Tagged: “Forgiving”

Even if my view of the one who walked out on me is too narrow, as you say, it is the truth.  Why play games with a fantasy of who she might become?

Seeing her as more than the behaviors of walking out on you is not fantasy.  I think it is a higher reality than seeing her only in terms of current behavior.  As I said earlier to you, would you want all of your family members to define you exclusively by the times when you had a really bad day, with insensitivity to some family members?  Do you think this misbehavior is the exclusive truth about who you are as a person?

I read your published article in the journal, Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, in which you helped men in a maximum-security prison to forgive people who hurt them.  What is your next step, to open all the jail cell doors and let out everyone who has ever been hurt?

You are confusing forgiving and abandoning justice.  You can forgive a person and then seek justice.  As people in correctional institutions learn to forgive those who brutalized them when they were children or adolescents, this can lower their rage, making them less dangerous.  Advocating for their forgiving does not mean advocating for their release from the institution.

It takes courage to say no to someone who hurt you.  It is weakness to forgive.

Is it weak to strive to see the full humanity in someone who hurt you?  Is it weak to stand in the pain of what happened so that you do not throw that pain back to that person or to unsuspecting others?  Is it weakness to return a phone call if it is requested by someone who hurt you?  To forgive is heroic because you try to be good to those who are not good to you and you do this while in pain, caused by that person.

OK, so to forgive is not a sign of weakness within the one who forgives.  Yet, it seems to me that as you forgive another person, you actually weakened that other.  I say that because you now are on the higher ground of forgiveness and the other sees the self standing lower because of the misbehavior.  Forgiving weakens the other.

This is a misunderstanding of what it means to forgive another person.  When you forgive, and when the other person “sees the self standing lower because of the misbehavior,” you do not let the other, in that person’s own judgement, remain in a lower position.  Instead, you, as the forgiver, can say, “Come. Take my hand so we can stand side-by-side.” Forgiving is the challenge of seeing the other and you as both possessing equal worth as persons.

Is Forgiveness a Decision?

I have heard quite often that the essence of forgiving others is a decision.  As the one who was offended makes this internal commitment to be good to the one who offended, then this allegedly is forgiveness.  Is this correct and if not, then what are some of the problems with this approach?

As a follower of the ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle, I have come to realize that forgiveness is a moral virtue because it has the characteristics of all of the other moral virtues such as justice, patience, kindness, love, and all the others.  One common characteristic is that all of these concern goodness, starting within the person so exercising the virtue and then flowing out to other people for their good.  For example, one aspect of justice involves the goodness of an equal exchange between persons.  If you contract with a carpenter to build a table for you at the cost of $300, you are being good (just) by handing over the $300 once the table is complete.

All moral virtues have a certain wholeness to them, according to Aristotle, in that the one exercising any of these moral virtues: a) knows it is good; b) is motivated to do good; c) behaves in such a way as to exercise the good (as in the payment for the table); and d) becomes more competent in the virtue with continual practice of it.

Given that forgiveness is a moral virtue, it possesses the essential characteristics of all other moral virtues.  Therefore, as people forgive, they: a) think about forgiving, knowing what it is and is not; b) become motivated to forgive, which can include a decision to move forward, and an inner conviction or feeling that this should be done; c) behaviorally exercise forgiving, which can be done in a wide variety of ways such as a smile toward the one who acted unjustly, a returned phone call, or other acts of goodwill.

When we look at forgiveness as a moral virtue, we see this wholeness that goes well beyond a decision.  Yes, deciding to forgive is part of what constitutes forgiveness, but to claim that such a decision is forgiveness reduces this heroic moral virtue to only one of its component parts.  This is a form of splitting, so common in modern philosophy and psychology.  For the sake of novelty, some scholars emphasize the importance of feelings when describing humanity; others reduce humanity to behaviors only.  None of this splitting captures who we are as persons.  In a similar way, reducing forgiveness to one of its component parts, whether it is a decision to forgive or a motivation to do good, is to distort the forgiveness process.  If we listen too long to those who split forgiveness into its component parts and chose their favorite part, then we may be hampering people’s full embrace and expression of what forgiveness actually is.  This, in turn, may block deep healing from resentment and prohibit genuine reconciliation because the “forgiver” is only partly appropriating this virtue.

Long live the wholeness of the moral virtue of forgiving.