Misconceptions

Too Much Forgiveness?

In my recently published book, The Forgiving Life, I make the point that it is healthy to clear the slate of resentment by forgiving all people who have made you resentful. This has led to a question: “But, might there be such a thing as too much forgiveness”  Might such constant forgiving be seen as weakness from the perspective of those who are unjust?

Forgiveness is a virtue, as justice is, so let us ask the same question of justice: Can a person practice fairness too much? It should be obvious that the answer is “no” because whenever the situation calls for justice it is best to respond with this virtue.

Yet, there is a difference. Justice is required of us whereas forgiveness is not. Forgiveness, as a part of mercy, shares features with such virtues as altruism. Surely it is the case, one might argue, that a person can overdo altruism. For example, suppose a kind-hearted person works 18 hours a day at the local soup-kitchen, ignoring his family. Is this not an example of overdoing a virtue? Yes, it is, but an important lesson follows from the example. Aristotle told us over 3,000 years ago that it is a distortion of a virtue if we practice it in isolation from all the other virtues. Altruism needs wisdom and temperance to balance it against excess and, in essence, from being an unjust act because of the excess. After all, if someone neglects family and other responsibilities for the sake of the soup-kitchen, the virtue in its excess becomes a vice of self-indulgence.

Could forgiveness degenerate into something like this? I think there are two answers. First, forgiveness is an action that begins in the heart, deep inside the emotions of the forgiver as he or she practices love and compassion. One can do that without taking the time to go to offenders and sitting down with them for long periods of time, thus depriving the family of one’s presence. Forgiveness, of course, can be expressed in a behavioral way, but it can be delivered with a smile or some other small gesture rather than hours and hours as in the case of our altruistic person.

Second, I think that forgiveness could become excessive if the forgiver dwells on offenders and forgives at the expense of other virtues such as responsibility and justice. One can forgive from the arm chair rather than from the soup-kitchen and so the same Aristotelian warning holds here as well: Never practice forgiveness in isolation from such other virtues as wisdom and temperance. Otherwise, an inordinate focus on forgiveness can degenerate into self-indulgence, just as the altruistic service to the poor can.

We should realize, however, that when forgiveness or altruism degenerate into self-indulgence, they cease to be the true virtues that they were meant to be. It is no longer forgiveness per se that is being practiced any more than our soup-kitchen friend is practicing pure altruism.

Can there be too much forgiveness? Only if there is too little of the other important virtues which balance it. Otherwise, no, there cannot be too much forgiveness any more than there can be too much justice.

Is Forgiveness Essentially Selfish?

I just read an article from an online forum. The authors said that forgiveness is essentially selfish. They said this because one of the *consequences* of forgiveness is emotional improvement. They are confusing *what forgiveness is* and *one consequence* of practicing forgiving. A consequence is not the same as the essence of a thing. Forgiveness in its essence is focused on goodness toward someone who has been unjust to the forgiver. This is hardly an essentially selfish activity. This confusion of essence and consequence is one reason why we need to have clarity far and wide on this issue of forgiveness. Well-meaning people get confused on what the essence of forgiveness is and is not.

Do Legal Pardon and Forgiveness Differ? How?

In January, 2012, Mr. Haley Barbour, former Republican Governor of Mississippi, granted legal pardon to over 200 prisoners as he left office. His rationale for the pardons was to show mercy in a *spirit of forgiveness* and to give each prisoner a second chance. Yahoo.com news reported on Sunday, March 11, 2012 that the final group of prisoners will be released this week following the state highest court’s ruling that they can be released.

The pardons set off a firestorm of controversy. Yahoo.com news describes an “outcry” from victims and their families. The state’s Attorney General challenged some of the pardons and there has been talk of trying to amend the governor’s power to grant such pardons.

The actions by the former governor raise the important question: What is the relationship between legal pardon and forgiveness, especially given that a spirit of forgiveness motivated the pardons? Legal pardon is always conducted by a third-party authority who is not a victim or someone connected to the victims. In other words, legal pardon is an attempt to be impartial. Forgiveness, on the other hand, is anything but impartial. It is a virtue, centered in goodness, precisely because it is the victim or someone who cares deeply for the victim who reduces resentment and offers compassion through his or her pain. It is not a detached action, as legal pardon must be to retain its objectivity.

Thus, the governor’s act of pardon actually cannot be in a spirit of forgiveness, which would imply that he is somehow a victim and therefore would have had to recuse himself in the decision.

We can see why the victims and their families are perplexed. Only they are the ones who can forgive. And, when we realize that legal pardon is no protection against recidivism, we can understand victims? fear of further injustice from at least some who have been pardoned.

An important lesson here is for people to realize how legal pardon and forgiveness differ. The former belongs to authorities and the latter to victims. Also, when an authority is contemplating legal pardon, it would be prudent, where possible, to discuss this with victims to ascertain their sense of safety. In other words, the issue of recidivism and the possibility of re-victimization need to be considered.

