Tagged: “forgiveness is a choice”

So Then, What Is a Good Society?

September 22, 2025 No comments

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I wrote a similar essay to this one 13 years ago on this very site.  Sadly and tragically, little has changed in that lengthy time period.  Societies are not listening and we are reaping the consequences of intemperate anger, unrestrained rage, and innocent lives lost. Let us continue with the ideas expressed here in 2012.

Peter Maurin of the Catholic Worker Movement is alleged to have said that a good society is one in which it is easy to be good. I write this blog post today as I reflect on some recent news stories of school shootings resulting in the deaths of innocent students and adults. I reflect on the killing of Charlie Kirk and the widening divide between political groups in the United States. Is it not obvious that anger is growing and at times knows no bounds? Anger can sometimes be deadly for those who just happen to be in the angry person’s way or who hold different beliefs than the shooter.

I wonder what those outcomes would have been if those with the weapons were bathed in forgiveness education from age 5 though 18. I wonder what those outcomes would have been if each one of the weapon-carriers, as they grew up, deliberately practiced forgiveness in school, on the playground, and in the home, and then continued the forgiving into adulthood. I wonder.

One key issue of forgiveness, and this takes time to develop, is to begin seeing the inherent worth of all people, including those with whom we disagree or at whom we are angry. What if the school shooters saw that deep, invaluable inherent worth in those at whom the gun was pointed? Could someone immersed in the understanding of the inherent worth of all people pull the trigger? What if the one who shot Charlie Kirk, despite wide differences in beliefs, saw his inherent worth. Could he have pulled the trigger?

What about us, who are observing all of this? For those of you who were dancing at the announcement of Mr. Kirk’s passing, can you honestly say that you saw and continue to see the inherent worth of the man? If not, perhaps you need to deliberately cultivate forgiveness in your life, starting with the little things of everyday life that annoy you so that you can begin to grow in this virtue.

For those of you who now deeply mourn Mr. Kirk’s passing, can you say that you see the inherent worth of the shooter? I am not saying, “Do you now excuse the killing?” No. Instead, I am asking if, in spite of the murder, can you see the humanity in the one who pulled the trigger? Such a view takes time and this is why, if you had years of forgiveness education, then you might be brought to such an understanding of him more deeply and more quickly so that you do not now even unconsciously cultivate a rage that could harm you or even be passed unintentionally to your loved ones. Forgiveness can help prevent that. Perhaps it is time for you who read this to begin growing in the heroic moral virtue of forgiveness for the sake of your family members and friends.

The wounds in the world are deep and everlasting, it seems. What we do here at the International Forgiveness Institute, Inc. (helping people if they so choose to learn to forgive and then practice forgiveness) will never be out of date. Yet, my big worry (yes, it is a big worry) is this: Will there be sufficient laborers in the forgiveness vineyard to bring the virtue of forgiveness to children so that they can become fortified against the grave injustices that come to too many too often as adults? Can we help them sustain the practice of this moral virtue so that it becomes part of their identity, part of who they are as persons?  Can we assist them with this growing in forgiveness so that their anger does not explode out of the barrel of a gun?

I worry about those 6-year-olds, sitting now in classrooms, learning their mandated ABCs, without also learning the ABCs of how to deal with injustice. You see, society is not emphasizing forgiveness. We are not being taught forgiveness on a regular basis. We are in a society where it is not easy to be a good forgiver. And so too many who become confused, frustrated, angry, and then filled with rage do not know how to temper these emotions before they are discharged onto unsuspecting others.

I know of no society which has deliberately decided to create a norm that to forgive is good. Instead, forgiveness remains deep in the heart of some people, not most, as society moves along with its norms of justice alone. So, then, what do societies do when rage erupts, overflows, and hurts others? We send in the law enforcement officers **after the mayhem.** Do you have any idea regarding how we might **prevent** the rage by encouraging forgiveness and how forgiveness and justice can and should work hand-in-hand?   

