My Academic and Personal Search for Forgiveness
When you were young and magic was new, you were taught how
to do spells and rites from your parents. Yes. You were. Despite religious
affiliation or moral apprehension at the notion of doing magic, you were taught
how to perform some of the most ancient and powerful spells humans can know. One
of these spells involves two words of power, two words that can evoke
incredible reactions and cause total change in your environment, two words that
can literally alter the way your life’s path curves. They were handed to you at
such a young age that you may have forgotten their power by now. What are these
two words? I’m sorry.
Why are they so powerful? Why do I call them a spell? Well,
they are words of power that are evoking a marvelous change. Also, it’s a
sensational opening paragraph that gets you to read on. Either way, the two
words in and of themselves do not mean much of anything without the second
part. See, this spell is interactive. It requires the participation of more
than one person. The second party/parties must recognize the spell’s call and
then choose to impart the gift of forgiveness. It is a choice, after all, and
not a guaranteed reaction - as it is with almost all of magic, never being
guaranteed a result.
What is forgiveness? Why is it important? What does it do
for us, personally, and for others? What are its types and its opposites? All
these questions will be examined, but first I would like to explain why this
question is coming up for me today.
There is a man named Mark Berndt whose name has been racing
through the headlines recently for acts of sexual depravity against young
children the likes of which are incredibly rare and incredibly disturbing. He
was an elementary school teacher in a Los Angeles area school called Miramonte
Elementary School for 31 years. On January 21, 2012, he was arrested and
charged with 23 counts of lewd conduct with children, a charge that carries a
punishment in California of 15 years to life. He is currently being held on a
$23 million dollar bail, $1 million dollars for every count against him. Why so
much? Because the kinds of crimes he committed were so extraordinarily
appalling.
In his over 30 years of teaching children, he victimized young
boys and girls between the ages of 7 and 10. He blindfolded them, fed them his
semen with a spoon, put cockroaches on their faces, gagged them, bound them,
and had the gall to photograph everything. He was only discovered after a film
processor saw that 40 images Berndt was attempting to develop depicted the
aforementioned crimes. It is expected that Berndt will serve multiple life
sentences.
This kind of case puts my usually over-extended ability to
forgive in a precarious position. It also brings to mind the famous C.S. Lewis
quote, “Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea until they have something to
forgive.”
I do not know this man. I do not live in California. I do
not have children that go to school at Miramonte, nor do I have any children
beyond my prodigiously possessive Pomeranian and my formidably fat cat. I am
not sure I have the right to feel the kind of hatred that I do about or towards
this man. Yet, I do. When I heard this story for the first time, and as I’ve
followed it in the weeks since, I have this deep pit of hatred for this man
whom I’ve never met. However…
I grew up in a Christian household. I grew up around a
central idea of forgiveness. Jesus was the giver of forgiveness. We were to be
like Jesus and forgive others of their wrongdoings against us. The Lord’s Prayer
has a line that asks Yahweh’s aspect of God the Father to ‘…forgive us our
trespasses, as we forgive those that trespass against us.’ So… Forgiveness.
It’s pretty big for most folks. And, it’s not just Christianity that espouses
forgiveness.
Judaism requires its adherents to forgive, expressly
forbidding wronged individuals not to grant forgiveness. (Mishneh Torah,
Teshuvah 2:10) Islam also preaches forgiveness, and one of the names for their
god literally means ‘The All-Forgiving’ (Al-Ghaffur). Eastern philosophies like
Buddhism and Hinduism take a karmic approach to forgiveness that is quite
psychological in nature. According to those philosophies, one should allow
forgiveness so that the wrong done to you does not further wreck your mental
well-being. There are almost no religions in the world that do not preach
forgiveness.
Here is where I falter. Here is where I scratch my head,
because forgiveness is typically seen in a religious light. Most of the time, I
can agree that all beings deserve divine absolution, for it is our destiny to
learn the lessons of life - perhaps over several lifetimes of learning them -
and merge with the divine at the end of our journey. Atonement. Forgiveness.
These concepts are central to learning such lessons, but it is severely
limiting as a human with the emotional spectrum of a human to look at a person
who has done the things that the above-mentioned criminal (and the rest of the
folks in history who have committed heinous acts against humanity) has done…and
think that they should be forgiven, too.
