Misconceptions

“Forgiveness Is Unfair Because It Puts the Burden of Change onto the Victim”

I heard this statement from a person who holds a considerable degree of academic influence.  The learned scholar, however, did not give a learned response as I will show in this little essay.

Suppose that Brian is driving his car and is hit by a drunk driver.  Brian’s leg is broken and he must undergo surgery and subsequent rehabilitation therapy if he again will have the full use of his leg.  What happened to him was unjust and now the burden of getting back a normal leg falls to him.  He has to get the leg examined, say yes to the surgery, to the post-surgical recovery, and to months of painful rehab.  The “burden of change” specifically when it comes to his leg is his and his alone.

Yes, the other driver will have to bear the burden of paying damages, but this has no bearing on restoring a badly broken leg.  Paying for such rehabilitation is entirely different from doing the challenging rehab work itself.

Suppose now that Brian takes the learned academic’s statement above to heart.  Suppose that he now expects the other driver to somehow bear the burden of doing the rehab.  How will that go?  The other driver cannot lift Brian’s leg for him or bear the physical pain of walking and then running.  Is this then unfair to Brian?  Should we expect him to lie down and not rehab because, well, he has a burden of restoring his own leg?  It would seem absurd to presume so.

Is it any different with injustice requiring the surgery and rehab of the heart?  If Melissa was unfairly treated by her partner, is it unfair for Melissa to do the hard work of forgiveness?  She is the one whose heart is hurting.  The partner cannot fix the sadness or confusion or anger……even if he repents.  Repentance will not automatically lead to a restored heart because trust must be earned little by little.  As Melissa learns to trust, she still will need the heart-rehab of forgiveness (struggling to get rid of toxic anger and struggling to see the worth in one who saw no worth in her) that only she can do.  Once hurt by another, it is the victim who must bear the burden of the change-of-heart.

We must remember: The rehab and recovery are temporary.  If the forgiver refuses to engage in such recovery, then the injurer wins twice: once in the initial hurt and a second time when the injured refuses to change because of a woeful misunderstanding that he or she must passively wait for someone else to bear the burden of change for him or her.

Ideas have consequences.  Bad ideas tend to have bad consequences.  Learned academics are not necessarily learned in all subjects across all cases.

Robert

Barriers to Forgiveness, Part 4: Waiting for the Other to Apologize

So many people think that it is improper and perhaps even morally inappropriate to forgive when the other refuses to apologize.  “My waiting for the other to apologize shows that I have self-respect.  I will not put up with the injustice,” I have heard people say.

Yet, why is your self-respect tied to another’s behavior toward you?  Can’t you respect yourself for who you are as a person rather than waiting for another to affirm your importance as a person?

“But, if I wait for the apology, this is a protection for me and for the relationship.  The apology is a greater assurance that the other will not do this again.”

Yet, cannot you forgive from the heart and also ask fairness from the other before—before—he or she apologizes?  One does not achieve justice through only one path, in this case the other’s apology.

If you insist on the other’s apology before you forgive then you are saying this to yourself:  I will not allow myself the freedom to exercise mercy toward this person until he/she acts in a certain way (an apology in this case).  Do you see how you have curtailed your freedom, including your freedom to heal emotionally from the injustice?  Forgiveness has been shown scientifically to reduce anger, anxiety, and depression.  Your insistence on an apology may delay or even thwart your healing.

When you insist on the other’s apology before you forgive, you—you, not the other person—trap yourself in the prison of unforgiveness…..with its resentment and unhappiness.  This does not seem like the ethical thing to do.

Forgiving freely whether the other apologizes or not is the path to freedom, healing, and a clear-headed call to justice.

Robert

One Reason Why We Need Forgiveness Education: People Misunderstand What Forgiveness Is

Too often in society the word forgiveness is used casually: “Please forgive me for being 10 minutes late.” Forgiveness is used in place of many other words, such as excusing, distorting the intended meaning. People so often try to forgive with misperceptions; each may have a different meaning of forgiveness, unaware of any error in his or her thinking.

Freedman and Chang (2010, in the Journal of Mental Health Counseling, volume 32, pages 5-34) interviewed 49 university students on their ideas of the meaning of forgiveness and found that the most frequent understanding (by 53% of the respondents) was to “let go” of the offense.  This seems to be similar to either condoning or excusing.  Of course, one can let go of the offense and still be fuming with the offender.  The second most common understanding of forgiveness (20%) was that it is a “moving on” from the offense.  Third most common was to equate forgiveness with not blaming the offender, which could be justifying, condoning, or excusing, followed by forgetting about what happened.  Only 8% of the respondents understood forgiveness as seeing the humanity in the other, not because of what was done but in spite of it.

If we start forgiveness education early, when students are 5 or 6 years old, they will have a much firmer grasp of what forgiveness is…..and therefore likely will be successful in their forgiveness efforts, especially if these students are schooled not only in what forgiveness is but also in how to go about forgiving.

Robert 

5 Ways of Misunderstanding Forgiveness

There are many misconceptions about forgiveness.  Here are 5 worth noting:

1. Forgiveness places the burden for healing on the one who was the victim. For example, if someone is assaulted and now is feeling depressed, the burden for healing falls on the one who was assaulted.  Our answer: Of course the burden of healing rests with the one hurt.  That is always the case whether the hurt is emotional (as in the case of depression) or physical (a broken leg, for example).  When we have an injury of any kind, we should never rely on the one who injured us to somehow fix the consequences of our injury because too often the injurer is not concerned one way of the other with our healing.

2. Forgiveness foreswears punishment of the injurer and lets him or her off the hook. Our answer: Forgiveness and justice grow up together.  When one forgives, one should seek justice. In the case of punishment, if the injurer broke the law, the injured one should not take the law into his/her own hands, but leave the punishment to a neutral, third party judge.

3. Forgiveness is morally suspect because one “lets go” of the other’s injustice. Our answer: Forgiveness is not a “letting go” of an offense but instead is a merciful overture to the one who had no mercy on the victim.

4. Forgiveness makes the one injured develop a victim-identity, in essence crippling his or her self-esteem. Our answer: Forgiveness helps one to thrive and rise above the injustice, thus helping the forgiver to shed the victim mentality.

5. Forgiveness is dangerous because it puts the injured one in harm’s way again as he or she reaches out to the injurer. Our answer:  Forgiveness is not the same as reconciliation. To forgive is a moral virtue. To reconcile is a negotiation strategy of developing once again mutual trust. One can forgive without reconciling.

Robert

The Forgiveness Path Is Not a Straight Line

If you are like the rest of us, when you begin to forgive another person you will start and stop and start again a number of times before you arrive, safe, at the journey’s end, confident that you have forgiven.  You will be making great progress and then have a dream about the person and wake up angry all over again.  You will think you have conquered, only to meet the person who hurts you again, and there is the anger.  Or, it is the holiday season and you reflect back on your life hoping for peace and instead get a piece of the person’s own anger, and once again you are angry.  The forgiveness path is like this and so please be gentle with yourself.

Robert