Tagged: “Forgiveness Education”

How can you create a forgiving community for oppressed people? Don’t you first have to validate the injustices by solving them? Forgiveness without such validity seems weak.

One can validate oppression by acknowledging it and calling it what it is: unfair.  One can own one’s legitimate anger over the oppression.  Yet, if one waits to actually solve the injustice before forgiving, then those who are oppressing win twice: once with original and ongoing oppression and second by having the oppressed people living under a constant state of unhealthy anger or resentment. That resentment, over time, might be so strong as to destroy individuals and families within that oppressed community.  Forgiveness without a correction of the injustice at the very least solves that one problem of destructive resentment.

Learn more at Healing Hearts, Building Peace.

I have noticed that some of my friends just are angrier than others. They do not seem to show this anger only when recently treated unfairly by others. They are just angry people. Why do you think this would be?

Without knowing the person’s history, it is not possible to know for certain why one of your friends is consistently showing anger.  I suspect two issues.  First, the display of anger in the home, when your friend was growing up, might have been high.  In other words, angry behavior was demonstrated in the home and implicitly approved as a norm.  In other words, the friend learned anger by observing it being modeled in the home.  Second, the friend may have been hurt by the anger displays in the home and so there is resentment from the past that is affecting the person now, in the present.  If this second scenario is correct, then the friend might benefit from forgiving one of the parents who might have displaced the anger onto your friend while growing up.

Learn more at Family Forgiveness Guidelines.

Do children really understand what forgiveness is?  If they do not, then can they really forgive?

We have been helping teachers set up forgiveness education programs since 2002.  In our experience, children as young as age 6 can understand the worth of people, including the built-in worth of all people.  This is a foundational step in forgiving.  Even though young children may not understand the moral virtue of love (serving others for the others’ sake), they nonetheless can see that to forgive is to see the worth in the other and to offer kindness of some kind to the one who offended.  As forgiveness education occurs on higher grade levels, then students’ understanding of forgiving as an expression of mercy can become more sophisticated.

Learn more about Forgiveness Education for Children at: Curriculum

Forgiveness gives you a second chance for a meaningful and happy life

Editor’s Note: We asked a recent graduate of our Online Forgiveness Education Course to tell us about her experience with the course. Here is the response from life coach Emily Atallah:

Through my work as an existential logotherapeutic coach, I help people find meaning in everything in their life, including work, family relationships, and in situations where they face insurmountable suffering. I do this mainly by working with the power of forgiveness.

In my home country, Colombia, forgiveness seems like an impossible task for many. With a history of more than 60 years marked by war, drug trafficking and constant conflict, entire populations have now had to confront a hard question: will they forgive those who horribly hurt them even if they never asked for forgiveness?

This made me look for ways I could help those clients who had to leave their home behind, fearing for their safety, and who came to a city that in more than one occasion, receives them with a hostile environment and not much help. Many people with deep wounds derived from the conflict and a past of violence, resentment and vengeance.

As I looked for ways to help, I researched many therapies, but with time, I found them temporary or incomplete. I also looked into the initiatives of religious groups, and though they were having some admirable results, they did not appeal to non-believers.

Then I heard about the International Forgiveness Institute, and all their research on how forgiveness is a psychological matter, not only a religious one. I was personally impressed by their focus on forgiveness’ impact on psychological issues such as anxiety, depression, and others as measurable variables. For me, it meant that now we can present evidence that forgiveness works and can in fact change hearts!

Finding meaning and forgiveness in a life full of resentments is crucial to heal.  To see the offender as a human being and giving them what they deserve in dignity and love, changes your life and theirs.  It restores justice even without reconciliation.

Emily Atallah with her Forgiveness CE Course Certificate of Completion.

Forgiveness gives you a second chance for a meaningful and happy life, an opportunity to live a better, healthier, fulfilling life where people reach for their dreams without the weight of resentful thoughts.

As a life coach, I found particularly reassuring and helpful to learn that forgiveness has a measurable impact on the people I treat despite what the offense was. My time studying at the Forgiveness Institute gave me more tools to better treat my clients, to measure their progress and to encourage them to strive for a better and more meaningful life.

I encourage you to give yourself the opportunity to see forgiveness in a new light and learn about its healing power, by taking the online “Forgiveness Therapy” course through the International Forgiveness Institute.

To learn more about the writer please visit her website: Emily Atallah Coach de vida

Is Forgiveness Transcending the Past…..or Is It More than That?

Recently, I have been hearing people say that forgiveness is transcendence.  By this they seem to mean that as people forgive, then the past injustices do not affect them any more.  They have risenabove the pain, the anguish, the sadness, and the anger.  They have moved on.

If this is all that forgiveness is, then forgiveness is not a moral virtue.  A moral virtue, such as justice or patience, is for people.  It reaches out to people.  It aids and supports people by putting the particular virtue into action and that action points toward people. When I exercise justice, for example, I honor the agreement that is part of a contract into which we both have entered.  I am patient by restraining from harsh words when in a long line or when those who are my teammates at work are slowing things down.

Moral virtues are concerned with goodness expressed toward other people.

If forgiveness is part of love—a moral virtue—then it cannot be only about transcending the past because one can transcend that past by being neutral toward those who have been unfair, who were responsible for the hurt.  The forgiver need not enter into a direct relationship with the injuring person if he or she continues to cause harm.

Yet, the forgiver wishes the other well, as Lewis Smedes in his 1984 book, Forgive and Forget has said.  The forgiver is willing to do good toward the other, if the other changes abusive behavior.  Being neutral might be part of the pathway toward forgiving, but it is not its end point.

 The end point of forgiving is to express love, as best one can, toward those who have not loved the forgiver.  Even if a person cannot develop that love for whatever reason, loving the other nonetheless is the endpoint of true forgiveness.
                                                                                                        – Robert Enright

Transcending the past might be a consequence of forgiving, but it is not forgiving itself…..if forgiveness is a moral virtue.

Robert

Learn more about the definition of forgiveness at Forgiveness Defined  then read Dr. Enright’s best-selling book Forgiveness is a Choice: A Step-by-Step Process for Resolving Anger and Restoring Hope. This self-help book is for people who have been deeply hurt by another and who are caught in a vortex of anger, depression, and resentment. It walks readers through the forgiveness process Dr. Enright developed to reduce anxiety and depression while increasing self-esteem and hopefulness.