Thoughts on forgiveness

[much_ado]

I went back through some older posts from early grad school last night, looking for an excerpt I'd hoped I'd posted from a book by Terry Hargrave entitled, Families and Forgiveness. That book deals largely with the Judeo-Christian-rooted societal myth of forgiveness being the key to all happiness and moral fortitude, and talks in depth about the

Comments

[dairymilk]

I don't have anything to add, but I wanted to say I found this post really interesting.

[hundmathr]

In reading this, I am reminded of the truth and reconciliation process or at least the ideals of that process.

[much_ado]

Care to expand on that at all, Matt?

[hundmathr]

I will when I'm a little less sleep deprived and derped, I'm not sure I have the spoons to articulate that thought further.

[hundmathr]

Ok lets try this after a caffeine reboot...

[much_ado]

Like I said, I haven't yet gotten far into this book (I'm about to leave for lunch though, so check back in an hour-ish :), but solely on the strength of the preceding book, I would recommend this one on spec as well.

[dicea]

I'm not sure. There is much confusing here and not a whole lot of definition that I can get a grip on

[much_ado]

It's interesting that you conjoin "forgiveness" with the act of differentiating between the person and the hurtful action. For myself, making that distinction has nothing to do with choosing to forgive, it would simply give me more avenues in which to employ forgiveness: I can choose to forgive the person (for example, in the case of perceived intrinsic character flaws), forgive the action (for example, making a dumb mistake that resulted in misunderstandings and emotional backlash), forgive both, or forgive neither. But the act of simply making the distinction does not, for me, automatically in any way convey a relinquishment of whatever I'm holding onto (the release of which is synonymous with "forgiving" someone).

In After the Affair, Spring suggests somewhere that genuine "forgiveness" means (or at least has as one meaning) "releasing someone from the risk of future retribution from the hurt partner." She raises this definition in discussion of the types of people who offer forgiveness as a sanctimonious act they can then hold

[mzrowan]

I was talking to someone about things along this line recently. The gist of what we were discussing is that, while breaking up with someone because of something hurtful they did is often reasonable and healthy, it also cuts off the primary avenue of communication/reparation/reconciliation, in that you don't spend much (or any) time together anymore or hear much (if anything) about each other's lives

[much_ado]

What we often seem to want [is] something that seems as large in the outside world as the hurt and disruption felt in our inside world. When we don't get it, we're left standing there like Marvin the Martian, angry that there was no earth-shattering kaboom. There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!

Gods yes; the self-righteousness, indignant, "The Retributive Hand of Justice must SMITE THEE!" response.

Letting go of that is a serious PITA :-P

[mzrowan]

Actually, it's not so much the Hand of Justice that I'm looking for as the Clue-By-Four of Enlightenment -- the fantasy in my head is about the person a) suddenly seeing everything my way, b) breaking down in abject apology, and c) drastically changing their ways. (Part of the point of my musing above is that if I've split up with the person, the changes would *have* to be drastic for me to be able to see them.)

Now, I admit, sometimes in those fantasies, the Clue-By-Four is spiked with nails...