Ask Dr. Forgiveness

If I have resentment but am unsure if forgiveness is the way to proceed, how can I know?

I would urge you to ask yourself these questions:

Have I been treated unjustly by someone or perhaps by more than one person?

Am I resentful of this treatment against me?  Try to give this a number from 1 (very little resentment) to 10 (extreme resentment that could be described as hatred).

If the number of your resentment is in the 5 t o 10 range, you may need some help in reducing that.  Thus, you should ask yourself this:  What have I been doing to reduce the resentment (if that number is in the 5 to 10 range)?

If what you have tried is not lowering that resentment number, then are you interested in trying forgiving as a way of reducing that resentment?

Your answers can help you determine whether or not to pursue forgiving.  It always remains your choice.

Would you please clarify how one forgives a large group such as a government?  In other words, do I forgive individuals or the whole group together?

I recommend that you first decide what the injustice is.  Who perpetrated this injustice specifically and concretely against you?  You can start with these specific people who directly hurt you.  Yet, this likely  is not enough.  I say this because, if this is a governmental dictate that led to hardship for you, then the group as a whole is implicated.  Thus, you can forgive the group because groups are comprised of persons and it was those persons who hurt you by their decisions.  Of course, it is more abstract to forgive an entire group, but you can do this because: a) groups can act unjustly; b) you still are forgiving persons and this is where forgiveness centers (we do not forgive a tornado, for example); c) you can have resentment toward the entire group of persons; and, d) your forgiving the group can reduce your resentment toward those who were unfair to you.

I wonder if some people are more inclined to forgive than other people.  In other words, might some people just have a natural disposition to forgive compared with most of us?  I think of Maximilian Kolbe as my example here.  He was in the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II.  He willingly gave himself up as a substitute for a Jewish man with a family.  Fr. Kolbe was calm and did not fight his abusers, which suggests to me that he forgave.  Most of us could not do that and so quickly.  What do you think?

I doubt that this saint of the Catholic Church only had some kind of natural disposition to forgive.  After all, his very life was giving to others as he became a priest.  In other words, he had many times in which he engaged in smaller sacrifices for people, which likely gave him much practice in the moral virtues, particularly love and forgiveness.  When it then came time for his momentous act of self-sacrifice, which probably included forgiveness, he was ready.  Further, theologians in his particular faith would include God’s grace as a large part of why he could love in this way by giving up his life.  So, did he have a natural tendency?  He might have, but at the same time he had abundant practice in love and forgiveness and he had God’s grace to accomplish heroism.

What if I think that forgiveness is not the solution?  Then what?

Forgiveness is not necessarily a solution to injustice because to right that wrong you need the moral virtue of justice.  Forgiveness is a response to injustice in that you are now confronting the effects of the injustice (anger, possibly a strained relationship, disharmony in the family or organization) and so it is important to address those negative effects, if you choose to forgive.  So, if you are thinking about forgiveness as solving the problem of injustice, I think you are asking the wrong question about forgiveness. Instead of “How will forgiveness solve this problem?” I would urge you to ask a different question: “How can forgiveness help me (and us) overcome the negative effects of the injustice?”

Is it possible that for some people forgiveness does not “work” in that they find no relief?

When this happens, I recommend: 1) more time in forgiving this person and, if this still is not working, 2) try to see if this person reminds you of someone else in need of your forgiving.  For example, a person is having trouble forgiving his wife.  His wife has behavioral patterns similar to his mother, whom he has not forgiven.  I then recommend that he forgive his mother first.  When he then focuses on forgiving his wife, the anger toward his mother is not getting in the way of that forgiving.