Our Forgiveness Blog
The Good Old School Days
OK, everyone, it is time to reflect on those good old school days of yore, those care-free days when everyone thought we did not have a care in the world. Yet, sometimes we carry burdens from those days and we do so in the silence of our own hearts. When was the last time that you, as an adult, had a discussion about your days in elementary, middle, or high school? When was the last time you had such a discussion with an emphasis on the emotional wounds you received back then? I am guessing that such discussion-times have been quite rare.
I wonder how many of you reading this still have some unresolved issues from the good-old-days. It is in school, within the peer group, at recess, on the sports team that our current sense of self is shaped, at least to a degree. Sometimes we are influenced by those days to a greater extent than we realize.
So, it is time for a little quiz. Please think about your days in school and see if you can identify one person who was unjust to you, so unjust that when you think about the person now, it hurts. This person is a candidate for your forgiveness. I have an important question for you: How has this person inadvertently influenced your own view of yourself? How has this person’s actions made you feel less than who you really are? Do you see that it is time to change that?
My challenge to you today is to take steps to forgive him or her for those behaviors long ago that have influenced you up to this very moment. It is time to take a better look at what happened, to forgive, and then to ask the question after you forgive: Who am I now as I admit to the injustice, admit to it negatively influencing how I have seen myself all these years, and who am I now as I stand in forgiveness?
Perhaps the good old days will seem a little brighter once you forgive. You will have lifted a silent burden.
Forgiveness is a virtue
I have seen two websites lately that have assumed that the expression, “Let it go,” typifies forgiveness. It is an unexamined assumption on both sites. Is it reasonable to assume that this statement represents forgiveness? Let us examine it and see.
Forgiveness is a virtue, as is justice, patience, kindness, and love. These moral qualities are meant to be directed from one’s own inner world outward to others for good. We give justice to other people and not to things. How can you be fair to a car or a hurricane, for example? How can you be kind to a door? Virtues are meant for good to other people. Forgiveness, being a virtue, is the same. As we forgive we reduce resentment specifically toward the person who was unjust. As we forgive we offer mercy specifically toward that same person.When we let something go, we are releasing a situation or a circumstance. Look carefully at the sentence. We are letting an “it” go, not a person. Can we let a situation go and still not forgive? I think we can all imagine examples of this. Suppose a boss asks you to work late five days in a row. You might “let this go” because you think the boss is morally incapable of doing what is right and good. You might “let it go” when a friend says something offensive to you, not to honor him or her as forgiveness does by being merciful, but out of expedience to keep the friendship. You might “let it go” if there is an external reward waiting for you, such as a raise or praise, as you remain annoyed or neutral toward the person-as-person. My point is that there are a lot of ways to “let it go” and either ignore or dismiss the person connected with “it.”
It seems that “let it go” and forgiveness are not necessarily the same thing. One is centered on the “its” of the world whereas the other is centered on persons.
Reflection on the Previous Week
It is the weekend, a time for some renewal and reflection. This was a busy week, with forgiveness workshops touching lives in Verona, Wisconsin; Dublin, Ireland; Belfast, Northern Ireland; the Philippines; Italy, and other places.
I am left with a burning question: Will those who hear the message of The Forgiving Communities forget about it as quickly as they heard about it? We are in a sea of noise and each voice, each tone, each loud crash competes for our attention. How does one rise above it all to accomplish something as quiet and gentle and courageous as forgiveness in this context?
Sometimes the message is bound to fall flat, but when it does not, what are the crucial ingredients that have risen above the competition for one’s time and energy? For one and only one of those ingredients, I think it takes at least two very dedicated people to team together and never, ever give up. The teaming up has to involve the message, heard over and over, that forgiveness matters: in the individual heart, in families, and in communities.
As it says in the Hebrew Proverb (18), a brother helped is like a strong city. The key is to be unwavering together, especially when criticisms come or distractions tempt which in the long-run really do not matter.
