What do we learn from the parable of The Lost Sons about forgiveness? (Check out Luke 15.) We asked that question on Tuesday in our lively study on Social Justice in the Parables. Then, in my inbox appeared an article from the Harvard Gazette, by Samantha Laine Perfas, and a podcast featuring a theologian, a psychologist, and a public health expert.
We often ask, “What is forgiveness?” Do we ever ask, what forgiveness is not? In our parable class I agreed with Janet’s mother: forgiveness does not include forgetting. (I’d say forgetting is a result of amnesia, not forgiveness!) Nor is it ever good to pretend something destructive never happened.
Further, “forgiveness is not the same as condoning the action, excusing it, or saying it’s all right. It’s not the same as foregoing justice,” said Tyler VanderWeele, Professor of Epidemiology at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and the director of the Human Flourishing Program.
When something happens that violates a person’s sense of either how another should behave, how the world should be, or how they themselves should be, there’s a natural response of anger, anxiety, or sadness, and there’s an opportunity for all kinds of responses.
Here are some ideas I liked from the podcast:
Forgiveness is the capacity to hold simultaneously the reality of a very difficult wrong, with the possibility of not staying stuck and being gripped by the wrong; of releasing, so it can be transformed into something different--at least neutral. It’s a shift in the thinking, the feeling, the motivation, and the behavior about this transgression away from the negative to either the neutral or the positive. We can find ways to transform the worst of our experiences into something that leads to transformation. Again, that is NOT diminishing the bad that has been done but choosing to find a way to integrate it into your life’s narrative in a meaningful way.
VanderWheel writes of the importance of moving toward seeking “goodwill for the offender”? Forgiveness is moving from wanting something bad to happen to the offender to wanting good to come to them. Forgiveness is not condoning the action or saying it’s all right. It’s not foregoing justice but replacing ill will toward the offender with goodwill. Think about someone who has wronged you. Do you hope (pray?) for good to come to them?
The podcast also discusses the importance of just recognizing the humanity of the other person! The vilest offender is still a human being.
The podcast also talks about self-forgiveness: We tend to think a lot about forgiveness of another person, but as much as there may be a lot of anger outward, there sometimes can be blaming or shaming ourselves around that, for our own behavior. So be gentle with the self. Forgive yourself.
At the end they suggested forgiveness workbooks that Everett Worthington developed and can be download freely from the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard at:
May the church be a community, in a deeply divided time, that seeks and finds ways to be a people of forgiveness.
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