Tagged: “Barriers to Forgiveness”

It appears that my mother has a lot of guilt. Now she constantly asks me to forgive her for the way she raised me as a child. Actually, this is not a huge concern for me because she did well as my mom. So, even though I don’t believe she did anything wrong, should I tell her that I forgive her?

Your mother seems to need your reassurance that you love her and that she is a good person. Her standards for herself are higher than yours in judging her parenting skills. If it were me, I would say something like this: “When people forgive others, they see the others as worthwhile and of great value. Mom, you are of great worth and of infinite value to me. When people forgive others, they love them. Mom, I love you without condition. Now that I have shown the attributes of forgiveness to you, may I make a suggestion? I think you should forgive yourself for anything you think you might have done that still makes you feel guilty. I want you to have peace regarding how you raised me. I think you did a wonderful job of that.”

There are moments when I simply don’t want to forgive. When I feel so indifferent about forgiving, what do you recommend?

Forgiveness includes our feelings, but it includes so much more. As a moral virtue, it has the characteristics that all the other moral virtues (such as justice, patience, and kindness) include: one’s will to engage in the virtue, one’s thoughts, and how one behaves.

When your feelings are indifferent, please focus on your will to forgive. Your free-will motivation usually is stronger than your feelings. Also, try to focus on your thoughts (“I forgive Person A for…..”). Try to cultivate thoughts of the inherent worth of the other person, seeing this person as worthwhile, not because of what was done to you, but in spite of this. Finally, try to behave in a forgiving way even if you do not feel like it. A smile or a kind word to the person is a step toward forgiveness.

You claim that forgetting can be harmful on page 2 of your book, Forgiveness Is a Choice. As I move past the painful, unfair circumstance, I believe that forgetting can be beneficial. Could you please elaborate?

There are at least two different meanings to the term “to forget.”  The first one, which I see as unhealthy, is to suppress the knowledge that the other is a danger to you.  It is important to remember that some people are not “on our side.”  The second meaning of the term “to forgive” is to move on, as you say.  So, you can move on from a situation while you see the humanity in the other (as you choose to forgive).  As you see the humanity in the other, it is important to acknowledge the other’s weaknesses if he or she still has a pattern of behavior that is hurtful to you.

Is it psychologically impossible to “forgive and forget”? Wouldn’t we be eliminating an important lesson in self-protection if we truly succeeded in forgetting the unfair treatment?

When we forgive, we do not forget what happened to us; instead, we remember it in new ways.  We can remember the person and the unjust event, and it then passes through our mind and heart without hatred or rage.  As an analogy, if you injured your knee five years ago, you can still look back and remember the event, but without the same level of pain you experienced when it happened.  Remembering in new ways is our protection.  As we remember, we can self-protect against similar injustices in the future.

If everyone in the world found a way to control excessive anger, do you think forgiveness then would become unnecessary in the world?

Forgiving others is not done solely because of its excellent psychological benefits, as shown by research.  Forgiving others also is good in and of itself because it is a moral virtue (as are justice, kindness, and respect).  Showing goodness as the goal of forgiving (rather than deriving a psychological benefit) is sufficient for forgiveness to be a part of your and others’ lives.  To address your point directly, as we both know, reacting to injustices only with temperate, short-term (not unhealthy) anger is not likely as part of the human condition.  Thus, the need for forgiveness, for psychological reasons, will remain alive and well on this earth.