Tagged: “Forgiving”

The eighth of 15 criticisms I see about forgiveness is this: To forgive is to cancel the debt the other owes you and so you never get back what is due.

When you forgive, as stated several times now, you do not cancel justice.  Yes, you can cancel any obligation the other person has in helping to heal your wounds, but even here your forgiving, to be more complete, involves kindness and even love (on its highest level) which goes way beyond canceling the other’s obligation to help you to heal.

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The twelfth of 15 criticisms about forgiveness that I so frequently see is that it is impossible to even understand or define forgiveness because there are so many different definitions of it in the published literature.

This problem is not inherent in forgiveness itself, but instead is a problem with those who write about forgiveness without deeply understanding what it is.  As the ancient Greeks, such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, remind us, there is an objective essence (or an unchanging set of characteristics) which typifies each moral virtue.  Forgiveness is what it is across historical time and across cultures and, yes, there can be individual and cultural variations in how this essence is expressed.  Just because there is a ritual, for example, in Sierra Leone on the West Coast of Africa, in which a community gathers at night around a large bonfire as people forgive one another, does not mean that what forgiveness is there differs in essence from what forgiveness is in a one-on-one forgiveness therapy session in the United States.  Those who think about and then write about forgiveness, according to Aristotle, can use their rational faculties to understand, even if imperfectly, what forgiveness is and is not.  To forgive is to be good to those who are not good to the forgiver and this goodness includes the motivation to be good to the offending person, the cognitions of goodness toward the person, positive affect, and, when possible, positive behaviors toward that person.

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My friend and I have a lot of conflicts and yet I do want to reconcile in the hope that these conflicts will be reduced.  What would you suggest if such a reconciliation will be kind of rocky yet we both want to try?

I would recommend two points.  First, are you both willing to forgive each other first so that you do not bring a lot of anger into dialogue with each other?  Second, and if you are willing to forgive each other, what are the small steps each of you can take to help the other feel more trusting?  In other words, what have you been doing to damage trust and can you take a small step in a better direction?  Is your friend willing to do the same by taking small steps to build up your trust?

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In my culture, filial piety is very important.  This is a strong loyalty toward parents.  I am emotionally unsettled because of how my father treated me in the past.  Yet, I do not want to reconcile with my father.  Do you recommend that I forgive if I can’t reconcile?

You can forgive without reconciling.  Because of the importance of filial piety, your emotions may become more settled if you forgive and then, because of the past treatment, you do not have to approach your father, unless you are ready to do so.

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