The Obligation to Forgive

We all have an obligation to be just or fair. If you decide to disobey traffic laws, for example, you could get fined or arrested. To be fair is your obligation. Yet, we are not under an obligation to be merciful. For example, if you receive a phone call to contribute to the local food pantry, no one will issue a fine or arrest you for saying “no.”

Yet, I think there are two instances in which mercy (and we turn now specifically to one form of mercy, forgiveness) becomes obligatory. The first instance is your overall pattern of living a life that includes forgiveness. It may be true that you are not under an obligation to forgive *this* particular person on *this* particular day for *this* particular offense, but if you are never forgiving to anyone under any circumstances, there is something there to criticize. Forgiveness, as a part of mercy, is a form of goodness and if it is ignored entirely then an aspect of goodness is ignored entirely. If we are to grow as persons, we are cutting ourselves off from one important pathway to moral growth.

The second instance occurs once you have deeply and consistently practiced forgiveness. Once practiced and accepted as good, forgiveness becomes a part of whom you are as a person. When this happens, to not be forgiving is to contradict the self, to go against who you are. It is here that you hold yourself to the high standard of making this virtue obligatory for you, even when it is difficult to do so. Of course, this does not mean that you quickly jump into the practice of this virtue when you have just been deeply hurt. Instead, the point is that you know you will practice it at some time when you are ready. It seems to me that the more deeply you understand and practice forgiveness, then the more quickly you will be ready even in the face of considerable injustice.

Do We Have Choices or Are They Illusions?

An article on forgiveness in The Times of India appeared today. I base this blog post on the following quotation from the author of this piece:

“Everything we do, while we are identified with body and mind is the result of conditioning and the choices we make are also influenced by this. Also, we don’t choose our parents nor siblings. Or the environment you lived in as a child or teachers at school.

Yet all these elements conditioned you into the person you are today. And they impact your choices. To know this is the beginning of awareness and compassion. The paradox is that real choice happens when we realize that there is never any real choice. So forgive and let go.”

We just had a materialist bomb drop on us. A “materialist bomb” is this: A person reduces human psychology to one and only one narrow area to such an extent that it looks like we have no free will. If we take neurobiology to an extreme, we could say that our brains make us think and behave in certain ways with no flexibility built in for our own innovation, creativity, or choice.

Or, rather than looking within for a material cause of our actions (the brain is an interior material cause), we can look to social conditioning such as positive reinforcement or punishment to explain why we behave as we do. After all, if someone bops you on your head every time you say the words “free will,” for example, you will probably end up cringing whenever you hear those two little words. You have been materially conditioned to cringe at the words “free will.” It is not your choice to cringe. Something in the material world is making you do this.

All well and good until we practice reductionism and make the rather difficult-to-make claim that none of us really has any choices at all. It is our brains and social conditioning that make us who and what we are.

Is that all there is to us as persons? If so, then there is no true right and wrong, no injustices against you because, well, the person’s brain is wired in a certain way and the social conditions of his or her environment have made the person this way.

There is nothing to forgive because no one chooses to hurt you. The person could not help it. Forgiveness is rendered useless. More dramatically, forgiveness is an illusion.

But, is it true that there is nothing but brain structure and social reinforcements to explain who we are? Whoever says “yes” to this, then I have the following thought-experiment for you. It comes with a warning label because the thought is violent.

Imagine that you are a parent. Your daughter was raped in Central Park. You are fuming. At the trial, the defense lawyer says this, “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. We all know that our society has perpetuated the idea that women are men’s property. This has fostered an unintended sense of aggression in my client toward women. We all know that our society reinforces men to exploit women, not that they want to do so, but they are taught that. There is nothing my client could do but rape the one woman who happened to be jogging by that day. And let us not forget testosterone. That, combined with negative norms about women and the social reinforcements all ganged up on my client. He could not help himself. Therefore, I strongly request the dismissal of all charges against him.”

A show of hands, please, from anyone who agrees with this lawyer. We all know why we disagree with the request. It is because no matter what the norms are in society and no matter what the accused man’s social conditioning or testosterone levels were on that day, he had hundreds of choices of how to act. To say that he had to act in this and only this way is to deny reality. It is to deny the raped woman justice. It is to deny her the possibility of forgiving because forgiveness is an illusion that we need to guard against, not embrace.

There are no choices? I choose not to believe it.

Forgiveness is alive and well because injustices do happen by people’s freely chosen actions, and sometimes those actions are wrong and punishable, not dismissed for the illusion of an exclusively-materialist cause to our behavior.

Forgiveness as an illusion? No. When someone harms you, he or she could have behaved in many other ways, including choosing—choosing—to be respectful and kind.