Tagged: “break free from the past”
I need to forgive four different people. Where do I start??
I recommend that you ask yourself what is your current level of anger—on a 1 to 10 scale—for each person. Order the people from the least anger you have to the greatest anger you have. Start with the one person with whom you have the least anger. This will allow you to get a sense of the forgiveness process and to practice that process before you get to the person who hurt you the most.
Is it harder to forgive someone who is frequently angry versus someone else who is not this way?
I do think it may be more difficult to forgive someone who is “frequently angry” and expresses that anger consistently to you. You may have to forgive on a daily basis if you are in regular contact with a person who is continuously angry. After you have forgiven to a deep enough level so that you can approach, in a civil way, this person, then it may be time to gently ask for justice. Part of justice is to ask this person, if you feel safe with this, to begin working on the anger so that you are not hurt by it.
Apart from the idea that we are all made in the image and likeness of God, how can non-believers see the worth in other people?
Aristotle makes a distinction between potentiality and actuality. If it is the case that all people have free will, then even when people behave badly, then they each have the potential to change, to actualize that potential and become better people to others. According to the philosopher Kant, all people are ends in and of themselves and so should be treated as such. The philosopher, Margaret Holmgren, argued for the position that all people, based on Kant’s idea, are worthy of respect. So, there is room in different philosophies for the view that all people have worth.
In your book, Forgiveness Is a Choice, you state that one purpose of forgiving is being open to reconciling with the other person. I am assuming that you mean a receptivity to reconcile rather than an actual reconciliation as part of forgiving. Is this correct?
Yes, that is correct. As people forgive, they usually are open to reconciliation if and only if the other, who has been deeply hurtful, has changed. So, the receptivity is more of an internal response at first, a waiting to see how the other changes.
Why is it so much easier to hold onto anger than it is to forgive?
Holding on to anger can be a way of feeling in control when others treat you in such a way that it is all too easy to feel out of control. Also, the anger can give a person a sense of power, specifically power over others. Further, anger can become a habit, even if this is unintended. This habit can be very hard to break. Forgiveness has been shown scientifically to break this habit of anger.