It might interest you to note that forgiveness was not seen
as a topic fit for academic study until as late as the 1980s. Before that it
was strictly seen as a religious topic with little psychological, sociological,
or academic merit. Boy, did the academic community get it wrong. I suppose we
can forgive their inattention…this time. Luckily, there is now a wealth of
quality research about forgiveness that we can examine.
Forgiveness, as a word, comes to us from the Old English
word ‘forgiefan’, which meant ‘give, grant, allow; forgive’ . It also meant ‘to
give up’ and ‘to give in marriage’. When you break the word down to its base parts,
it is made of the words for-, meaning completely, and giefan, meaning give.
Originally, it is easy to see what this kind of word might have meant,
especially in the marriage connotation. It’s a common idea that marriage
requires you to give yourself to your partner completely, that there should be
no part of you that is not your beloved’s, and vice versa. You are giving up
your former life and beginning a new one. But, as was said above, the entire
word hinges on the choice to do so, the choice to grant that forgiveness,
which, given our newfound understanding of the word, is a bit redundant.
But, forgiveness has a slightly more modern definition.
English has many words that borrow from other languages, and forgiveness became
mixed up with the Latin word ‘perdonare’ (naturally, this is where we get the
word ‘pardon’). When you mixed the completely giving up sense of the original
‘forgiefan’ and the ideas of absolution from punishment in ‘perdonare’, you get
the modern word ‘forgive’ that now means ‘to give up the desire or power to
punish.’
You see, by definition, when you forgive someone, you are
giving up both the desire and the power to continue to punish that person for
their wrongdoing. If I can digress for just a moment, this seems to be in
direct contrast with the modern notion of ‘forgive and forget’. This phrase has
led many a person to say something along the lines of, “I might be able to
forgive, but I will never forget.” This seems to imply almost that forgiveness
is superficial (the ubiquitous child that has said ‘I’m sorry,’ so often that
it has lost all meaning), and you are choosing to harbor a grudge or resentment
against the wrongdoer. You are continuing to punish the person and yourself by
holding on to the negative feelings associated with the wrong done. This
doesn’t seem very forgiving, especially now that we know where the word comes
from.
Also, I am beginning to sense a pattern in all of this.
Religions of all shapes and sizes say that forgiveness is something good for
the wrongdoer. We should be seeking forgiveness for when we act against
someone, and - in many cases - the person who has been wronged is required to
forgive it. This is all beginning to seem very one-sided. What if Jenny stole
my juice box, but then apologizes? I might not want to forgive Jenny, because
I’m now juice-less. And, being juice-less is an incredibly sad state of being. Maybe
I’m not ready to forgive until restitution of the juice is made. With interest.
In a 2007 WebMD article, Charlotte vanOyen Witvliet, PhD,
said, “Despite the familiar cliche, 'forgive and forget,' most of us find
forgetting nearly impossible. Forgiveness does not involve a literal
forgetting. Forgiveness involves remembering graciously. The forgiver remembers
the true though painful parts, but without the embellishment of angry
adjectives and adverbs that stir up contempt.”
Let’s try and get selfish for a moment; it shouldn’t be
hard. (Especially for us Americans.) What can forgiving do for me? I get that
being forgiven can lift a weight of guilt off of one’s shoulders, and, by
definition, it absolves one of further punishment, but what can forgiving
someone do for me?
Continuing from the same article, Witvliet cites a 2001
study in which she examined 71 college age individuals. These individuals were
monitored while focusing on both forgiving those that had wronged them in some
way and on not forgiving.
"When focused on unforgiving responses, their blood
pressure surged, their heart rates increased, brow muscles tensed, and negative
feelings escalated," she says. "By contrast, forgiving responses
induced calmer feelings and physical responses. It appears that harboring
unforgiveness comes at an emotional and a physiological cost. Cultivating
forgiveness may cut these costs."
Thanks to scientists finally deciding to examine forgiveness
under a microscope, or stethoscope as it were, recent research shows that an
ability to forgive those who wrong you can lead to lower blood pressure, a
stronger immune system, a drop in stress hormones circulating in your blood
stream, the disappearance of back pain, headaches, stomach problems, and a
reducing of general anger, bitterness, resentment, depression, and other
negative emotions.
