppression though class struggle.
The short answer is that forgiveness is rarely mentioned in the above literature, whether it concerns political, philosophical, or theological writings. I found no mention of forgiveness in Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, or Althusser. Of course, this does not mean that the word is completely absent in their writings or in other authors’ works that I did not consult. It only means that I did not find it and that it appears not to be highly emphasized.
This is not surprising, given that the origins of the word “forgiveness,” at least in a focused and repeated sense, is in the monotheistic traditions of both Hebrew and Christian ancient writings. Marx, for example, decried religion as an excuse to remain oppressed: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”
For Leon Trotsky, the moral virtues might be placed on the table, not as ends in and of themselves but as means to the end of victory: “There are no absolute rules of conduct in peace or war. Everything depends on circumstances.”
Mao Zadong’s writings are similar: “Classes struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated. Such is history. Such is the history of civilization for thousands of years.” The struggle for justice, or in this case the ascent to power, supersedes the mercy of forgiveness.
Even in liberation theology, emerging in a Christian context in Latin America as a strategy for reducing poverty and oppression, the emphasis is on justice rather than forgiveness. There is one central exception, that of Daniel Bell in his book, Liberation Theology After the End of History. New York: Routledge, 2001. Bell refers to the oppressed poor of Latin America as the “crucified people.” For him forgiveness was a political way of standing against oppressive government. Forgiveness for Bell is a kind of radical political move to remain alive in the face of severe stress. Yet, such an idea does not lead to a clear strategy of how forgiveness will liberate the poor from their material poverty and thus seems to be contrary to the major tenets of liberation theology.
In response to liberation theology in Latin America, there has been a more recent movement known as “the theology of reconciliation” (Edward Lynch, The retreat of liberation theology, Homiletic & Pastoral Review, 1994). To quote Lynch: “For the liberationists, unity will come when economic and social divisions are eliminated, and they are willing to use violence to achieve this end. For their opponents, the unity that matters is cultural, spiritual, and far removed from economics.” This new theology in Latin America centers on “the reality of the reconciliation of man with God, with himself, with others and with all that is created” (Paul Sigmund, Liberation Theology at the Crossroads: Democracy or Revolution? New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). This new theology as a response to liberation theology is not at all Marxist, but instead is orthodox in its Catholicism. I only mention it as counterpoint to the ideas underlying liberation theology.
As one quick point regarding apology and the seeking of forgiveness, there are statements in the news and other writings that communist rulers, such as Ho Chi Minh in North Vietnam, have used a political strategy of confessing “errors of thought.” This appears to be a political strategy of acquiescence (getting dissenters to agree to the party’s ideology) rather than the exercise of a moral virtue toward the goal of genuine reconciliation of persons. As one work for the general public, please see the Reader’s Digest, November, 1968 on the example used here. As a more scholarly work, focused on Stalin in the Soviet Union, please see Igal Halfin’s work, Stalinist Confessions: Messianism and Terror at the Leningrad Communist University. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009.
In sum, if the concept of forgiveness in any legitimate sense is in communist literature, it is not obvious and not emphasized. The quest for justice reigns, and a philosophical examination of just what constitutes justice in this context would require another essay. As Aristotle reminded us over 3,500 years ago, we should never exercise any one moral virtue in isolation of the other moral virtues, for to do so is to invite distortion even of this one, prized virtue.
Dr. Bob
Eliminating Bullying Behavior that Destroys Lives
ABC News reports that bullying behavior has claimed yet another victim, Amanda Todd, age 15, who apparently killed herself after years of struggling with being bullied. This kind of tragedy must end. We at the IFI just recently have published an Anti-Bullying Forgiveness Program focused on helping those who bully to forgive. You see, those who bully usually have pent-up anger…..and they displace their own wounds onto others. Our program is meant to take the anger out of the heart of those who bully so that they no longer bully others. Please check out this life-giving anti-bullying program, which we hope gets into as many schools, internationally, as possible.
Dr. Bob
All You Need Is Love, but Is It True?
The Beatles captured the world for music almost 50 years ago, but did they capture philosophical truth? The phrase, “all you need is love” needs, to borrow from Socrates, exploration. A hidden assumption to the song’s title is that the rest of the moral virtues are irrelevant. No need for justice if we understand the world as loving harmony and further understand injustice as an inconvenient misunderstanding. No need for forgiveness if there is no injustice.
Let us suppose that we could put a constraint on justice and forgiveness so that they do not exist. They, like injustice, are failed misunderstandings from a primitive past. All we have is love.
Now further suppose that a 14-year old girl comes to you and she has a sprained ankle, two cracked ribs, a swollen face, and a boat-load of resentment and mistrust because two boys accosted her on her way home from school. They laughed at and demeaned her.
Now what? We can bind the ankle, give her pain meds for the ribs and love her. But what do we do about the boat-load of resentment? “All you need is love.”
So, does she start to see what happened as a misunderstanding and to love the bullies, the law-breakers? Well, I suppose we could take a step back and first seek justice. We could call the police, make out a crime report, and stop the brutes so that this does not happen again.
No, wait a minute. In our world of love, there is no justice because there is no injustice.
OK. Sorry about that. Does she then start with forgiving the boys for……Sorry again. There is no forgiveness in our new world. Forgiveness is a mistake our ancestors made when they thought there was injustice in the world.
Our message to our battered friend is the refrain, “All you need is love.” We say to her: Train your mind to see mistakes where you thought there was brutality; train your mind to see your cosmic connection with boys who beat and batter and demean.
We may all be connected in some way, but we are not in harmony. Not by a loving long shot.
Aristotle famously told us over 3,500 years ago that we cannot practice any of the virtues in isolation of the others, for to do so distorts even the one moral virtue we have isolated. For example, try to help a courageous non-swimmer who has no wisdom (one of the virtues) to refrain from jumping in the stormy lake to save a dog. The courage degenerates into reckless bravado. It is no longer courage.
Try to tell the wounded 14-year-old girl that all she needs is love and you condone brutality. Even love, you see, degenerates and is no longer love. It is reduced in our case of the battered girl to patronizing her complaints, her agony to retain a point of view that cannot be defended. We know better than she does. She needs time to advance in her thinking. Condescension is not loving.
Some sing that they won’t live in a world without love. Can we start a new tune, singing that we won’t live in a world where there is only love? I hope it has a good beat and is easy to dance to, so that we can keep it on the charts for awhile, say, until the end of time.
Dr. Bob
