Ask Dr. Forgiveness
How is forgiveness related to mercy?
Forgiveness is being good to those who are not good to you. Mercy is refraining from punishing a person who deserves that punishment because of unjust behavior. Both are moral virtues and so hold that in common. When people forgive, they exercise mercy in that as they forgive they do not give an eye-for-an-eye to the one who hurt you. Instead, the forgiver offers a hand up to the person to come and join you as a person of worth. Mercy as part of forgiveness is a specific expression of mercy in that this mercy is occurring in the context of being treated unjustly by another or others.
There are other examples of mercy that do not include forgiveness. For example, legal pardon is a form of mercy in that a judge may reduce a deserved sentence within a court of law. The judge offering legal pardon never is the one who was treated unjustly by the defendant. Forgiveness, as a personal decision, occurs within the human heart, not in a court of law. Thus, forgiveness includes mercy, but mercy can occur in entirely different contexts than forgiveness. Further, forgiveness does not involve only exercising the moral virtue of mercy. Forgiveness also is an expression of love, particularly agape or the kind of love that is challenging and even costly to the forgiver.
In your experience, when do children begin to truly forgive parents who have behaved very badly?
In my experience, people tend to start forgiving parents once the children are emerging into adulthood and are beginning to leave home or have left home. Before that, the child is both very dependent on the parents for basic needs and, when young, does not necessarily have the cognitive insight regarding how deeply unjust the parental behavior is. The young adult can be shocked at the depth of anger and at the seriousness of the parental injustice when looking back. Because of this, the struggle to forgive can take time, but definitely is well worth it. The forgiving might lead to a genuine reconciliation with the parent, if the parent also wishes to reconcile, which, in my experience, most parents want.
Is it justified to forgive the self first before forgiving others?
I am supposing that you have both broken your own standard (needing self-forgiveness) and you have been treated unjustly by others (needing to forgive them). In my experience, it is easier for most people to forgive others because we tend to be harder on ourselves. If this is true in your case, then you might want to start by forgiving others and once this is accomplished, and you know the forgiving path well, you then can apply that learning to forgive yourself.
How do we promote the true meaning of forgiveness, given that there are so many misunderstandings of it?
We have resources to help, such as three self-help books (Forgiveness Is a Choice, The Forgiving Life, and 8 Keys to Forgiveness). We also have forgiveness education curriculum guides for teachers and parents in our Store. With all of these materials, we have tried to be very accurate regarding what forgiveness is and what it is not.
Can witnesses to abuse forgive the abuser even though the witnesses were not the ones harmed? For example, suppose one child is scapegoated in the family. Could a sibling, now an adult, who did not experience the parental wrath forgive the parents?
Yes, the adult child who was not abused can feel free to forgive the parent for abusing the adult child’s sibling. Trudy Govier, a philosopher in Canada, refers to this as secondary forgiveness. The abused child, who wishes to forgive, would be engaging in primary forgiveness.
