Tagged: “forgiveness”
The ninth of 15 criticisms I see about forgiveness is this: Forgiving others lowers your self-esteem as you focus more on those who did wrong than on healing yourself.
There is a paradox of forgiving in that as you reach out to the others with forgiveness, offering a second chance as well as kindness and love, it is you, the giver, who heals. Scientific studies have demonstrated the validity of this paradox.
The tenth of 15 criticisms I see about forgiveness is this: When you proclaim your forgiveness, it only serves to make the one who offended you feel guilty.
To forgive offers a lot more consequences than just having the offending person feel guilty. As we saw in our point 9, forgiving can heal you, the forgiver, psychologically. Your forgiving can help to restore a relationship, if the other is amenable to this. Yes, your proclamation of forgiving may make the other feel guilty and this is a very good thing if the other is guilty of injustice. The feeling of guilt may aid the person in repenting and therefore changing unjust behavior.
The thirteenth of 15 criticisms that I so characteristically see on-line about forgiveness is this: Forgiving is a sign of disrespecting the offending person because it does not give that person the chance to repent and change behavior.
You can forgive and then support the person in repenting and changing behavior. There is no rule of human behavior that states that a person cannot repent once you initiate forgiveness toward that person.
The fourteenth of 15 criticisms I see about forgiveness is this: The more people ask you to forgive, the more fuzzy you get about what is right and wrong. For example, if parents keep asking Sally to forgive her brother Sam for continually hitting her, eventually Sally may come to think that it is perfectly all right for Sam to keep hitting.
In our experience, true forgiveness helps people see the injustice more clearly, not more opaquely. As people break denial, examine what happened, and allow for a period of anger, they begin to label the other’s behavior as “wrong” or “unfair.”
The fifteenth of 15 criticisms I see about forgiveness is this: Forgiveness will lead to the opening of every jail cell door and letting out dangerous criminals. Therefore, forgiveness is a danger to society.
This argument confuses forgiveness and legal pardon. A person can forgive and see that it is important that a person, who remains a danger to society, stays in a correctional institution.