News
Parents Forgive Attacker Who Severely Burned Their Daughter
The Christian Post, Indonesia – Parents of a 4-year-old girl who suffered severe burns in a Sunday terror attack on a church in Indonesia’s East Kalimantan province, have forgiven the accused and have said they will not even ask God to punish him.
A bomb, reportedly a Molotov cocktail, was thrown inside the Gereja Oikumene Church compound where children were playing, killing a toddler and injuring three other infants.
Trinity Hutahaean, the 4-year-old girl, was severely wounded in the attack. The toddler’s aunt, Roina Simanjuntak, says the family has forgiven the accused.
“God teaches us to forgive and not to pay revenge,” Simanjuntak quoted the girl’s parents as saying. “I have a big hope that my family members, especially Trinity’s mother, can face this hard time. She is still in trauma after seeing what happened to her child.”
Despite tradition to the contrary, the mother did not pray to God to punish the accused, Simanjuntak added.
While the majority of the people in Indonesia are known to be tolerant and moderate, there are several extremist groups in the country. According to Human Rights Watch, more than 1,000 churches in the archipelago have been closed over the last decade due to pressure from such groups.
Read more:
The Christian Post, “Indonesia: Parents of 4-Y-O Burned in Church Bombing Say ‘God Teaches Us to Forgive’ “
The Jakarta Post, “Kalimantan church bomber linked to terrorist movement“
Forgiveness: why it’s important
Editor’s Note: Forgiveness has matured into a world-wide movement, including in India. This article is excerpted from a more lengthy news story in one of India’s largest business publications.
LiveMint.com, New Delhi, India – In his 2015 book, 8 Keys To Forgiveness, psychologist Robert Enright cites research to demonstrate the power of forgiveness. In a study conducted with fellow psychologist Suzanne Freedman, he found that incest survivors who underwent a 14-month programme to forgive their perpetrators were free of depression one year after the programme ended. The study was published in the Journal Of Consulting And Clinical Psychology in 1996.
In another study, published in the Psychology & Health journal in 2009, Enright and his colleagues worked with men who were admitted to the hospital with cardiac problems. After undergoing forgiveness therapy, which involved 10 weekly sessions of identifying and forgiving those who had wronged them, the men not only exhibited reduced levels of anger but also had healthier hearts.
Intriguingly, Enright has even found that students who were unable to concentrate in school owing to anger issues benefited from forgiveness counselling, so much so that they actually raised their grades from D to C, were able to focus better and had more amiable relationships with others. This study was published in the Journal Of Research In Education in 2008. Thus, forgiveness can have a positive ripple effect, wherein mercy extended to one person radiates to others.
If forgiveness, then, can have such a positive impact, how can we practise it more often? As Enright says, forgiveness goes beyond saying “I forgive you”. In fact, the words do not even have to be uttered; rather, they have to be felt. In its essence, forgiveness entails “extending goodness towards those who have hurt you”. It involves acknowledging the inherent worth of every human being. And, as we all know, this can be hard even at the best of times, and can become a Herculean task when we have been wronged grievously.
Enright, however, says that we can become “forgivingly-fit” with practice. By first forgiving people whom we love for minor misdemeanours, we can gradually graduate to forgiving those who have injured us in more heinous ways.
Finally, forgiveness should not be mistaken for weakness. As Mahatma Gandhi aptly put it, “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
Aruna Sankaranarayanan, the author of this article, is the founder and director of Prayatna, a centre for children with learning difficulties in Andheri, a suburb of Mumbai, India. She completed her undergraduate studies at Mount Holyoke College and acquired her doctorate in developmental psychology at Harvard University. Both schools are in Massachusetts, USA.
Mint is one of India’s premium business news publications and the clear No.2 among business papers in terms of readership. LiveMint.com is Mint’s online portal and is among the fastest growing news websites in India.
To explore more of Dr. Enright’s compendium of peer-reviewed forgiveness research from the past 30+ years, visit the Research Section of this website.
Forgiveness Becomes Her Passion: “Replace Hate with Love”
Carly Elms is a determined woman, a well-educated and experienced therapist, and a disciple of “forgiveness therapy” as developed and proven by Dr. Robert Enright, the founder of the International Forgiveness Institute (IFI) and a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Forgiveness is the only way to move through the anger and pain of even the most horrible wrongs,” according to Elms, “and to not let hate consume the rest of a life.”
