Forgiveness as a Decision

We decide to forgive. In reality, forgiveness can only help us. 

Sue Patton Thole Cited in Mystical Hours

Brother Teasdale writes:

As author Sue Patton Thole conveys so accurately with the analogy of a garden hose, we choke off our own vitality, our life force, when we withhold our forgiveness. This life force is actually love itself, which flows in all directions, in the act of forgiving.`

There are many ideas that surround the concept of forgiveness. Many books, sermons, and poems have included the idea and the ideal of forgiveness within their themes. This is all well and good; as long as the forgiveness is understood as a release from any further responsibility to hold a grudge, nurse resentment, or poison yourself with feelings of being undervalued, or being taken advantage of by someone etc…  

Maybe the most toxic belief associated with forgiveness is the belief that you can only forgive after you have “settled the score”… This outlook has to do with the egotistical or arrogant need to “get even” with someone for the slight or seeming disrespect they had shown to them!

It is dysfunctional at best, as many people (primarily insecure or arrogant men) feel the need to be demanding of respect, or to be held in some morally corrupt place of honor and power.

For me, forgiveness has been a hard won goal, and at times, especially earlier in my life, it was difficult to give. My ethnic identity had a cultural shadow quality of having a Sicilian “Godfather” stereotype which, early in my life, had me caught up in a cruel, yet highly romanticized, set of “macho” expectations… (My grandfather always carried a stiletto with him… for apples!)

Much later, during my studies towards my first master’s in community mental health, I came across this pithy saying from controversial psychologist, Thomas Szasz. He gave this cogent synopsis: “The stupid neither forgive nor forget; The naive forgive and forget; The wise forgive, but do not forget….”

As I experienced more of the world and its diversity of culture, values, and expectations for behavior, many of those early, harsh, more parochial qualities significantly lessened. While a clear and strong or abiding sense of justice developed, any validation for vindictiveness, insistence on punishment, and any need “for getting even”’ had thankfully disappeared.

I credit that change in personal and emotional growth to my deepening ethical awareness fostered by my studies in social justice, and developing a greater sense of compassion that challenged and defeated any left over resentments and any latent prejudices I harbored as a young man.

As I grew into ministry, the words of MLK Jr reinforced my learning, and freed me from any necessity to right the wrong or to be compensated… He said:

“[We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. Any of us who is devoid of the power to truly forgive, is also devoid of the power to truly love. It is true that there is some good in the worst of us, and there is some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate, and more open to life and love.]”

Additionally, my lifelong study of spiritual guidelines, East and West, taught me to respond with a more magnanimous, unselfish, and humble outlook; In my research and understanding, my life and practice, forgiveness has four general ways it expresses itself: two are self-defeating and unproductive, and two are positive and in religious language, are more redemptive. 

Briefly, the less positive ways we deal with the need for forgiveness center themselves on how and to what extent we can avoid conflict, try to keep the peace, etc.. The first is when we forgive, because we are afraid to lose the friendship or partnership, because of these attached feelings, we often forgive too quickly! As a result, we forgive without expecting a change in the behavior of those who have hurt you… and they might go on to repeat it! 

The second self-defeating approach is found in the refusal to forgive-when we continue to rehearse the hurt, hold on to grudges, remain stuck or refuse to move on emotionally from slights and insults we all might receive over a lifetime. That can become a self-poisoning outlook, and can contribute to psychosomatic illnesses and to the emotional corollaries to any illness or disease.

The two more positive ways combine a willingness to forgive with the possible expectation of behavioral reform, or with the possibility of true contrition by the offending person. One response is simply known as Acceptance. Accepting what has happened to us, knowing what our roles in the issue was or had been, and understanding that our best response is compassionate wisdom and then moving or getting on with our lives. We might never receive a sincere apology, but we have learned from the situation, and have freely chosen to release it, to let it go… 

The last approach is Genuine Forgiveness. It involves not holding a grudge, not lording over another in some pious way, but clearly expecting behavioral changes that restore trust and intimacy, that gives or that helps to regain respect, dignity, and equality to the person who is willing to offer forgiveness.