Forgiveness is a conscious decision not to go on holding something against someone. It is a personal decision to let go.
On one level, forgiveness involves voluntary relinquishing a right to retaliate (a cognitive decision), subsequent to an injury. On another level, forgiveness involves some aspect of release or letting go over time (an emotional healing) - release of anger, revenge, record of wrongs, resentment. The component of time, or forgiveness as an unfolding process taking months or possibly years to achieve, is a fundamental component emphasized by most theoreticians.
Forgiveness recognises and anticipates, and attempts to mitigate against the the lex talionis (the law of retribution – an eye for an eye). The lex talionis reflects the human organism’s almost automatic natural response for desiring retaliation and retribution in the face of hurt and pain at the hand of another. Thus, forgiveness can be understood as the exact antithesis of an individual’s natural and predictable response to violation and victimization. Berne said that forgiveness is about relinquishing the hope of cashing in the trading stamps that one has been collecting throughout life.
In my view forgiveness is primarily a creative coping strategy to enable the individual to survive and improve in the face of difficult circumstances. This coping strategy will involve a voluntarily relinquishing a right to retaliate, and over time this may facilitate the release of painful emotion. In some situations forgiveness will involve other people, but it need not necessarily do so (interpersonal acts). In some situations forgiveness will not involve the people who have committed the original offence (intrapersonal act). Regardless of any social skill that may be involved or any moral imperative, forgiveness is about an individual deciding to effect change in her or his life – it is primarily a creative coping strategy in the face of pain. The reason to forgive is firmly rooted in a personal choice about change.
Before 1987 forgiveness is hardly mentioned in the research literature, since then there have been thousands of studies. Forgiveness allows a reduction in anger, revenge, resentment, grief, depression, and anxiety. Unforgiveness and its correlates of bitterness and hatred can do harmful things to your digestive system and arteries, are a good predictor of cardiac disease, and a risk factor in the development of mental health problems.
Despite what we now know about the benefits of forgiveness and the dangers of unforgiveness, many people still find it difficult to forgive, in some cases, largely because of the myths that they have about what it involves. In Forgiveness Myths (1) I have attempted to address three of these myths. Forgiveness is not about waiting for feeling, but about making a decision. Forgiveness doesn’t take place all at once. You can decide to forgive, but may need to go on repeating that decision on a daily basis. And forgiveness is not the same as reconciliation (indeed, it can be very harmful to insist that they are the same). It is possible to forgive, and never to be reconciled. In the remainder of this post I want to explore three more myths about forgiveness that some people hold.
Myth 4: I can’t forget, therefore I can’t forgive.
It is surprising how common this myth is. I suppose it stems, to some extent from the popular cliché phrase forgive and forget. Such clichés arise from a fairy-tale view of relationships where problems can be neatly swept under the carpet and forgotten. The problem with fairy-tales is that they are fairy-tales and do not exist in the real world where people have real brains that are (under most circumstances) very good at remembering things, especially significant things like hurt. Unless you have major cauterizing brain surgery you are unlikely to forget things that have hurt you.
However, forgiveness is not about forgetting - rather it is a decision not to hold what you can remember (and are likely to go on remembering) against someone. It is based on an act of will that is separate from memory cells. And of course, the more you forgive, the more likely it is that the painful memories will fade (though not disappear).
Myth 5: (S)he is not sorry, or hasn’t changed, or hasn’t promised not to do it again, therefore I can’t forgive.
In a future posting about things which make forgiveness more likely to happen, I will show how contrition, and apology, and attempts at restitution are powerful factors in facilitating forgiveness. However, the fact that these things make forgiveness easier, doesn’t mean that forgiveness can’t happen without them, and there is a strong case to be made for encouraging forgiveness even if they are not present.
Let’s go back to basics. Forgiveness is about you, not about them. It is primarily a creative coping strategy to enable the individual to survive and improve in the face of difficult circumstances. If you don’t forgive, the person you are hurting is you, more so than them. Your arteries and digestive system is likely to be more harmed than theirs.
If I say I will only forgive if certain conditions are fulfilled:
- I may condemn myself to a life of unforgiveness because they may have no intention of fulfilling those conditions. To some extent, I am making my health (physical and mental) contingent on the whims of others.
- I may condemn myself to a life of unforgiveness because the conditions I have set for others to fulfill first may be unrealistic. In my view, expecting a fallible human being to promise to never ever do something again is asking something which may be unrealistic.
Remember, forgiveness is not the same as reconciliation. If you are regularly being beaten by your partner, you may be able to forgive and walk away. You know that if your forgiveness was contingent on a promise never to do it again rather than a decision initiated on your part, you both may be disappointed.
Myth 6: I can’t forgive because I want the court procedure to go ahead.
I have tried to separate out forgiveness from feeling (Myth 1), from completeness (Myth 2), from reconciliation (Myth 3), from memory (Myth 4), from conditional behaviour (Myth 5), and I now want to separate out forgiveness from due legal process. If the law has been broken, one of the kindest things that could happen may be to allow the due legal process to proceed. It may be in the best interests of the community (protection, and an enhancement of the view that there are consequences to breaking laws), of the criminal (helping him or her realise that actions do have consequences), and of the victim (helping him or her have a sense of just redress for what happened).
It is perfectly possible, at some stage, to take the decision to forgive in order to cope and survive better in the face of difficult circumstances, and at the same time, to allow prosecution and punishment to go ahead. Forgiveness is about saving yourself from further dreadful consequences of an action, not saving another person from due legal process.