Society, what do you think? It is more than time to bring forgiveness into societies so that it can take up residence in individual hearts for the good of the self and others as people then strive for a temperate and good justice. It is time.

Forgiveness Therapy for Battered Women in Pakistan

September 21, 2025 No comments

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A recent study led by Sana Nisar of the Government College University, Lahore, Pakistan found that a forgiveness intervention for 15 sessions, done one-on-one with the intervener, was effective. Following the intervention, those in the forgiveness condition, relative to those in the control group, had significant decreases in depression, anxiety, and anger and significant increases in forgiveness and hope relative to those in the control group.  The reference to this work is this:

Nisar, S., Yu, L., Ifikhar, R., & Enright, R.D. (2025). Forgiveness therapy to build hope and reduce anxiety and depression in battered women in Pakistan. Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy.doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/cpp.70089

 

 

 

 

Revisiting the Question: ‘Do I Really Want to Forgive When Traumatized?’

August 27, 2025 No comments

Note: When I posted the blog essay below on September 27, 2017, as an excerpt from my book, The Forgiving Life, published in 2012, I had no idea how a backlash against forgiveness would emerge in the published literature.  There appears to be an association between the increasing popularity of forgiveness and the publication of criticisms against it.  As one rebuttal here, I have reproduced the essay from 2017.  It is even more relevant today, in 2025, than it was eight years ago.

Do I Really Want to Forgive When Traumatized?

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Why would anyone want to forgive when another has traumatized you?

I would like to suggest a different perspective on trauma and forgiveness. It is not forgiveness itself that is creating the sense of fear or disgust or danger or moral evil. Instead, it is the grave emotional wounds which are leading to these thoughts and feelings about forgiveness. When people are wounded they naturally tend to duck for cover. When someone comes along with an outstretched hand and says, “Please come out, into the sunshine, and experience the warmth of healing,” it can be too much. We then blame the one with the outstretched hand or the warmth of the sun or anything else “out there” for our discomfort when all the while the discomfort is what is residing inside the person, not “out there.” And this reaction is all perfectly understandable, given the trauma.

If you experience a blown out knee while working out, and it is gravely painful, is it not difficult to go to the physician? There you face all the sharp white-lights of the examining room, and the nurses scurrying about, and the statements about surgery and recovery and rehabilitation. It all seems to be too much. Yet, it is not the physician or the nurses or the thought of the scalpel or the rehab that is the ultimate cause of all the discomfort. That ultimate cause is the blown-out knee. Isn’t it the same with forgiveness? You have within you a deep wound, caused by others’ injustice, and now the challenge is to heal.

Forgiveness is one way to heal from the trauma which you did not deserve. Like the blown-out  knee, the trauma needs healing. So, I urge you to separate in your mind the wound from forgiveness itself. My first challenge to you, then, is this: Is it forgiveness itself that is the basic problem or is it the wound and then all the thoughts of what you will have to do to participate in the healing of that wound?

Forgiveness heals. Forgiveness does not further traumatize. To forgive is to know that you have been treated unjustly and despite the injustice, you make the decision to reduce your resentment toward the offending person and eventually work toward mercy for him or her. That mercy can take the form of kindness, respect, generosity, and even love. Do you want that in you life—kindness, respect, generosity, and love? Forgiveness can help strengthen these in your heart or even begin to have them grow all over again for you.

– Excerpt from the book, The Forgiving Life, Chapter 2.                                                                                    

Reader’s Digest Presents 10 Powerful Stories of Forgiveness

August 25, 2025 No comments

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On June 9, 2025, Reader’s Digest published 10 heart-warming stories of people who have forgiven others for deep injustices.  As one example, entitled The Unexpected Caregiver, Pascale Kavanagh, a survivor of domestic abuse, stated that she never imagined reconnecting with her abuser, her mother, in her adult life. Her mother, however, had multiple strokes, preventing her from speaking or caring for herself. Kavanagh started reading to her mother beside her bedside. Kavanagh reports that her hatred for her mother turned into forgiveness and love as she took care of her on a daily basis.