Tagged: “Enright Forgiveness Process Model”

If teachers of elementary school children teach forgiveness education and then the child goes home to parents who discourage forgiveness, what is your opinion of the effectiveness of the school-based instruction?

It is difficult to know the answer to this because each situation will be different.  Yet, it seems to me that if forgiveness education is consistent across years in school, the student will have a chance to understand accurately what forgiveness is and is not.  The children then have the opportunity to choose forgiveness for themselves as they see the norm in school that forgiveness is worthwhile.

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Do you think that forgiveness is something that should be taught formally in schools?

What is the purpose of education?  Isn’t it to prepare children for adulthood?  We prepare children to read. We prepare children to balance a checkbook.  Why do we not prepare them for the injustices that likely will visit each child in adulthood?  Yes, I do think we need forgiveness education in schools so that, when the students grow into adulthood and experience cruelty, sometimes unexpected and deep cruelty, we will have equipped them with how to recover from that through forgiveness, if the person now chooses forgiveness as a free will decision.  Further, it would be important to teach the teamwork of forgiving and justice-seeking so that the child does not equate forgiving with giving in to the other’s unfairness.

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How do you correct a child who equates forgiveness with revenge? I sometimes hear my son saying to his friend that they can be buddies again only if he can hit him back.

I think you need to first ask your son this: If you hit your friend, do you think he will feel pain?  Then you need to ask this: “What is forgiveness?  Is it gentle?”  Try to get your son to see the large difference between causing pain and giving tenderness and love.  Once your child sees this difference, he likely will abandon the idea that hitting is equated with forgiving.

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I am beginning to realize that a huge obligation of anyone who writes about forgiveness or who is a mental health professional aiding people’s forgiveness is this: The writer or helper must take the time to deeply understand what forgiveness is and is not in its true sense, in its essence.  This takes time, study, and reading works that show maturity and accuracy.  I now am a bit discouraged because I do not see this happening nearly to the extent that it should be happening.  What do you think?

I agree with you that scholars and practitioners have the “huge obligation” of taking the time to very deeply know what forgiveness is in its fullness, in its essence.  I agree that there should be more time devoted to examining the “works that show maturity and accuracy” without reductionism or the search for continual innovation, which is so rewarded in academia.  If a person comes up with a new twist on forgiveness (or any other variable) this is often seen as an innovation or an advance, when too often it splits the construct, reduces the construct, and therefore distorts the construct.  For example, talking of “emotional forgiveness” as if this is a kind of forgiveness is confusing “kind” and “component,” a very large difference.  Emotions are a component of forgiveness, that includes much more than this.  Emotions by themselves are not a “kind” of forgiveness.  If that were the case, then motivations, cognitions, and actions could be deleted and you still have forgiveness.  Does this sound accurate to you when your goal is to understand the essence, the whole picture of what forgiveness is?

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In your most recent answer to my question about scholars misunderstanding the term forgiveness, can you give an example of a failure of some scholars to understand forgiveness in its “full sense” and a failure of some other scholars to understand forgiveness in “a true sense”?

A failure to understand forgiveness in its full sense, for example, is when a scholar equates forgiveness only with a part of what forgiveness is in its essence.  An example of this is equating forgiveness only with a motivation to forgive.  A motivation to forgive is one component of forgiving, but not the entire essence of it, as I explained in an earlier answer.  A failure to understand forgiveness in its true sense, for example, is when a scholar claims that we can forgive situations, such as when a tornado strikes one’s house.  Because you cannot be good to a tornado, it follows logically that you cannot forgive a tornado or any other non-human entity.  Situations are non-human entities.  Therefore, you cannot forgive situations, despite some scholars’ claim to the contrary.

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