Our Forgiveness Blog
Extending the Love of Forgiveness in New Directions
As we practice the love of forgiveness, don’t be surprised if that love spills over into other areas of your life. Here is one heart warming story that a friend, who practices forgiveness daily, told to me:
“When I was riding my bike yesterday, a homeless woman was pushing a shopping cart that contained, in all likelihood, all of her worldly possessions. I stopped and said, ‘Excuse me…’ She looked afraid and startled, which is typical in the homeless world because people usually hurt them rather than help them. Then I said to her, ‘Would you please do me a favor and hold this for me?’ I then put a $20 bill in her hand. She looked at the money and started to laugh….and then I laughed. And she thanked me and had very soft eyes toward me. I then continued the ride…..with a warmer heart than when I started out.”
Dr. Bob
You Forgive and the Other Denies Wrongdoing: Now What?
In a recent story in our Forgiveness News section, “Forgiving Muammar Gaddafi for the Lockerbie Bombing,” we reported on Lisa Gibson, whose brother died in the Lockerbie, Scotland airplane bombing (Pan Am 103). She attempted to forgive both Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the only one convicted in the case, and Muammar Gaddafi, suspected to have masterminded the plot.
Both denied any connection with the bombing. Now what? How should Lisa Gibson deal with the forgiveness? Does she withdraw the attempt until at least one of them admits to wrongdoing of some kind, either planning or carrying out the deed? Does she go ahead anyway?
What should you do when you are about to forgive someone who denies any wrongdoing?
It seems to us that the first step is to take a little step backward and ask: Am I correct here in thinking that this person (or people) acted unjustly toward me? Of course, one need not have the kind of evidence required by a court of law because you are not being the judge over this person. You are not sentencing him or her to prison.
If, upon further reflection, you conclude that the person was unjust to you, then we recommend that you go ahead anyway, despite any howls of opposition from the person. Further, you need not tell him or her that you have forgiven. You can do so from the heart and then demonstrate your forgiveness by how you interact with or talk about the person.
The bottom line is this: You should not be held captive by another’s denial of wrongdoing. If your reflection leads you to conclude that he or she was unjust to you, then go ahead. Forgiveness is about freedom, including the freedom to make your own decisions about whom and when to forgive.
Dr. Bob
Is the Term “To Forgive” or the Expression “I Forgive You” Universal or Specific to a Few Cultures?
Here is a list of various cultures and their words for “to forgive” or “I forgive you”:
Albanian prt falur
Catalan a perdonar
Castilian Para perdonar
Czech Odpoutm
Danish At tilgive
Dutch Te vergeven
English to forgive
Filipino upang patawarin
Finnish Annettakoon se teille anteeksi
French pardonner
German Ich verzeihe Dir
Hungarian n megbocs tok neked
Icelandic afyrirgefa
Irish a logh
Italian A perdonare
Maltese li nahfru
Norwegian Til forlate
Polish Odpuszcza
Portuguese A perdoar
Romanian Pentru a ierta
Spanish Para perdonar
Swahili kusamehe
Swedish Frlta
Turkish BEN size bala
Vietnamese Ti tha th cho bn
Welsh i faddau
26 languages, 26 similar ways to communicate. This, of course, is no proof of the universality of “to forgive” or “I forgive you.” Yet, we put this term and this expression to the test and they were not defeated. At the least we can conclude that forgiveness has a place in many cultures. Here’s an even more comprehensive list of world cultures and forgiveness translations.
Thanks to these websites for translation help: Babylon translator and Dictionary.com Translator.
For each term or expression, we translated it from the English into the other language. We then back-translated into English and retained the term/expression only if both forms of translation were consistent.
Dr. Bob
Is It Ever Possible for Forgiveness Not to Be a Virtue?
The intriguing title to a Wall Street Journal article, “When Forgiveness Isn’t a Virtue,” motivated us at the International Forgiveness to ask the question: Is it ever possible for forgiveness not to be a virtue?
The answer is no.
Forgiveness has been considered a virtue for at least the past 3450 years, with the story of Joseph forgiving his brother and 10 half-brothers in the Book of Genesis. Since that time, forgiveness has been seen as one aspect of love, specifically being in service to others. The one aspect of love that particularly captures the meaning of forgiveness is mercy, or giving to others generously, even when the giving is not necessarily deserved if our focus is only on the virtue of justice.
When we forgive, we offer love, in the context of mercy, toward those who have treated us unjustly. This is the essence of forgiveness.
What, then, is the endpoint of forgiving? What is its purpose? We see three purposes to the virtue: a) to offer goodness (in the form of loving mercy) as an end in and of itself; b) to get the attention of the offending person so that he or she can see what was done to correct it; and c) to possibly reconcile with the transgressor if he or she does see the damage done and has remorse, repentance, and (where appropriate) recompense.
