Ask Dr. Forgiveness
I attended your seminar roughly 2 years ago and am now using your book to teach a forgivenss class. Today, a student asked if there is another option for understanding a hurtful behavior if it is neither a mistake (unintended) or evil (chosen)? Example: Drunk driver causes one or several deaths.
Even unintended actions can be unjust. Let us take your example of the drunk driver causing injury or death. Although the accident was unintended, it is still unjust because the person knew that he or she would be driving. Starting to drink that evening was not wise. Surely, before the person became drunk, he or she had the rational faculties to know that the amount of alcohol consumption was not good. So, prior bad judgements before the accident show that the unintended consequences had bad choices connected with it. Those choices were unjust choices and so those injured or those who lost loved ones can forgive if they so choose.
In your book, Forgiveness Is a Choice, you refer to the “global perspective” that is important when forgiving someone. I am having trouble understanding this one. Would you please clarify?
A global perspective asks the forgiver to go beyond concrete specifics of the offending behavior and to view the person who offended in a larger context than those behaviors. For example, in taking a global perspective the forgiver is asked to see what he or she shares in common with the other person. They both need air to breathe; they both have bodies that need nutrition; each will die some day. The point is to help the forgiver see a common humanity between the two, not because of what the other did, but in spite of this.
Are forgiveness and trust the same?
Forgiveness and trust differ. Forgiveness as an act of mercy toward an offender can be offered unconditionally. Trust needs to be earned if the offense is deeply serious. Forgiveness is a moral virtue. Trust accompanies reconciliation, which is not a moral virtue but instead is a negotiation strategy between two or more people. Finally, you can forgive without trusting the other, at least in those areas of his or her weakness. For example, you can forgive a compulsive gambler and watch your wallet.
Might tolerance be a better approach than forgiveness? I say this because forgiveness might draw us too close to someone who is not in our best interest. Tolerance allows us to keep a certain and safe distance.
Tolerance will not change the world; love will. As you make a distinction between forgiveness-as-love and reconciliation (two or more people coming together again in mutual trust), do you see that you can and should keep yourself safe as you forgive?
A friend told me that self-forgiveness is a way to rationalize bad behavior so that you can keep doing it. Is she correct?
Some people consider self-forgiveness to be inappropriate because one cannot judge one’s own actions in an objective way (we are biased and too self-interested to get it right, in other words). Yet, even if we cannot see our own actions with complete clarity, we do have a conscience that assists us. Thus, we can assess our actions and words as right or wrong.
When we self-forgive in an accurate way, we see that we have done wrong to self and others and do what we can to change. In other words, to self-forgive is not only to love oneself after not feeling so loving (toward the self) but also to make amends for the damage the self-forgiver caused to other people. Thus, self-forgiveness, when understood and practiced properly, is not a trick one plays on oneself to keep going with the behavior (which conscience tells us is unacceptable).
