Our Forgiveness Blog
5 Ways of Misunderstanding Forgiveness
There are many misconceptions about forgiveness. Here are 5 worth noting:
1. Forgiveness places the burden for healing on the one who was the victim. For example, if someone is assaulted and now is feeling depressed, the burden for healing falls on the one who was assaulted. Our answer: Of course the burden of healing rests with the one hurt. That is always the case whether the hurt is emotional (as in the case of depression) or physical (a broken leg, for example). When we have an injury of any kind, we should never rely on the one who injured us to somehow fix the consequences of our injury because too often the injurer is not concerned one way or the other with our healing.
2. Forgiveness foreswears punishment of the injurer and lets him or her off the hook. Our answer: Forgiveness and justice grow up together.
When one forgives, one should seek justice. In the case of punishment, if the injurer broke the law, the injured one should not take the law into his/her own hands, but leave the punishment to a neutral, third party judge.
3. Forgiveness is morally suspect because one “lets go” of the other’s injustice. Our answer: Forgiveness is not a “letting go” of an offense but instead is a merciful overture to the one who had no mercy on the victim.
4. Forgiveness makes the one injured develop a victim-identity, in essence crippling his or her self-esteem. Our answer: Forgiveness helps one to thrive and rise above the injustice, thus helping the forgiver to shed the victim mentality.
5. Forgiveness is dangerous because it puts the injured one in harm’s way again as he or she reaches out to the injurer. Our answer: Forgiveness is not the same as reconciliation. To forgive is a moral virtue. To reconcile is a negotiation strategy of developing once again mutual trust. One can forgive without reconciling.
Robert
How to Pass Forgiveness to the Next Generation: Forming Forgiveness Communities
How can we pass forgiveness to subsequent generations? Let us begin to explore some answers to this question through the implementation of forgiving communities.
By “forgiving community” we mean a system-wide effort to make forgiveness a conscious and deliberate part of human relations through: discussion, practice, mutual support, and the preservation of forgiveness across time in any group that wishes to cultivate and perfect this virtue (alongside justice and all other virtues). The Forgiving Community is an idea that can become a reality wherever there is a collection of individuals who wish to unite toward a common goal of fostering forgiveness, developing the necessary structures within their organization to accomplish the goal, and preserving that goal for future generations. We will consider The Family as Forgiving Community here and in a subsequent post, we will consider The School as Forgiving Community.
The central points of the Family as Forgiving Community are these:
1. We are interested in the growth of appreciation and practice in the virtue of forgiveness not only within each individual but also within the family unit itself.
2. For family members to grow in the appreciation and practice of forgiveness, that virtue must be established as a positive norm in the family unit. This necessitates that the parents value the virtue, talk positively about it, and demonstrate it through forgiving and asking for forgiveness on a regular basis within the family.
3. For each member of the family unit to grow in the appreciation and practice of forgiveness, that virtue must be taught in the home, with materials that are age-appropriate and interesting for the children and the parents.
4. Parents will need to persevere in the appreciation, practice, and education of forgiveness if the children are to develop the strength of passing the virtue of forgiveness onto their own families when they are adults.
To achieve these goals, one strategy is the Family Forgiveness Gathering.
Family Forgiveness Gathering
The parents are encouraged to create a time and place for family discussions. We recommend that the parents gather the family together at least once a week to have a quiet discussion about forgiveness. They are to keep in mind that to forgive is not the same as excusing or forgetting or even reconciling and that forgiveness works hand-in-hand with justice.
Questions for the family forgiveness meeting might include:
– What does it mean to forgive someone?
– Who was particularly kind and loving to you this week?
– What did that feel like?
– When the person was really loving toward you, what were your thoughts about the person?
– When the person was really loving, how did you behave toward that person?
– Was anyone particularly unfair or mean to you this week?
– What did it feel like when you were treated in a mean way?
– What were your thoughts?
– Did you try to forgive the person for being unfair to you?
