Forgiveness, some initial thoughts

Imagine being raped a couple of years ago and then being one of the survivors of the London bombings in July this year. Well you can’t quite imagine it can you? Well, Rachel from North London has actually lived it and has started an excellent blog to write about some of her experiences.

She wrote a post a few days ago that asked what people think about forgiveness. This is what I said in response:

To me forgiveness is about not being beholden to someone or allowing them to somehow influence my life, particularly when I may not want them to.

If I don’t forgive and instead harbour thoughts about that person that make me angry or bitter or resentful I allow that person to continue to influence my life.

If my forgiveness is conditional on them being able to admit or acknowledge that they did something wrong then I am again allowing them to influence my life. If forgiveness is conditional on the actions of that other person, if they are dead then it seems that forgiveness would never be possible.

Instead I see forgiveness as something that I do because it is to my benefit. That sounds really selfish putting it as starkly as that, but I guess ultimately we can only truly control our own part in something and so that is what we have responsibility for. So if forgiveness is the issue then the only part of the process we have any control over is whether I as an individual forgive.

But to me this seems to leave two questions:

First, what is forgiveness?

Is it saying that what someone did was ok or does not matter? Does it mean that we have to forget what they did? Does it mean being reconciled to that person? To me the answer to all of those questions is no. Depending on what the ‘offence’ was reconciliation etc might be possible but I don’t see it as an integral part of the process. In a lot of ways I find it easier to say what I think forgiveness isn’t rather than what it is beyond finding a way to be at peace about something so that it no longer has a hold on me.

Second, how do you actually go about forgiving someone?

Another difficult question. As suggested by others, empathy could be part of that but you can end up excusing someone’s behaviour and making them purely a sum of their circumstances. I don’t think someone raping a woman ‘excusable’ because, for example, they themselves were abused as a child. It is still an act that violates another in one of the most extreme ways possible. And, of course, others who may also have been abused as a child don’t go on and rape. We take away any responsibility from the individual if we empathise too much.

However, empathy can perhaps take some of the ‘heat’ out of the situation and help us to understand it from their perspective a bit.

I think in someways it is about making an active decision to not allow something or someone to control you. Sounds so easy, doesn’t it? What if that person is continually making things difficult for you?

I don’t really know the answer but will continue to think about it. Forgiveness is a really difficult issue.
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But as is apparent from what I wrote, there are still any number of unanswered questions that I want to turn my mind to. So over a period of time I will try and do so here.