So, does that mean if I can forgive Jenny for stealing my
juice box, I won’t need to buy any more Excedrin? That can all depend on my
relationship with Jenny and how much the juice box means to me. Research also
shows that these benefits only come into play when one is forgiving something
that they would otherwise not, something colloquially said to ‘weigh one down’.
Such as, if I worked with a homophobic individual or if I was mugged or if I
were raped, these instances are emotionally strong enough to cause the
unforgiving to cause the aforementioned negative physiological effects. When
someone says holding on to a negative situation is eating you from the inside,
new science suggests they might be right.
How does one forgive, though, especially if the wrong is
especially harsh or a source of deep scarring? Frederic Luskin, PhD, says that
forgiveness is like love: it can’t be forced.
"You can't just will forgiveness," says Luskin,
author of Forgive For Good: A Proven Prescription for Health and Happiness.
"What I teach is that you can create conditions where forgiveness is more
likely to occur. There are specific practices we offer that diminish hostility
and self-pity, and increase positive emotions, so it becomes more likely that a
genuine, heartfelt release of resentment will occur."
Luskin suggests that the act of keeping a gratitude journal
can assist by slowly changing your thought dynamic to one where you focus on
the positive things that happen in your life rather than the negative. In this
way, one can forgive easier because they believe there is more positivity than
negativity in their lives, thus making the pros outweigh the cons. "Gratitude
is simply focusing your attention on the positive things that have
happened," he says. "That creates a biochemical experience that makes
it more likely that forgiveness will occur."
However, Luskin also discusses something called ‘cognitive
reframing’, perhaps better known as a change of perspective. In other words,
focusing on the facts of the situation and not about what might have been. You
might wish you had a better job, lover, parent, life situation, but the facts
are that you are in the place you are and no amount of forgiving or
psychological back bending is going to change the facts of the matter.
The book Mea culpa: a
sociology of apology and reconciliation by Nicholas Tavuchis says the
following, “Very simply…an apology, no matter how sincere or effective, does
not and cannot undo what has been done. And yet, in a mysterious way and
according to its own logic, this is precisely what it manages to do.” Though,
one could argue the latter statement, which Tavuchis does at length. The
argument he poses in his book is whether there is such a thing as a true
apology in the modern day, or, as was discussed above, have we moved into an
era where the apology is so commonplace that one does not take it seriously.
Once someone has apologized, though, how does the process of
forgiveness take place? In my research thus far, I have found two different
types of forgiveness, though I’m sure further research would lend itself to the
finding of dozens more. (After all, if forgiveness is like love we could study
it forever and keep finding new types.)
Everett L. Worthington, Jr., PhD, not only has an awesomely
ostentatious name, but he has the idea that there are two types of forgiveness:
emotional and decisional. Decisional forgiveness, he defines, is the choice to
let go of the angry thoughts surrounding the wrongdoing and specifically about
the person who performed the act. He says this can be decided by telling
yourself you will not seek revenge or that you will actively seek to avoid that
person. However, the immediate argument is that this is not the type of true
forgiveness Tavuchis would want - a type that ignores the facts of the matter
and restores the emotions of the offender and offended to a time before the
wrong. Thus, Worthington says the better method of forgiveness, and that which
we should strive for, is emotional forgiveness.
When one is engaged in emotional forgiveness, the emotions
surrounding the wrong are truly replaced. Bitterness, betrayal, hatred, agony,
hostility, anger, etc. are replaced with love, compassion, sympathy, and
empathy.
"Emotional forgiveness is where the health action
is," says Worthington. "Emotional unforgiveness causes a chronic
stress response, which results in obsessing about the wrong done to you.
Rumination is what gets people into trouble. Rumination is the mental health
bad boy. It's associated with almost everything bad in the mental health field
-- obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety, depression ... probably hives
too."
So forget an apple, forgive someone every day and you’ll
live to be 1000. You might be able to tell that I’m still a bit skeptical about
this total forgiveness thing. Not in cases where Jenny steals juice boxes or when
someone lies to me or possibly even to those folks that wrong me in other ways.
It’s the folks like the case we discussed at the beginning, with people acting so
incongruently with the ideas of human decency, so outside the realm of what I
feel I have the capacity to forgive, that I feel I enter into a realm of what
researchers call ‘unforgiveness’.
