My ideas about forgiveness

Before I write posts about Negro forgiveness and Catholic forgiveness, I want to write down my own ideas about forgiveness. A part of me suspects they come not from religion like I think but from slave times, just like my ideas about the police.

The main things to know about forgiveness as I understand it:

1. God wants you to forgive.
2. If you do not forgive it will eat you alive.
3. You need to forgive to move on.
4. Forgive but do not necessarily forget.

The first one presumably comes from Christianity, the others sound like warmed-over pop psychology.

Christian duty: Forgiveness is right there in the Lord’s Prayer, the prayer that Jesus himself taught:

“And forgive us our trespasses,as we forgive them that trespass against us”

See Matthew 6:14. (That is not quite what Matthew says, but we will pass over that point for this post.)

In other words, you should have a bit of humility, patience and understanding when others do you wrong. That does not mean be a doormat and not stand up for yourself. It means that justice and mercy need to be balanced, one with the other. Justice without mercy is cruel and inhuman, but mercy without justice turns a blind eye to wrongdoing and lets it grow. You should not have a heart of stone, but neither should you have a heart of wet tissue paper. There is a balance.

When to forgive: When someone asks for forgiveness and wants to make things right then you should try to forgive. After all, time will tell how sincere they were.

Even when someone does not ask for forgiveness, you still need to forgive! Not instantly, not right away, but at some point you must. Because otherwise the anger will burn a hole in your heart – and cause more damage than the original wrong. You have to know when to let go, when to cut your losses.

Forgetting: In my experience holding grudges causes more harm than good. My wife and my sister will bring up stuff I did ten years ago. They have a memory a mile long. It is not making me a better person and it is not making them happier either. While they should not forget – knowledge is power! – they need to let it go emotionally. Their anger may have been reasonable, right and useful at first, but at this point it no longer seems to be doing anyone any good. They need to move on. Wait, that sounds familiar!

Historic wrongs and “moving on”: The best model I know of here is South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It needs a post too. As I understand it, a country needs to face up to the wrong it has done and try to set it right as much as possible, but it also needs to reach the stage where it can forgive and move on.

Those are my ideas. How well I but them into practice is a whole other matter!

– Abagond, 2019.

See also:

• forgiveness according to the gospel according to Matthew
• St Gregory of Nyssa: The Lord’s Prayer
• Negro forgiveness
  • Judge Tammy Kemp
• Catholic forgiveness
• South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission

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