Our Forgiveness Blog
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.
Why Forgive?
Let us start with a different question to better frame the one above. Why be just or fair? At the very least, we obey laws so we are not punished. At higher levels, we strive for fairness because we have come to be fair people and to deny justice is to deny whom we are as persons.
When it comes to forgiveness, we cannot fall back on laws and punishments because no society ever has had a law requiring forgiveness because it is centered in mercy, not on a quest for fairness.
I would like to suggest that there are at least four good reasons to forgive:
1) As we forgive, we begin to feel better emotionally. Forgiveness is not centered in the self, but instead on goodness toward those who have injured us. A *consequence* of forgiving is emotional release from resentment. This by no means implies that a person is necessarily selfish if he or she forgives for this reason. Grasping a life preserver in a stormy sea is a wise move.
2) As in our justice example above, as we practice forgiveness over and over, we actually become forgiving persons. To forgive becomes a part of who we are as persons and to not forgive is to deny our very personhood.
3) When we practice forgiveness long enough, we begin to see that we have a choice in life regarding the legacy we will leave in this world. We can leave a legacy of woundedness and anger or a legacy of love. Forgiveness helps us to leave a legacy of love as we honor each person as having inherent worth, even those who have hurt us. We do not honor the unjust for what they have done, but in spite of that.
4) Finally, as we forgive, we are showing others how to live a life of moral goodness in the face of unjust treatment. When we forgive, we are helping to create a community of forgiveness for others, in the home, school, place of employment, place of worship, and wherever people come together for mutual support and growth.
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.
Just Checking in Regarding Your Unfolding Love Story
On January 19, we posted a reflection on our blog site in which we encouraged readers to grow in love as their legacy of 2012. We said this:
“Give love away as your legacy of 2012.
How can you start? I recommend starting by looking backward at one incident of 2011. Please think of one incident with one person in which you were loved unconditionally, perhaps even surprised by a partner or a parent or a caring colleague. Think of your reaction when you felt love coming from the other and you felt love in your heart and the other saw it in your eyes. What was said? How were you affirmed for whom you are, not necessarily for something you did? What was the other’s heart like, and yours?
It is now about a month-and-a-half later. Can you list some specific, concrete ways in which you have chosen love over indifference? Love over annoyance? If so, what are those specifics and how are they loving? We ask because 2012 will be 25% over at the end of March. Have you engaged in 25% of all the loving responses that you will leave in this world this year?
Tempus fugit. If you have not yet deliberately left love in the world this year, there is time…..and the clock is ticking.
Finding Meaning in Suffering: I Am Someone Who Can Love Despite Hardship
Viktor Frankl, a survivor of the Holocaust and a world renown psychiatrist, made the point that the only ones who survived concentration camp were those who somehow could find meaning in what they suffered. Those who saw their suffering as meaningless died.
In other words, finding meaning in this case meant to find life. What fascinates me about Dr. Frankl’s observations is that finding any meaning seems to count in staying alive. Whether a person saw the suffering as a way to toughen the self, or as a way to reach out to other suffering people was not the main point.
I wonder now, in reflecting on Dr. Frankl’s broad view of meaning in suffering, whether he had it entirely correct. Yes, it may be the case that any meaning can keep a person alive. Yet, what kind of meaning in suffering actually helps a person to thrive, not just to live? Perhaps people thrive only when they derive particular meaning from suffering. Of course, we do not know for sure, and any comment here is not definitive because it is open to scientific investigation and philosophical analysis. With that said, I think that when people realize that suffering helps them to love others more deeply, this is the avenue toward thriving.
How does suffering help people to love more deeply? I think there are at least three ways this happens: 1) Suffering makes people more aware of the wounds that others carry; 2) Suffering makes people more determined to help those others bind up their wounds, and 3) Suffering gives the sufferer the courage to put into action these insights and motivations to make a difference in the lives of others.
As people love in this way, there are characteristically two consequences which help them to thrive: 1) Those who deliberately love in the face of suffering grow in character, each becomes a better person, and 2) The recipients of this love-in-action have their well-being enhanced. As those who suffer see the fruit of their loving actions, this increases satisfaction with life, increasing thriving.
When we have been treated unjustly by others, this is an occasion of suffering. Let us cultivate the habit under this circumstance of finding this meaning: I have an opportunity now to love those who have hurt me. The one avenue to loving the unjust is to forgive them. Let us remember this meaning to forgiveness: “In my forgiving, I am someone who can love despite hardship.” As we say this routinely and come to know it is true, we may find that we have been given an opportunity to thrive as persons.
