New Ideas
Contrasting Power and Love
People who are hurt by others too often are hurt because someone is seeking power—-power over you. Forgiveness, in contrast, concerns love—-loving those who are not loving you. Below, from the book, 8 Keys to Forgiveness, are 11 contrasts between power over and love.
Power says, “Me first.” Love asks, “How may I serve you today?”
Power manipulates. Love builds up.
Power exhausts others. Love refreshes them.
Power is rarely happy in any true sense. Love understands happiness.
Power is highly rewarded in cultures that worship money. Love considers money to be a means to an end, not an end itself.
Power steps on others. Love is a bridge to others’ betterment.
Power wounds—even the one who exerts the power. Love binds up the wounds, even in the self.
Power is joyless even when it is in control. Love includes joy.
Power does not understand love. Love does understand power and is not impressed.
Power sees forgiveness as weakness and so, in rejecting forgiveness, resentments might remain. Love sees forgiveness as a strength and so works to eliminate resentment.
Power rarely lasts because it eventually turns inward, exhausting itself. Look at slavery in the United States, or the supposedly all-powerful “Thousand-Year Reich” of the Nazis, or even the presence of the Berlin Wall, intended to imprison thought, freedom, and persons . . . forever. Love endures even in the face of grave power against it.
Robert
Enright, Robert (2015-09-28). 8 Keys to Forgiveness (8 Keys to Mental Health) (pp. 99-100). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.
Forgiveness as an Illusion
If materialist brain activity determines how we behave, then we have no personal responsibility for our actions. If behaviorist punishments, reinforcements, and modeling determine how we behave, then we have no personal responsibility for our actions. If we have no personal responsibility for our actions, then we have to stop the illusion that we, ourselves, engage in right or wrong behavior, as if this were our own choice rather than materialistically determined for us either by interior activity of the brain or exterior activity of others and society. Moral right and wrong become, then, illusions.
When we forgive, therefore, we are responding to illusions. Forgiveness itself, therefore, is an illusion. Are you by any chance feeling very upset by another’s injustice against you? How will you rid yourself of persistent resentment if you cannot forgive? Biological materialist views of the brain and social materialist views of behavior modification will block you from forgiving and from experiencing inner emotional relief……if you have faith in these two (or really, either one of) these philosophies of human anthropology and anti-ethics.
In fact, your job is to stop using such words as “another’s injustice against you” and begin to talk of synapses and urges produced from the brain and inevitable behaviors emerging from how others have reinforced or punished you in your life. Forgiveness? Get over it. It is an illusion. Why live a life of illusion when you can wallow in your resentment…..without relief…..for…..the…..rest…..of……your……life.
Isn’t the practice of materialistic philosophies fun?
Robert
Two Over-Simplified and Very Dangerous Ideas Emerging
There are two thought movements spreading in the Western world:
1) There is no personal responsibility because of brain activity which determines how we behave, rendering free will impossible; 2) social forces, such as poverty and oppression, determine how we behave, rendering free will impossible.
Beware of these over-simplifications of humanity. Do you see the implication….no really….do you see it?: If there is no personal responsibility, then there are no moral offenses…..rendering forgiveness impossible. Why? How can you forgive those who just couldn’t help it?
These new thought-movements are not saying that **some people** are incapable of free will. They, instead, are claiming that **all people** are incapable of free will. This is dangerous. Why? If one buys into these simplifications of humanity, then one must conclude (it follows logically) that no one is morally responsible for…….anything. Do as you wish (complete freedom….or is this license?) because your brain or social circumstances make you what you are rather than your own efforts helping to form who you are. How human is this?
Robert
When Is Doing “Enough” Sufficient?
I was talking recently with someone who works with caretakers of those who are ill. The insight from the conversation is this: Many caretakers have a sense that they did not do enough. They need to forgive themselves. Self-forgiveness implies that you have broken a moral standard; you have offended yourself and perhaps others.
I am not so sure that self-forgiveness is the appropriate response in many of these situations, where the caretaker feels guilty about not doing enough. I say this because we always can do more…..and more…..and more. When is it sufficient to say, “I have tried hard. I have done my best as an imperfect person. It is time to accept my limitations”?
If we move too quickly to self-forgiveness, then we are not giving ourselves sufficient time to ask this: Maybe I have false guilt here. Maybe I was expecting the person whom I am serving to get much better and that did not happen. Maybe I am tying my efforts to the other’s biological challenges, with the incorrect view that I have not done enough if the other does not get better. Sometimes, despite our best efforts, people do not become physically healthy. Sometimes the other does pass away.
It seems to me that many people, who do courageous care-taking of others, need to see this and not self-forgive, but instead challenge their own view that their care-taking was not enough.
Yes, at times, people missed an opportunity to serve well. At these times self-forgiveness is appropriate. Yet, I think this is more prevalent: At even more times, people have done the best they can. The healthy response then is to humbly accept one’s limitations, refrain from self-forgiving, and to say, “I have done enough. It is sufficient.”
Robert
Editor’s Note: Learn more about self-forgiveness in either of Dr. Enright’s books 8 Keys to Forgiveness or Forgiveness Is a Choice.
Why We Need Forgiveness Education…….NOW
“I was too busy trying to survive. I did not have room to bring forgiveness into my world.”
These two sentences, spoken by someone who lived with an abusive partner for decades, is one of the strongest rationales I have ever read for forgiveness education, starting with 4-year-olds or 5-year-olds.
Do you see that the person, as an adult, did not have the energy and focus to add something new to her arsenal of survival?
What if forgiveness was a natural part of her survival arsenal starting at an early age?
We do this for learning how to speak and write coherent sentences.
We do this for learning how to add so that a budget can be maintained.
We do this for learning how to be just or fair as corrections and punishments are swift to come once one enters the school door and then misbehaves in the school setting.
I think it is tragic that educational institutions and societies fail to make forgiveness a natural part of life through early education. Isn’t a central point about education to help people make their way in society? And isn’t a central point of making one’s way in society having the capacity to confront grave injustices and not be defeated by them? And isn’t a central point of confronting grave injustices the knowledge of how to forgive? And isn’t a central point of knowing how to forgive the thinking about forgiveness and the practice of it in safety, before the storm of evil hits?
And isn’t a central point of knowing forgiveness and practicing forgiveness to aid in the survival of people who could be crushed by others’ cruelty?
Why do we spend time helping children learn to speak and write, learn essential mathematic skills, and be just…….but completely neglect teaching them how to overcome g
rave injustices?
Education in its essence will be fundamentally incomplete until educators fold into it the basic strategies for overcoming grave injustice and cruelty so that students, once they are adults, never have to say, “I was too busy trying to survive. I did not have room to bring forgiveness into my world.”
And the tragedy of this incompleteness is this: We now know scientifically-supported pathways to forgive. We have scientifically-tested forgiveness curricula for children and adolescents.
It is time to make “room to bring forgiveness into my world.”
Robert