Carly R. Elms, M.Ed., LMSW, CRC
Elms holds two master’s degrees. Along with her Masters in Clinical Social Work (MSW), she has a Masters of Education in Educational & Counseling Psychology (M.Ed.). She is a certified rehabilitation counselor (CRC), with experience as a trauma therapist, counselor for the blind, transition counselor for youth with disabilities, a service-disabled veteran of the U.S. Air Force, and a fanatic about forgiveness therapy.
Last fall, Elms opened the Franciscan Forgiveness Center on the grounds of the Sisters of St. Francis of the Holy Eucharist in Independence, MO, to help victims recover their lives from even the worst thing that could possibly happen to them.
“It’s a place of healing,” Elms said of the peaceful grounds where she has her office and where she also teaches the Sisters about forgiveness. “And that’s what forgiveness is. It is healing.”
Elms said she became a disciple of Dr. Enright’s forgiveness model after reading his popular self-help book Forgiveness Is a Choice: A Step-by-Step Process for Resolving Anger and Restoring Hope. Inspired by what she read, Elms then enrolled in the IFI’s online Continuing Education Course: Helping Clients Forgive. She completed the course with the highest score ever recorded at the IFI.
Elms’ philosophy is simple (though easier said than done): Replace hate with love.
“You have a right to be angry if someone does something wrong to you,” Elms said. “But there really can’t be anything good that comes out of that. All that anger is the desire for revenge.”
“Revenge won’t heal a broken heart. The ability to forgive and to love will.”
Read more about Carly Elms:
» Replace hate with love: forgive and heal, an article in The Catholic Key Online.
» Carly Elms, M.Ed., LMSW, CRC; Franciscan Forgiveness Center, a review on CatholicTherapists.com.
Israeli President says “A society without forgiveness is not a humane society.”
The Jerusalem Post, Jerusalem, Israel – The Ofek detention center at Sharon Prison is Israel’s only detention facility for offenders under the age of 18. Now, thanks to the incorporation of forgiveness and repentence, the center is touting its successful rehabilitation strategy.
At a recent “celebratory seminar” held at the home of Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, three boys from bad neighborhoods and poor families spoke of how someone suddenly taking interest in them, and noticing them and their needs, had made each of them rethink his options for the future.
They said they regard Ofek as more of a school than a detention center, and they are grateful to their teachers and social workers for their patience and faith in them, and for instilling them with hope and motivation. For those imprisoned with minimal schooling, Ofek staff helps them complete high school.
President Rivlin observed that while the concept of forgiveness is wonderful, it is not easy to ask for forgiveness, nor is it always easy to forgive. “And yet, a society without forgiveness is not a humane society,” he said. “It is a society in which we are doomed to be forever chained to the past, without the possibility of looking to the future.”
Youth justice policy in Israel is a problem-solving, individual-treatment, adopting welfare model. While in many Western countries juvenile justice has moved from a welfare approach to a punitive model, policies in Israel have modified and changed while retaining the traditional view that juvenile delinquents are to be treated and rehabilitated rather than punished.
Forgiveness Crucial to Middle East Peace
Catholic News Agency (CNA/EWTN News) New York City, N.Y. – Christianity is at a crossroads in the Middle East, and only a dedicated campaign of aid and activism can help Christians survive as a merciful, forgiving influence in the region, according to the head of the Knights of Columbus.
“Either Christianity will survive and offer a witness of forgiveness, charity and mercy, or it will disappear, impoverishing the region religiously, ethnically and culturally,” Carl Anderson, Supreme Knight and CEO of the Knights of Columbus, said Oct. 12.
Anderson’s remarks came at the awards banquet for the Path to Peace Award. The Knights of Columbus received the award in recognition of its work in the Middle East and its humanitarian work throughout the world. The Knights’ support campaign began in 2014, raising millions of dollars for Christians and other minorities suffering from war or persecution in the Middle East, especially Iraq and Syria.
Anderson said Christians have lived “heroically” in the Middle East for 2,000 years. “This is the history of Christians indigenous to the Middle East. They forgive, and by doing so they open the path to peace,” the Supreme Knight continued. “Today, they have given up everything but their faith, for their faith. But even having lost so much, they have given a great gift, to their fellow citizens and to the world. The gift they have given is the example of forgiveness and mercy – the fundamental building blocks of peace.”
Previous recipients of the Path to Peace Award include U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, former President Corazon C. Aquino of the Philippines, and former President Lech Walesa of Poland. The Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternity, has about 1.9 million members worldwide. The Knights’ relief fund for Middle East Christians and other minorities is accepting donations through its webpage at www.kofc.org/Iraq