I think we have found these two brothers, well, sisters actually, in Lynn and Noreen in Dublin. Each has the heart of a lion. Dublin and all of Ireland is collectively in need of forgiving, given the history of that region and the current economic struggles. Forgiveness is one piece to putting all of the pieces back together for a thriving Ireland.
My personal thanks to Lynn and Noreen. May we walk together for a long, long time in service to our brothers and sisters in need of forgiving and being forgiven.
A Critique of the Prologue to PBS’s New Film
In April, a new documentary will be shown on PBS television: “Forgiveness: A Time to Love and a Time to Hate.” This raises a central question: Is there ever a time to hate? Surely there are times when people hate, but should we set aside a time for hating? The subtitle of the film suggests an affirmative answer, but what good has hatred ever delivered to the world? Do those who crafted this title mean, instead, that there is a time to seek justice? This is self-evidently true because justice is a central virtue, perhaps the central virtue according to Plato. The subtitle, then, is muddled in its meaning if the writers confuse hatred and justice.
The film has a “prologue” for viewing. “Forgiveness is elusive,” the narrator says as the opening statement of this prologue, suggesting that we cannot find its core meaning.
“There is no consensus about what it is,” the narrator of the prologue proclaims with firm confidence. A Socratic dialogue would lead us to ask: “Does this imply that the “meaning” of forgiveness has no consensus?” Further, we need to clarify: “Does this mean that the actual differences are centered in the people, who possess ‘differences of opinion’ about what forgiveness is, or is the ‘meaning’ of forgiveness itself relative and ultimately lacking in any true consensus across the globe?”
“However you define forgiveness….” is yet another statement, bringing home the relativist assumption. There are many “opinions” brought forward in the brief prologue. None are examined. The impression, then, is that forgiveness itself is “elusive.” An issue not even remotely assumed in the prologue is this: Might the problem of a lack of consensus exist in the people themselves, who may not have thought about and experienced forgiveness deeply and over a long period of time? If Socrates assumed his own ignorance at understanding the objective nature of justice, which he did in The Republic, why do not the speakers in the prologue to “Forgiveness: A Time to Love and a Time to Hate” do the same thing? We are in an age in which the individual speaker has the power. Socrates assumed just the opposite.
In our blog post of March 17, 2012 (scroll down to read), we made the point that there are cross-cultural and cross-time meanings of forgiveness that strongly suggest a core meaning to what the narrator calls an “elusive” concept.
In the movie, The Paper Chase, Professor Kingsfield proclaims to his first-year Harvard law students: You come in here with a head full of mush….and you come out thinking like a lawyer. If the prologue is prelude to the rest of this symphony of ideas on forgiveness, we predict this: The viewer who has thought little about forgiveness will come to the film with a head full of mush……and, if he or she absorbs the film’s message without strong rebuttals, will leave with a head full of mush. We shall see.
Respect or Love?
When we forgive, what moral principle should underlie the forgiving response? Would it be better to approach each person with respect or with love or perhaps with some other moral quality? A case can be made for respect because we can more easily offer this to all whereas love is not that easily given through our anger. For example, we can show respect for a hard-driving boss even when we feel no love for him or her at all. Thus, respect covers a variety of circumstances and hurts, whereas love does not.
On the other hand, love is the higher principle because it includes respect and then goes beyond it to serving in mercy. It reaches farther and challenges us more deeply. I think that the response of love goes farther also in its effects. We can give respect at a respectable distance. A hand shake out of respect is not the same as letting someone into our world and caring about him or her.
Other moral responses do not go as far and as deeply as love either. Tolerance can be a rather cold approach, patience by itself can be almost neutral, and a spirit of cooperation can have a “What’s in it for me if I do cooperate?” ring to it. None of these go beyond love as a way to forgive.
Although more difficult than all the rest of these, I opt for love as the underlying response to forgiveness.
Why? Because respect might keep the world safer, but love changes the world for the better.
