Tagged: “The Forgiving Life”

Suppose someone makes a mistake without deliberately trying to be unfair. Can I forgive this person or does there have to be deliberate intention on that person’s part to act with malice?

You can discern an unjust action, according to the Medieval philosopher Thomas Aquinas, by examining three things: the act itself, the intention, and the circumstance.  If a person, for example, disrespects you (the action), decided to disrespect you (the intention), and did so in front of others, which embarrassed you (the circumstance), then it is obvious that this person tried to hurt you and you can forgive this person.  Now suppose that someone had no intention of hurting you, such as failing to show up for an important meeting (the action).  Suppose further that the circumstance was such that this person became quite ill right before the meeting.  Only the action was challenging for you, but the intention was to attend the meeting and the circumstance was sudden illness.  This seems to me to be a case of accepting what happened, not a case of forgiveness for most people.  Now suppose as another example that a driver was texting on a cell phone (the act), did not at all mean to hit your car (the intention), but indeed did hit your car (the circumstance).  Even though there was no intention to harm you, the action itself of inattentive driving can sometimes have a bad outcome, as happened in this case.  The action is so serious that even without intent to harm, this is an unjust offense and so your going ahead with forgiving is appropriate.  In other words, you can forgive a person who had no intention of harming you.

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I recall that there was a quotation from Aaron Beck on the back cover of your first book for mental health professionals, Helping Clients Forgive.  I no longer have that book cover.  Would you please restate Dr. Beck’s quotation for me?  It had to do with Forgiveness Therapy being stronger than Cognitive Behavioral Therapy when people are treated very unjustly by others.

Yes, I can provide that.  Here is Dr. Aaron Beck’s quote on the back cover of the book, Helping Clients Forgive, by Enright and Fitzgibbons (2000): “Anger and the wish to punish a family member or friend for past grievances often remain resistant to the most useful cognitive-behavioral approaches.  In this volume, Enright and Fitzgibbons show how forgiveness can help to finalize past resentment and allow people to lay their past grievances to rest.  This is essential reading for anyone working with patients, as well as for those people who cannot relinquish past hurts.”

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I am in graduate school studying to be a mental health professional.  Held in high regard is the issue of insight.  The point is to break down the psychological defenses so that the person now is aware of what is causing the anger or the anxiety or the discontent.  How does forgiveness compare and contrast to the call for insight?

In our Process Model of Forgiveness, we have four phases.  The first phase asks the client, when that client is ready, to see the amount of anger in the heart, caused by other people’s unfairness.  There is more to this phase than just this, but my point is that we do make room, lots of room in fact, to explore the psychological defenses and to gradually see how current and persistent anger is connected to unfairness toward the client that might have occurred many years ago.  Yet, awareness or what you are calling insight is only the beginning of Forgiveness Therapy.  In other words, as a person now sees the depth of anger, what does the person now do to get rid of that anger?  We find that insight is not enough.  It is in deliberately reaching out to those who acted unfairly with the moral virtue of forgiveness, this has a way of softening the heart and thus reducing the anger to manageable levels.  In other words, when deeply hurt by others, the inner trauma is not reduced to an important degree without forgiveness, which the client must freely choose for the self.

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If I cannot offer this “moral love” or agape to the one who hurt me, does this mean that I have not forgiven?

No, it does not mean that at all.  Aristotle makes a distinction between Essence and Existence.  Essence is the core meaning of any object or concept.  The highest Essence of forgiveness is to offer this moral love or agape to the other person. Existence in terms of forgiveness is how you express now that forgiveness to the other person.  You might be able to reduce some resentment right now.  If you can do that as you commit to do no harm to the other, you have begun the process of forgiveness.  You have not reached the highest Essence of forgiveness, but you are expressing it to the best of your ability now.  Here is a sports analogy to try to make this clearer.  Suppose you are playing basketball and you are shooting free-throws.  You make 4 out of 10 shots.  This is your Existence (how you behave now) at the free-throw line. The Essence of basketball is to successfully make 10 out of 10 shots.  Even though you are not matching the perfect Essence of free-throw shooting, you are playing basketball.  It is similar with forgiveness.  Even if you cannot offer complete forgiveness in terms of agape love, you still are forgiving as you commit to do no harm to the other and as you work in reducing resentment toward that person.

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You say that to forgive is to offer “moral love” to another person.  What exactly is moral love?  I don’t think I can reach that high with my partner at this point.

Moral love, or agape in the ancient Greek, is a deliberate caring for another person (or other persons) for that person’s own sake, for the good of the other.  This sometimes can be difficult because it requires effort and persistence on your part.  It is not doing something so that you get something in return, but done for the other person’s sake.

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