Tagged: “forgiveness is a choice”
I cry a lot. It seems to me that this is who I am and I just have to get used to it.
Sometimes when we are caught up in grief and anger, it seems as if this is all there will ever be now in our life: permanent tears, permanent anger. Yet, please take a look at two different times in your life in which you were steeped in heartache or rage. The tears came. . . and they left. Today it may seem as if these will never end—but they will. Take a lesson from your own past. The pains were temporary. They are temporary even now. Consider working on self-esteem, reduced anger, forgiveness, and your inherent worth as a person. All of these may help the psychological effects of betrayal to be temporary.
I am starting to get nervous. My new partner has a tendency to blame me and I know I did nothing wrong. She then tells me that she forgives me. This is so confusing to me. Should I run or what should I do?
Sometimes people will state that they are forgiving you even when you know you did nothing wrong. If this is the result of a mistake on the “forgiver’s” part, then this can be somewhat easily corrected by your explanation of the truth. In other instances, you have to be on your guard against what is called gaslighting, or the false blaming of you in the hope that you will come to believe the lie as true. Sometimes the other will receive your correction that you are being falsely accused. If the other refuses to consider your viewpoint, it is possible that the person’s narcissism may be blocking genuine and honest communication between you. If the latter is the case, and if you suspect an entrenched narcissism in your new partner, then, yes, you have cause for concern about having a healthy relationship.
I want to teach my 8-year-old child about forgiveness. I notice that you talk about the inter-relationship between forgiving and seeking fairness. Should I teach one of these moral virtues first (forgiveness first or justice first), or should I teach them at the same time?
The teaching of forgiveness already has embedded within it the theme of justice, particularly as the child sees story characters being treated unjustly and then forgiving. So, the child, in being introduced to forgiveness, is also examining justice. You can and should point this out; being fair with one another is very important; it is when justice breaks down that people get hurt and then need to forgive. A more complicated issue is this: Should you teach a child to forgive and to seek justice at the same time? The answer is yes. For example, if a child is being bullied by another child on the playground, the one being treated unjustly needs to protect the self by letting a teacher or the principal know of the injustice. Forgiving the one who was bullying also is a good idea, but only if the child is ready and is not pressured into it.
Which of the 20 units of your Process Model do you think hinders people the most?
I think a difficult unit is the decision to go ahead and forgive. Because forgiveness may be new to people, they have a certain and understandable apprehension about starting what is unfamiliar to them. Also, the idea of giving a gift of some kind to the one who was unjust can sound unfair and unreasonable. Yet, forgiveness, being centered in its deepest essence in mercy and love toward the other, is about such gift-giving.
Is it possible for most people to understand what forgiveness actually is? I mean, can the vast majority of people come to an accurate understanding of what forgiveness is, without distortion?
I adhere to the philosophy of Aristotelian realism. This philosophy assumes that people can use their rational faculties to understand the world. For example, we can distinguish horses from cats because both are real and so are accessible to our reason. Although much more abstract than horses or cats, forgiveness is accessible to us as are all of the moral virtues such as justice or patience. Yet, it takes effort and practice to truly and deeply know, for example, how forgiveness differs from the other virtues (forgiveness is offering goodness specifically to others who have been unjust). In other words, without the persistent effort to know what forgiveness is, people could confuse it with “just letting the unfairness go” or abandoning justice. Yet, with the persistent effort, yes, most people should be able to understand what forgiveness is.