– What does forgiveness feel like?
– What are your thoughts when you forgive?
– What are your thoughts specifically toward the one who acted unfairly to you when you forgive him or her?
– How did you behave toward the person once you forgave?
– If you have not yet forgiven, what is a first step in forgiving him or her? (Make a decision to be kind, commit to forgiving, begin in a small way to see that the person is in fact a person of worth.)
The parents are reminded that they do not have to know all the answers.
Robert
Checking in Regarding Your Unfolding Love Story
In March of 2014, we posted a reflection here in which we encouraged you to grow in love as your legacy of 2014.
The challenge was this: Give love away as your legacy of 2014.
Our challenge to you now is this: Give love away as your legacy of 2015.
One way to start is by looking backward at one incident of 2015 so far. 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?
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 2015 is about 75% over as we move into October. Have you engaged in 75% 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.
Robert
Learn About Forgiveness from the Master
Editor’s Note: Today, instead of providing a forgiveness-related blog written by Dr. Robert Enright, we are providing you with a link to a another blog page featuring an exciting and rare upcoming event.
“Forgiveness expert Robert Enright reveals the keys to emotional healing” is the title of that blog on the University of Wisconsin-Madison Continuing Studies blog site. It outlines a two-day forgiveness workshop Dr. Enright is conducting on Oct. 21-22 at the Pyle Center on the UW-Madison campus — Forgiveness: A Pathway to Emotional Healing. That conference is a rare face-to-face experience with the leading authority in the scientific study of forgiveness—the “forgiveness trailblazer,” according to Time magazine. Attendance is being limited in order to allow participants to dialogue one-on-one with Dr. Enright.
A Response to Simon Doonan’s “The Healing Power of Holding a Grudge”
In the on-line site Slate, author Simon Doonan refers to what he calls “the forgiveness movement,” an obviously unpleasant image for him. For example, he thinks that forgiveness is a part of “our softy culture” that does not have the backbone to stand up against injustice.
His criticism against the virtue of forgiveness, in part, grew out of this very difficult experience: At the funeral service for his murdered friend, the one giving the talk exhorted those in attendance to begin forgiving. It was too early for such a message because forgiveness usually begins in confusion and even rage. Forgiveness is a process that takes time. This request to forgive is more an issue with the messenger, not with forgiveness itself.
Mr. Doonan gives a series of examples of what might be termed hasty forgiveness, again as a way to bolster his view that forgiveness is part of a “kumbaya” culture. Yet, again, hasty forgiveness is not what forgiveness is at its essence. To forgive in its genuine sense is to know that what happened was wrong, is wrong, and always will be wrong and from that position the forgiver gives compassion rather than hatred. It takes great inner strength to do that. To forgive is not to throw justice away, but instead to let forgiveness and the quest for justice grow up together.
Not everyone will choose to forgive, but for those who do, they must be tough-minded and know that forgiveness usually comes slowly and with much courage to try to cultivate that compassion that fights against rage in an inner battle for the person’s emotions.
Mr. Doonan’s experience with the message-bearer of forgiveness at the funeral was unfortunate. It seems to have deeply affected him because in his closing comments in his essay he refers back to this 15-year-old incident as he proclaims, “Out of respect for the memory of my pal, I will carry that rage and indignation to my grave. No forgiveness necessary.”
Rage….to his grave? Truly, I wish him well, but I am concerned for his inner world and the health of his emotions if he deliberately will nurture rage. Surely, I do not blame him for his anger, and I would like to suggest that he strive for justice toward the murderer, but he is no longer among the living. When there is no recourse to justice, is rage the only or even the best option? The murderer took a life, Mr. Doonan’s friend. He also gave birth to a rage that is promised to last a lifetime. The murderer, if his intent was to inflict suffering, is even giving this from his grave.
Rage will not make the world better. Compassion will, but it comes with a price, one of struggle and even agony, but surely not in a “softy” nor “kumbaya” way.
Robert