Of course, abusers of any kind, will want to play the “you can’t prosecute me if you love me and forgive me” card in order to keep out of prison. I remember reading a very bitter and angry letter from a paedophile who had abused a child in the Sunday School at a church I used to attend. The incident had been reported to the police. While awaiting trial, we had placed restrictions on the services he could attend (he was welcome in the evenings where there were no children in the building, but unwelcome in the mornings where children would be present). If we loved him and had forgiven him, why the restrictions, and why the police? We argued that we did both love and forgive him (he was a helpful man who many of us had known and worked with for years), but we needed to safeguard other children, consider the feelings of the family concerned, and show that we were not above the law.
To be continued …
[...] See Forgiveness Myths (2) [...]
Another excellent blog which I have read carefully.
I have always thought of forgiveness as an event over one specific singular action. You forgive, do the time of forgiveness, and in time you hopefully have not only learnt something from that experience but have reconciled yourself to the situation; and perhaps, hopefully, the person involved-even if that person is primarily you.
Each seperate act requires a conscious act of forgiveness.
I find it interesting to read of Berne’s statement:
“Berne said that forgiveness is about relinquishing the hope of cashing in the trading stamps that one has been collecting throughout life.”
The trading stamps suggests to me something I have not thought of before. That there may be no one thing that causes a specific pain: infact wrongs can be committed that you realise to yourself only a while later-perhaps years.
It is like building layers or collecting coupons in a book. By saying you want to cash them in feels to me like he is saying you want pay back time. I want compensation, revenge.
So to forgive is like saying I am relinquishing that pay back of stamps. I am putting them on the fire -of my fire of forgiveness and when they are gone there is no turning back in my decision. I may want to sift through the ash and churn over a few things but I know that the fire has consumed them.
Recently, I have also discovered that if you are more at peace with yourself, you feel more at ease with those whom you live with. It is so easy to say you have caused me grief and you make my life difficult. Infact you are the one who can determine how you feel by what YOU are doing.
The partner can be the same and little has changed but huge amounts have changed on the outside because YOU are the one that has different lenses on the world and suddenly everything feels different.
Forgiveness is not only healing but liberating. It generates within you powers that you thought you could never own. Forgiveness can also bring about an increased confidence. It is like a domino effect. The more release of pain through forgiveness comes greater affirmation of one’s life and circumstances, promoting hopefully even more beneficial change and achievements. This then is very rewarding as you then feel one thing that all of us need:happiness!
I will keep reading what you have to say.
onethoughtfulwoman: You wrote:
Infact you are the one who can determine how you feel by what YOU are doing.
The partner can be the same and little has changed but huge amounts have changed on the outside because YOU are the one that has different lenses on the world and suddenly everything feels different.
I agree wholeheartedly. One of the bases of cognitive therapy are the ideas that 1) the problems in life are usually not what happens to you but how you interpret what happens to you, and 2) you often cannot change the circumstances (though you sometimes can) but you can always change how you respond to the circumstances.
A wonderful post. I concur that forgiveness is about self wellbeing and balance than it is about the other. It often involves relinquishing the blind rage that can create so much harm to self and others. Forgiveness allows me to live on without the offense unduly controlling me. While not necessarily so, forgiveness can act as the first stages of reconciliation.
I agree wholeheartedly that forgiveness does not mean that we keep the person from experiencing the consequences of their actions. If the law has been violated, for the sake of the person and our sense of justice the process of legal action should continue along with our constructive participation.
One aspect of forgiveness I hope you will be touching upon in the upcoming post is the forgiveness of self. Even when they have made amends and made changes to their lives, too often people heap guilt for years upon themselves for the past action and thereby never rebuild their lives in a positive manner.
Another good post. The roots of the difficulty westerners have in developing healthy conceptions of forgiveness and in reconciling forgiveness and justice may well lie in Christians teachings about those concepts.
With regard to myth $#4, God supposedly “forgives our sins and throws them into the sea of his forgetfulness.” This sounds nice in theory, but is not realistic given the realities of human cognition. Then, when we can’t forget, we question whether we actually ever forgave. As you noted, forgiveness is a decision that often has to be made more than once, but this idea doesn’t fit with the ideal of “forgive and forget.”
With regard to myth #5, the only way that Christians can enjoy God’s forgiveness is through his acceptance of the sacrifice of his son on our behalf. Additionally, Christians must express contrition and confess their beliefs in the efficacy of Jesus’ sacrifice before they can be granted God’s allegedly gracious offer of forgiveness. Before Jesus lived and died, of course, the Jews had a complex sacrificial system through which they sought to gain God’s favor and forgiveness. God’s requirement of a sacrifice, as an expression of contrition, before he will forgive is not a good model of forgiveness. It seems to me true grace would offer forgiveness without attaching conditions. I think this is consistent with what you’re saying here.
Finally, myth # 6. God requires that justice must precede forgiveness. He cannot forgive humankind until his thirst for divine justice is satiated. Additionally, he is willing to accept the sacrifice of the innocent in the place of the guilty. What sort of warped justice is that? Would it be morally acceptable for me to allow an innocent neighbor to serve a prison sentence in my place? Would the court system find such a substitution an adequate expression of justice? Would the victims of my offense be satisfied that justice was served if I remained free while another who was guilty of no wrongdoing languished in prison? There is no justice in requiring that Jesus die in my place, and there is no justice in my agreement that such a sacrifice is good.
Is it any wonder that westerners have difficulty understanding forgiveness? I think we do a much better job with justice, but it appears we’ve had jettisoned some prime Christian teachings in order to do so.
the deacon: I agree. One of the exciting things about forgiveness for me is that it gives me back control, regardless of the other person and the original offence. And yes, I will be discussing forgiving self in future posts.
the chaplain: I really liked your analysis. I hadn’t really ever thought of the influence of Christianity on my forgiveness mindset (stupid really as I was a Christian for over 30 years!). A wonderful example of your ‘thinking outside the box’.