Tagged: “injustice”

Is a forgiving community even possible for people who have been oppressed by injustice?  Don’t we have to validate the injustice and even overcome it first?

One can validate oppression by acknowledging it and calling it what it is: unfair.  One can own one’s legitimate anger over the oppression.  Yet, if one waits to actually solve the injustice before forgiving, then those who are oppressing win twice: once with original and ongoing oppression and second by having the oppressed people living under a constant state of unhealthy anger or resentment. That resentment, over time, might be so strong as to destroy individuals and families within that oppressed community.  Forgiveness without a correction of the injustice at the very least solves that one problem of destructive resentment.

You use the expression, after forgiving, “You now are in control of your anger rather than your anger controlling you.”  How do I know if I am in control of the anger?

You can start by asking yourself these questions: 1) Is your anger leading to strained relationships in the family, with friends, and in the workplace? 2) Are you discontented or more settled in your life, even if your circumstances are not the best? 3) Are you less tired than you were before you started to forgive? 4) Are you thinking less about the situation or about the same?  If your relationships are doing better (with no displacement of the anger onto others), if you are more settled, less tired, and thinking less about the situation, I would conclude that the anger is no longer controlling you.

An Example of Finding Meaning in Deep Suffering: In Honor of Eva Mozes Kor 

Consider one person’s meaning in a dramatic case of grave suffering. Eva Mozes Kor was one of the Jewish twins on whom Josef Mengele did his evil experiments in the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. In the film Forgiving Dr. Mengele, Mrs. Kor tells her story of survival and ultimate forgiveness of this notorious doctor, also known as the “Angel of Death.”

In describing her imprisonment as a child at Auschwitz, she said, “It is a place that I lived between life and death.” Soon after her imprisonment in the concentration camp, young Eva was injected with a lethal drug, so powerful that Mengele pronounced, after examining her, that she had only 2 weeks to live. “I refused to die,” was her response.

Her meaning in what she was suffering in the immediate short run was to prove Mengele wrong and thus to do anything that she possibly could to survive. Her second meaning in her suffering was to survive for the sake of her twin sister, Miriam. She knew that if she, Eva, died, Mengele immediately would kill Miriam with an injection to the heart and then do a comparative autopsy on the two sisters. “I spoiled the experiment,” was her understated conclusion. A third meaning in her suffering, a longer but still short-term goal, was to endure it so that she could be reunited with Miriam. A long-term goal from her suffering ultimately was to forgive this man who had no concern whatsoever for her life or the lives of those he condemned to the gas chamber. She willed her own survival against great odds, and she made it.

In this case, fiendish power met a fierce will to survive. Upon forgiving Mengele, she saw great meaning in what she had suffered. She has addressed many student groups, showing them a better way than carrying resentment through life. She opened a holocaust museum in a small town in the United States. And she realizes that her suffering and subsequent forgiveness both have a meaning in challenging others to consider forgiving people for whatever injustices they are enduring.

Her ultimate message is that forgiveness is stronger than Nazi power. And it has helped her to thrive.

Robert

» Excerpt from Chapter 5 of the book, 8 Keys to Forgiveness, R. Enright. Norton publishers.

Read more about Eva Mozes Kor and her forgiveness work with Dr. Robert Enright:

• Let’s Heal the World Through Forgiveness
• Nothing Good Ever Comes from Anger
• In Memoriam: Eva Mozes Kor

Is it harder to forgive someone who is frequently angry versus someone else who is not this way?

I do think it may be more difficult to forgive someone who is “frequently angry” and expresses that anger consistently to you.  You may have to forgive on a daily basis if you are in regular contact with a person who is continuously angry.  After you have forgiven to a deep enough level so that you can approach, in a civil way, this person, then it may be time to gently ask for justice.  Part of justice is to ask this person, if you feel safe with this, to begin working on the anger so that you are not hurt by it.

Why is it so much easier to hold onto anger than it is to forgive?

Holding on to anger can be a way of feeling in control when others treat you in such a way that it is all too easy to feel out of control.  Also, the anger can give a person a sense of power, specifically power over others.  Further, anger can become a habit, even if this is unintended.  This habit can be very hard to break.  Forgiveness has been shown scientifically to break this habit of anger.