Tagged: “Forgiving”

I once heard an academic say that forgiveness hurts relationships because it is good to sometimes vent and express anger.  What do you think?

I think we need to make important distinctions in answering this question.  To express anger is not incompatible with forgiving.  We have to distinguish short-term anger, in which the offended person shows self-respect, and long-term and deep anger in which the person harbors a grudge and keeps the offense in front of the one who behaved badly.  The short-term anger is meant to alter the injustice and correct the other person’s injustice.  A person can show such anger, correct the other person, and then forgive.  The long-term variety of anger, in contrast, can be a tool for punishing the other, with no end in sight.  The important message here is to avoid sweeping generalities about anger and about forgiveness.  To presume that one cannot be angry and forgive is reductionism which then distorts what forgiveness is and how it can be used productively in a relationship.

I hope I am not pressing my point too hard, but you have a book entitled, FORGIVENESS IS A CHOICE.  If I choose to forgive the COVID virus because it lowers my anger, then it is my choice, right?

Choosing through your own thinking and will to forgive a virus does not mean that you actually are engaging in what forgiveness is in its essence.  As an analogy, if a person thinks that eating snow is a good choice for excellent nutrition because it is organic and so has an exclusive diet of snow for 6 months, would this be an example of good nutrition even if the snow-eater insists that it is?  There is a very large difference between what forgiveness is and what some people think it is.  From your ideas, I do think you are misunderstanding what forgiveness is even though you are using that word.

So, are you saying that forgiveness is something “fixed” that does not change?  What about cultural variations of many kinds that center on different beliefs and customs.  You seem to be too inflexible in how you view forgiveness.

Forgiveness does have a fixed essence.  It is one thing and not whatever people’s subjective impressions are regarding it.  To forgive is to try as best one can to be good to those who are not good to the forgiver.  There are cultural variations in how this goodness is expressed, but the essence of forgiveness is not changed by these different customs or norms.

So, in your view, one’s subjective views of forgiveness are unimportant.  You seem to discount personal opinion.

Subjective views need to be scrutinized relative to what is true about the concept of forgiveness or about many issues in the world.  For example, if a person insists that 1 + 1 = 5, should we take that as this person’s truth?  I think this would be an act of disrespect for the person as we are not aiding this person to properly know mathematics.