Our Forgiveness Blog

Should I Forgive?

Excerpt from pages 37-38 of the book, The Forgiving Life by Dr. Robert Enright:

“Not everyone agrees that forgiveness is morally good. For example, in 1887, Nietzsche said that only the weak forgive. In other words, if you have to keep a job, then you forgive. If you find another job, then you can boldly tell that boss where he can go as you strut out the door. Yet, is this philosopher Nietzsche talking about genuine forgiveness? I don’t think so. To forgive is to deliberately offer goodness in the face of your own pain to the one who was unfair to you. This is an act of great courage, not weakness. Forgiveness—like justice or patience or kindness or love—is a virtue and all virtues are concerned with the exercise of goodness. It is always appropriate to be good to others, if you so choose and are ready to do so. As a caution, if you have only $1 to feed a hungry child and you get a phone call to please give mercifully to the local animal shelter, you should not exercise goodness toward the shelter if it means depriving your child of basic needs. Yet, if the circumstances are right and if you have an honest motive to give mercy to someone who hurt you, then going ahead with forgiveness is morally good. Why? Because you are freely offering kindness or respect or generosity or even love (or all four together) and this might change you and the other person and others in the world. Even if no one is changed by what you do, it is always good (given the right motivation and circumstance) to offer mercy in a world that seems to turn its collective back on such an act too often.”

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If the one forgiven does not accept it, is the forgiveness then incomplete?

One major goal of the process of forgiveness is to be reconciled with those who have hurt us by their unjust acts. If the ones who were unjust refuse to change, refuse to reconcile, is the process of forgiveness then incomplete? After all, if the goal is not accomplished, how complete can it be?

If a person wishes to serve the poor and gets caught in traffic, which prevents him from going to the soup kitchen, one can hardly say that the service to the poor was accomplished. Yet, I think this analogy is not a strong one for this reason: Forgiving as a moral virtue is complete in itself when the person exercises that virtue. The exercise of that virtue is independent of others’ reactions to it. Not only did the forgiver intend to perform a forgiving act but also he did so when he offers a cessation of resentment and some form of goodness to the other. In our soup kitchen example, the well-meaning person had full intent to work in the soup kitchen, but did not do so.

All virtues are complete as virtues when exercised appropriately and do not require a specific response from another. As another analogy, if a police officer exercises justice by restraining a burglar, the police officer has exercised the virtue of justice (presuming he had a deliberate intent to exercise justice). Even if the burglar now escapes and burglarizes three different stores, the police officer’s act of justice is complete as a virtue. The intended purpose was not brought to completion and so we must distinguish between a completion of the virtue itself and a completion of an intended purpose for the virtue. The intended purpose at least in part of the process of forgiveness is reconciliation. So, one can forgive and complete this as a moral virtue. At the same time, the other can spurn the forgiveness, in which case, the intended purpose of the process of forgiveness is not fulfilled.

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How Does Forgiveness Relate to Trust?

Excerpt from page 27 of the book, The Forgiving Life by Dr. Robert Enright:

“When you forgive, you do not say, ‘Because I forgive you, I now trust you.’ No. You can forgive and still not trust. If the person is showing you that he or she is a danger to you, then mistrust of his or her behavior is warranted. At the same time, and this is stated specifically to those who have experienced trauma, be careful not to confuse a general mistrust and particular mistrust toward a particular person. In other words, many traumatized people have a pervasive mistrust that needs work. Sometimes the traumatized person meets someone who truly is a good person, reliable, and safe to be with, yet the mistrust from past relationships is so great that he or she just cannot give of oneself in the new relationship. Knowing this and working deliberately on the previous issues of mistrust will help. Forgiveness will help. Time will help. Trust is such a delicate thing and needs work if it will improve.”

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Must the Offender Make Amends Before a Person Can Forgive?

In reading some recent blogs that focus on forgiveness, I have seen a particular theme, that of the necessity of the the offender making amends before someone can or should forgive. This requirement on the part of the offender seems incorrect to me for three reasons.

First, if the offender must–must–make amends before the offended person can forgive, then he or she is trapped in unforgiveness until the other decides that it is time to make amends. This is not fair to the one in pain from the offense.

Second, why cannot one forgive and seek justice at the same time, forgive and help the person toward amendment? Waiting for the offender to make amends seems to be confusing the mercy of forgiveness with justice itself. Once the other makes his or her behavior right, what is there left to forgive? Surely, there may be issues from the past, but to now offer forgiveness for good behavior confuses mercy and justice.

Third, there is no other moral virtue (such as justice or patience or kindness) that requires a special response from someone else before it is given. Why should forgiveness be the one extraordinary case of all of the moral virtues?

Must the offender make amends before a person can forgive? It does not appear to be the case.

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Extreme Forgiveness

There has been an increased media attention on forgiveness in the form of news, documentaries, web-posts, etc. All of which are not surprisingly, on the sensational side, highlighting the most severe cases of injustice in which the victim must exercise “extreme forgiveness.” It seems similar to the growing popularity of “extreme sports” with events showcasing sensational, risky, attention-grabbing feats of extreme fitness, endurance, strength, and athleticism. Events like Tough Mudder and Iron Man, or sports such as free-style biking, BASE jumping, and speed skiing keep taking extreme to the next level. More and more, it seems the more dangerous the better; marathons, for example, are no longer extreme enough. A mere marathon has been topped with “ultra-marathons,” which can mean anything from a double marathon to a multiday race of 1000 miles or longer.

