Forgiveness News

When people forgive extreme injustices, do others condemn this?

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Some people have made the claim that when a person forgives others for extreme injustices, then the forgiver is open to discrimination and heavy criticism.  Yet, a study published in 2022 suggests otherwise.  Eaton, Olenewa, and Norton (2022) asked over 100 college students in each of two studies to react to two stories, one in which a woman forgives the murderer of her child and the other in which a person forgives the drunk driver who killed the spouse and child.  In both studies, even though the participants tended to disagree with the decision to forgive, most did not criticize the forgivers.  At least in this study, those who are what the authors called “extreme forgivers” were not held up to extreme criticism.  Even if they were, it is the forgivers’ choice whether or not to offer this surprising goodness if they choose to do so.

Eaton, J., Olenewa, J., & Norton, C. (2022). Judging extreme forgivers: How victims are perceived when they forgive the unforgivable. International Review of Victimology, 28, 33-51.  https://doi.org/10.1177/02697580211028021

Should we use different words for “student loan forgiveness”?

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In perusing the Internet recently, I frequently read the term “student loan forgiveness”…….again and again…….and again.  Setting aside the differences of opinion of whether or not this is a good idea, my point here is to suggest that the term should change.  There is a large difference between legal pardon and forgiveness.  Legal pardon is not a moral virtue.  The one who pardons the loans is not the one who was offended by the loaner.  Forgiveness, as a moral virtue, in contrast, is concerned with reaching out to those who have been unfair and hurtful toward the forgiver.  Given these distinctions, let us make a turn and refer to the loan issue as “student loan pardon.”  Why?  It is for this reason: Forgiveness already is misunderstood by many.  For example, forgiveness can be erroneously associated with “just giving in” or “letting the hurt go.”  If we now equate forgiveness with third-party people taking debt away, we are continuing to move away from the true meanings of the word forgiveness.  Let us correct this.  Student loan pardon needs to be the new term.

‘Racialized’ Forgiveness?

An author, Myisha Cherry, in the journal, Hypatia in 2021, made the claim that under certain circumstances, forgiveness becomes “racialized.”  In her words in that article:

“Cases that exemplify certain conditions that I take as paradigmatic of the problem of racialized forgiveness includes instances in which: A. Who is forgiven or not is (overtly or tacitly) determined by the race of the offender. B. Praise and criticisms of forgiveness are determined by the race of the victim. C. Praise and criticisms of forgiveness are, at least implicitly, racially self-serving.”

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Yet, we would have preferred that the two words, “racialized” and “forgiveness” were not put together because there are no such aspects of true forgiveness.  A more appropriate pairing of words would be “racialized pseudo-forgiveness” or “racialized false forgiveness” because that is what is happening.  Aristotle reminded us that any moral virtue is bounded by two vices, one which is an under-representation (for example, in the case of forgiveness the person exhibits moral weakness in which others dominate the one who is trying to forgive) and one that is an excess of the virtue (in the case of forgiving, the one who supposedly forgives is actually using forgiveness as a weapon to dominate others).  “Racialized false forgiveness” actually is a vice, not a moral virtue, in which the person uses forgiveness to dominate others.  This, of course, is not forgiveness at all and it should be recognized as such.  To equate “racialized forgiveness” with the true form of forgiveness is philosophically incorrect.  Dr. Cherry has a book-length work (Failures of Forgiveness, 2023) in which she continues with these ideas.  It is good that she is pointing out this excess of forgiveness, but in the future, this needs to be classified not as the moral virtue of forgiveness but as a distortion of it.

Dr. Enright discusses ‘Forgiveness is a Choice’ on Relationship Podcast

On April 2, 2024, Dr. Enright appeared on a one-hour podcast on YouTube, We Need to Talk with Dr. Darcy Sterling. Dr. Sterling is a New York City-based relationship therapist and host of E! Network’s Famously Single, who specializes in working with high-performance women who want to prioritize love and relationships.

Sterling describes her forgiveness journey that led her to interview Dr. Enright as follows on the YouTube video description:

“Years ago, I was gutted by a falling out with one of my siblings. It quickly became clear that we were on the verge of estrangement, and that impending loss brought me to my knees — I had just recovered from PTSD and was terrified of getting sucked into the black hole of trauma that I’d just come through.

Frantic for help, I found myself Googling a solution, and up came the term Forgiveness Therapy.

To be clear: I was not feeling forgiving. But I was feeling desperate. I did not want to revisit the darkness I’d just emerged from.

A book on forgiveness had recently been published by a professor named Robert Enright. In it he posits that forgiveness isn’t about cutting the other person slack. It’s a liferaft for people who feel wronged. Enright’s theory had been peer-reviewed — the gold standard in the field of psychology — so, despite my apprehension, I committed to following his program.

Today, my journey through forgiveness comes full circle in my conversation with the theorist himself, Dr. Robert Enright.

If you struggle with anger or are someone who holds grudges and you want to explore a solution, please listen to this episode.

In it, you’ll learn:

Why it makes sense if the thought of forgiving someone who wronged you makes you cringe.
The consequences of not forgiving.
How choosing to forgive puts you in control of your feelings.
How Enright’s program helped me to personally bypass a relapse of PTSD.”

Check out the interview below!

Forgiveness Education Identified by the CDC as a way to “Promote Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Learning”

As described in the abstract in Freedman’s (2018) study,  forgiveness education  was implemented with 10 at-risk adolescents

Dr. Suzanne Freedman

attending an alternative high school in a Midwestern city. Twenty-one participants were randomly assigned to either the experimental group (forgiveness education class) or the control group (personal communications class). Classes met daily for 31 sessions for approximately 23 hours of education. Enright’s process model of forgiveness was used as the focus of the intervention. After the education, the experimental group gained more than the control group in forgiveness and hope, and decreased significantly more than the control group in anxiety and depression. Verbal reports from the experimental participants following the education also illustrate the positive impact forgiveness had on the students.