When the essence of forgiveness (what it is) is matching the endpoint of forgiveness (its purpose), then we can say that the person who is exercising forgiveness is doing so properly.
Now, let us look at two kinds of distortions of this ancient virtue. The first distortion concerns the essence of forgiveness (what it is). Sometimes people will misunderstand its essence. They might see forgiveness as a way of moving on from a situation or just letting a bad situation go. These are distortions of the essence of forgiveness because forgiveness is appropriated toward persons in particular, not situations. The offer of loving mercy is not “moving on” or “letting go” because one can move on in an unloving and unmerciful manner by dismissing or even hating the transgressor. Such apparent expressions of the essence of forgiveness are incorrect from a philosophical viewpoint because they are not capturing what forgiveness is.
The second distortion concerns the endpoint of forgiveness. Sometimes people will misunderstand the endpoint or purpose of the virtue of forgiveness. Sometimes people decide to forgive so that they can: a) keep an unhealthy relationship going at all costs; b) dominate the other by reminding the transgressor of the many transgressions, or c) remain passive and uncourageous by not confronting an offender. In any of these three cases, the person is failing to fulfill even one of the actual purposes of forgiveness.
Now, let us further suppose that we have a critic of forgiveness who criticizes the essence of forgiveness, saying that to forgive is a cowardly,
passive, non-constructive, or self-centered act of “moving on.” The critic may be right about what “moving on” might be, but he or she has not described forgiveness. Instead, the person has appropriated a distortion of forgiveness and then has criticized the distortion.
It is the same pattern when we turn to a distortion of the purposes of forgiveness. As a critic embraces a distortion of what forgiveness allegedly accomplishes and then criticizes that, he or she is fighting a straw man. Why? Because the criticism is pointed toward a distortion of forgiveness’ endpoint, not a true endpoint. When we forgive, we do not hold onto unhealthy relationships at all cost or dominate another or remain weak while hiding the virtue of justice under the bed.
When we clear away the distortions of forgiveness’ essence and endpoints we see more clearly. Forgiveness properly understood as a term and in its true endpoints is never not a virtue. A sharper way to say it is this: Forgiveness is always a virtue.
Dr. Bob
“When Forgiveness Isn’t a Virtue:” A Response
On October 29, 2012, the Wall Street Journal published an article entitled, “When Forgiveness Isn’t a Virtue.” It centered, in part, on research by Dr. James McNulty of the University of Tennessee. The newspaper author makes the claim that once a person forgives another for a transgression, then the act of forgiving “may encourage the transgressor to do it again.”
For example, in one of Dr. McNulty’s studies of newlywed couples, “He found that the day after forgiving a partner, people were 6.5 times more likely to report that the partner had again done something negative, compared with when there was no forgiveness.” A similar finding was reported in another study that examined these outcomes over a six month period. Forgiving partners were the recipient of continued transgressions. Yet, the critical question is this: Is forgiveness the culprit here?
The conclusions reached in the article have at least one major philosophical flaw and one major psychological flaw worth noting. First, the philosophical flaw is this: We have known for at least 3,500 years that we are not to practice any one virtue in isolation of the other virtues. Aristotle taught us that. Otherwise, for example, a courageous non-swimmer who practices only courage and not wisdom might jump into a raging river to save a drowning dog, only to lose his own life. It is the same with forgiveness. It must not be practiced in isolation from justice, otherwise other people will take advantage of us. This is not the fault of forgiveness itself. It is the fault of the one appropriating it in isolation from justice.
The major psychological flaw is this: Dr. McNulty, when asking research participants about forgiveness, presumed that each was using that
word correctly. It is an assumption that should not have been made.Researchers Freedman and Chang in 2010 did a study in which they found that most people misunderstand what forgiveness is, equating it with letting a transgression go or “moving on.” Philosophers and psychologists who make the study of forgiveness their life’s work will tell us that these are misconceptions because “letting go” and “moving on” are not virtues.
Instead, forgiveness is offering goodness to another in spite of what he or she has done. Forgiveness then comes alongside justice, which asks something of the transgressor. To avoid any misunderstanding of what forgiveness is, I suggest using the definition I developed from more than 25 years of forgiveness research: Forgiveness Defined.
Forgiveness need not get a black eye from Dr. McNulty’s research when we realize that participants can misunderstand and therefore misappropriate this virtue. If anything, his research calls for careful forgiveness education for anyone who wishes to practice the virtue of forgiveness in important situations with important people in their lives.
Dr. Bob
