Tagged: “forgiveness is a choice”
Recently, one of my high school students approached me and said this, “I am kind of ambivalent about forgiveness. If I forgive, some of the other students seem to think that I am a weakling.” I was not sure how to answer this. Do you have some insights for me?
The student is confusing forgiveness with giving in to others’ demands. This is not forgiveness. To forgive is to know that what the other person did is wrong and yet mercy is offered nonetheless. When one forgives, one also asks for justice and so this idea of weakness or giving in is not correct. There are two basic ways of distorting forgiveness: to let the other have power over you or to seek power over the other because of that person’s transgressions. True forgiveness avoids these extremes.
How can I encourage others to forgive without over-stepping my bounds?
I like your word “encourage” because it suggests that you will not pressure others to forgive. The gist is to help others to be drawn to the beauty of forgiveness. In other words, the person will have to see that to forgive is not to show weakness or to cave in to others’ unreasonable demands. To forgive is to see the humanity in the other and in the self, without coercion to think this way. If the other begins to see forgiveness in its true light, then over time the person may be drawn to forgiving, as a free-will choice.
I wanted to share an experience with you and get your insights. I have been practicing forgiveness lately, particularly toward one of my parents when I was a child. This past weekend, I was at a family function and a cousin said that I did not belong there. Usually, this would make me enraged, but this time, it did not deeply affect me. Yes, I was angry, but I was able to stay. Why do you think this unusual behavior by me occurred this weekend?
I think you are learning to forgive in a more generalized way than only applying forgiveness toward one of your parents for what happened when you were a child. In other words, your practice of forgiving is generalizing to others, and this is a sign of maturing in the practice of forgiving. Aristotle said that a mark of maturing in the moral virtues is to develop a love of those virtues. Do you think this is happening to you, in that you are developing a love of forgiveness? If so, then it is understandable that you may have been applying the moral virtue of forgiving toward your cousin who insulted you. If that is the case, then you likely, in the future, will begin to forgive more and more people when they are unjust to you.
If I make a decision to forgive, is that sufficient to actually forgive?
We did a study in which we asked some of the participants to go only to our Decision Phase of forgiveness. We asked other participants to advance through our entire Process Model of Forgiveness, which includes the Work and Discovery Phases. Those who stopped at the Decision Phase did not achieve the same psychological benefits as those who went through the entire forgiveness program. This was expected because to decide to forgive is not the same as exercising the moral virtue of forgiveness in its entirety. Here is the reference to that research:
Al-Mabuk, R., Enright, R. D., & Cardis, P. (1995). Forgiveness education with parentally love-deprived college students. Journal of Moral Education, 24, 427-444.
I told my partner that I forgave him. He did not accept it and told me he did nothing wrong. This rejection has increased my pain. I now have the pain from the original offense and now this. How do you suggest I deal with this doubling of my pain?
Yes, his rejection of your gift of forgiveness is another pain for you. If you think he is being unjust in this, you can deliberately forgive him for the original offense and then you can begin forgiving him for this second offense of denying any wrongdoing. This double injustice does make the forgiveness journey harder, but it will be worth the effort if you are motivated to forgive both actions by your partner.