It can make one wonder, what is this drive, this need, for the extreme in our lives? Why this desire to see and witness others pushed to and beyond the normal limit of human capacity? Why does there seem to be such a focus on extreme cases while we brush over every day acts of heroism and virtue?

Are we becoming desensitized, less attentive and less responsive to every day struggles — our own and others? Is the media being driven by our demand for the extreme or are we being shaped and desensitized by the media’s push of the extreme?

I’m not sure which it is, the media or public demand, driving us to extremes, but I do think a reality check may be in order. This is not to diminish the true courage, compassion, and perseverance of those heroes who have forgiven in extreme cases of injustice. Rather, this is to point out what preceded those extreme acts of forgiveness…namely, the “small” acts of forgiveness we persevere in every day. How does one push past the so-called “normal” limits of human capacity, whether it’s sports or forgiveness?

When we witness extreme acts of forgiveness, we may wonder, would I be able to forgive someone if they did that to me? Would I be able to ever forgive someone who murdered my loved one? Who crippled me? Who abandoned me? The answer is “yes!” Does this unconditional answer seem a bit over the top, a little abnormal, counter-cultural? Well, it is! Forgiveness tends to be that way. How can I be so certain that forgiveness is possible? It’s called training. Much like an athlete trains for his sport, so too a forgiver strengthens his “muscles” of virtue and forgiveness through every-day forgiveness. Forgiveness becomes part of our lives as we practice it daily the best we can, as often as we can. Each time we forgive, it becomes easier and more ingrained into our being. And here’s the beauty of it — it’s never too late to forgive! We can even forgive those who we may not have been ready to forgive before.

Further, forgiveness is a process! This means, we can even forgive the same person, for the same injustice, over and over again, reaching new levels of forgiveness each time. The process of forgiveness takes times and cannot be forced or faked for true healing to begin. We should never expect others to forgive, nor should we allow ourselves to be coerced into forgiving. If and when this kind of “forced forgiveness” takes place, it is not true forgiveness; rather, it is a lie, a façade, often to appease others’ expectations. Take the example used in this documentary review from the Huffington Post:

In the case of the Amish shooting, theologians and counselors in the film also wonder if there is a kind of violence to the self that such a quick forgiveness might inflict. They worry that the suppression of natural emotions might stunt healing; and that a legalistic understanding of forgiveness could short-circuit the full response that such a tragedy requires. In a chilling anecdote, two boys are watching the destruction of the school house where the murders took place and one boy says: “They can take down our school, but they can’t take away the things we remember.” To which another boy replied: “You better be quiet don’t let people hear you say that — we are supposed to forgive.”

Hopefully, in their analysis, these theologians and counselors considered the fact that there is a difference between genuine forgiveness that is freely given (if and when a person chooses to do so) and forced forgiveness in which it is coerced. In the latter case, the victim may go through the actions in order to appear to forgive, but true forgiveness is an internal act of free will. So unless our exterior actions are motivated by the internal actions of the heart, they do not constitute real forgiveness, and may indeed do more harm than good. So, as in the above statement, “You better be quiet; don’t let people hear you say that” we are supposed to forgive. Not only does this response reveal that some kind of coercion may be taking place (or at least in the young boy’s perception), but also a deep lack of understanding about what forgiveness is. He seems to think that unless his friend forgets the incident, he is not forgiving. However, his friend’s remembering in no way conflicts with forgiveness. On the contrary, his friend has made a realistic and poignant point that is very much consistent with what it means to forgive. Forgiveness does not take away the things you remember. When you forgive, you remember what happened, but you begin to remember in new ways that give healing and hope. A false form of forgiveness may be occurring if one is under the misconception that by pushing the memory away, he is forgiving. This attempt to forget will more likely lead to suppression of his emotions rather than the healing that true forgiveness could give.

So let us make a distinction between this kind of forced or misconstrued forgiveness and what the author above calls, “quick forgiveness.” We should be careful to distinguish between true forgiveness and pseudo-forgiveness as in the example above. We should also be careful in how we identify or label these false forms of forgiveness in order to avoid distorting the meaning of forgiveness. “Quick forgiveness” seems to imply that the act of forgiveness has been completed and done in the moment of stating, “I forgive.” Now, if a person stopped short there, by simply saying, “okay, I forgive, moving on now,” then, certainly, that would not seem to be a sufficient, much less healthy response. Again, this would be a form of false or pseudo-forgiveness. We need to remember that choosing to forgive is only the first step in the process and it doesn’t end there. The process starts with a freely-given choice, but can continue for days, weeks, months, and even years. Surely, in the case of the Amish school shootings, the victims will be recovering and working on forgiveness for a long time to come.

Theirs is a process that began with a unified statement and gesture of forgiveness as a community and will continue within each individual heart. It is a process for which each of them has been preparing for by living out forgiveness in their daily lives. This is a process in which they will need to support each other in their daily struggles to forgive.

So when asked if you could forgive as some victims of the Amish shooting, the Rwanda genocide, or the Nazi holocaust have, you can say, yes. Will we be able to forgive overnight? Do we need to choose forgiveness immediately? Will it be a “quick forgiveness,” done and over in a single breath? No, it won’t happen overnight or in a single act of the will. No, we don’t need to be ready to forgive sooner than we are ready. But with a clear understanding of true forgiveness, in its full scope and sequence, and by living the forgiving life through small acts of forgiveness, we can be prepared to exercise extreme forgiveness, should we ever need to. You might not be able to choose forgiveness immediately as the Amish did, and forgiving certainly won’t be easy, but it can happen when we are prepared by living an every-day forgiving life. Yes, extreme forgiveness is possible!

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