Tagged: “Anger”
As my third follow-up to your idea that forgiveness is a moral virtue, how do I go about seeing the personhood in the one who injured me?
You can begin to see this person’s struggles in life. Perhaps he was hurt by others when he was a child or an adolescent. Perhaps he currently is having difficulty at work and in his pain, he displaced his anger onto you. We call these kinds of views the personal perspective. As another view on this other person, we have what we call the global perspective in which you see your common humanity with this person. You both are unique in this world. You both need adequate nutrition and rest. You hold humanity in common. A third view, if you have a transcendent perspective, you could see that this person is loved by God. All three views (the personal, global, and cosmic perspectives) help you to see the person as more than the offenses against you.
As my second follow-up to your idea that forgiveness is a moral virtue focused on the person who behaved badly, why would I want to do that? It only makes me feel worse when I think of him. I would prefer to forget about him.
Forgetting about him is not forgiveness. You need to make a decision about whether or not you want to actually engage in the moral virtue of forgiveness. If you do, then you will try, by your free will, to begin seeing the personhood in this person. It takes time to do that.
In response to your question about my question, here is how I understand forgiveness: When we forgive, we concentrate on letting the anger or disappointment drift away. In this way, the negative emotions no longer are affecting a person. What do you think?
I think you are tapping into some current writing about forgiveness that actually is a distortion of it. When we forgive, we do not concentrate on our emotions. Instead, we engage in a moral virtue of mercy toward a person who acted unjustly. In other words, the focus is on the other person, not on yourself. I think you are not making progress in forgiveness because you are not practicing forgiveness.
You emphasize practice as a way of growing in forgiveness. I have been practicing now for about four weeks on forgiving someone. It is not working. What do I do now?
I first have to ask you a question: What is your definition of forgiveness? I want to be sure that you are understanding it correctly.
I’m not angry. My father ignored me as a child, so I don’t have to forgive him, right?
To start or continue forgiving, you do not need to be angry. For instance, are you feeling sad or disappointed? Do you believe that you and your father can now have a sincere, trustworthy relationship? If you do not think that a genuine reconciliation is possible between your father and you, then forgiveness would be justified in this circumstance. To put it another way, forgiveness is not solely motivated by feelings of anger. Forgiveness might be suitable if you believe that you have been treated unfairly and that this is interfering with your connection with your father.
