Tagged: “The Forgiving Life”

I would like to know and learn more about forgiveness. What self help books and resources can you suggest? I have been on my own forgiveness journey for a while now. The biggest challenge has been learning how to forgive my husband fully for hurting me and my family.

I would recommend any one of these 3 self-help books, which describe our Process Model of Forgiveness, which has been scientifically-tested and found to be effective:

Forgiveness Is a Choice (2001)

The Forgiving Life (2012). This is my most in-depth self-help book because it links forgiving to the moral virtue of agape love. This book is a Socratic dialogue between two women.

8 Keys to Forgiveness (2015)

I wish you the best on your healing journey.

If someone has frustrated and offended me and I choose silence because I am afraid to choose dialogue and confront him, is this actually forgiveness on my part? Is it true forgiveness? 

First, do you commit to doing no harm to the other? If yes, this is the beginning of forgiving.  Do you see the inherent worth in the other, not because of what was done, but in spite of that?  This, too, is part of forgiving.  Do you wish the other well?  This is part of forgiving as the late Lewis Smedes reminded us in his book, Forgive and Forget.  The silence itself is not necessarily forgiving. Why?  I can be silent with hatred in my heart.  To forgive is to have a change of heart toward the offending person (as the philosopher Joanna North said in the book, Exploring Forgiveness, 1998).

It seems to me that for forgiveness to succeed, it is necessary for low self-esteem and toxic anger to disappear. What do you think?

For forgiveness to significantly raise a person’s self-esteem and to lower toxic anger, the person needs to commit, with a strong will, to the practice of forgiveness. This takes, as Aristotle says, practice, practice, and more practice.  Our Process Model of Forgiveness is an empirically-verified way of helping people to reduce in negative emotions. Yet, when we forgive, we do not necessarily leave all negative psychological issues behind. For example, we still may have some residual anger, but that anger now no longer controls us. Instead, we are in control of the anger.

Is it possible that the expression of forgiving can cause the person who originally acted unjustly to feel annoyed? If this happens, does this make the act of forgiving wrong?

If the one who acted unjustly is annoyed at the genuine expression of forgiveness by the offended person, this is not the fault of the forgiver.  Why?  It is because the forgiver is giving something good, love, to the other.  Rejection of that love does not make love bad.  As an analogy, if a parent gives a birthday present out of love to a child and the child does not like the present and yells, is this the fault of the parent or of the act of gift giving? 

How can we inspire someone to be forgiving, but not then feel like a perpetual victim?

Hearing about what forgiveness is and is not can motivate people to forgive.  Simply trying forgiveness can be highly motivating because it puts love in the heart when done well.  Also when forgiving is done well, the forgiver engages in the moral virtue of humility, which should help the forgiver to avoid a continual sense of victimhood with a “you owe me one” attitude.