In 1999 a joint study by Worthington and Wade cited in the
2003 article Empathy, Selfism, and Coping as Elements of the Psychology of
Forgiveness: a preliminary study (whew…long title) says that unforgiveness is a
‘cold’ emotion characterized by “resentment, bitterness, and perhaps hatred,
along with the motivated avoidance or retaliation against a transgressor.” By
contrast, the article states that forgiveness is the conscious choice to
relinquish unforgiveness and possibly seek reconciliation with the perpetrator
- with the caveat that reconciliation be “safe, prudent, and possible”. The
study suggests that empathy, humor, and/or love compete with the emotion of
unforgiveness. This harkens back to the notion of decisional forgiveness we
discussed earlier.
We keep talking about forgiveness being a choice. We’ve discussed
what happens after we make that choice, to decide whether to be forgiving or
unforgiving. What informs that choice? An often cited 1998 study by McCullough
et al says that there are 4 different factors that affect whether one forgives.
They are 1) Personality, 2) Relationship Quality, 3) Nature of Transgression,
and 4) Social-Cognitive Variables. Because we don’t all speak Researchese,
these variables might also be codified as 1) Selfish or Selfless, 2) how
heavily invested you are in the relationship, 3) how you found out about the
wrong-doing and how serious the wrongdoing was, and 4) whether the act was
malicious or not.
Two quick examples.
The first: Jenny steals my juice box. Jenny was a moron and
didn’t bring anything for lunch to work, so she stole my juice box from the
office refrigerator. While I am greatly displeased at this action, as it has
taken my sugary, appley goodness away from my lunchtime mastication, I decide
to forgive her. Why? 1) Jenny usually lets me eat her Reese’s peanut butter
cups because she’s on a diet. 2) I’m not invested in the relationship enough to
marry Jenny, but she is my coworker and not forgiving her might cause tension.
3) When I asked who took my juice box, Jenny fessed up, and the offense is
trivial comparatively speaking. 4) She didn’t mean anything by it. After
weighing the Personality, Relationship Quality, Nature of Transgression, and
Social-Cognitive Variables, I decide to forgive her. (But if she does it again,
the chick is going down.)
The second: Eric steals my boyfriend. Eric has always been
jealous of my boyfriend, and he decides to purposefully lure him away with
promises of sex and chocolate, and various combinations of both one would
assume. While I admit there is wrong on the part of my boyfriend, I can be
quite petty and choose to only focus on how slutty and evil this Eric fellow
is. I choose not to forgive him. 1) The move was selfish. 2) I am not heavily
invested in keeping the relationship with Eric. 3) I had to find out through a
third party and it’s a pretty serious offense. 4) It was totally intentional.
After weighing the options, I decide that I am petty and hateful enough to
enter into a state of unforgiveness with Eric, deem him a nasty, dirty slut,
and move on in bitterness. Suffice it to say, Eric should watch out for both my
pitchfork and my evil eye. (Good thing I don’t know any Erics.)
If one does choose the path of forgiveness, however, it goes
without saying that there is a final step: reconciliation. Or, rather, the
choice of reconciliation. This is possibly the most difficult part in the
entire process. This is the true choice. This is the difference between the
modern day split of forgiving and forgetting, to use the crudely applied terms.
The 2003 study by Konstam et al. that was mentioned earlier states that it is
easier to change one’s cognitions - or thoughts - rather than changing one’s affect
- or emotions. As we’ve learned, this is the difference between decisional and
emotional forgiveness, the difference between superficially moving on and
actually doing so. This process has no timeline, and there are innumerable
factors that can contribute to the slow and often painful or uncomfortable
process of reconciliation. Restitution, appeasement, counseling, history, etc.
all play a part in the reconciliation process.
In Criminal Justice, this would be called ‘restoring the
victim and offender to the pre-crime state.’ That is deemed the ultimate goal
of the justice system. You know that part at the beginning of any action movie
where the hero and his bikini model girlfriend/wife are all giggling and happy
and life is kinda perfect? Then the terrorists come in or the aliens land or
Dennis gets up to his crazy shenanigans again, and that bliss is upended. The
point of the entire action movie is that the hero just wants to get back to
that first five minutes of the film, where the sun was shining and everyone was
smiling and life seemed to be going just fine. Maybe not perfect, but fine.
That is reconciliation. That is moving on. And, if one cannot reconcile with
the offender, then one at least needs to get to a psychological place of being
able to move on.
Jeanne Safer, PhD., says that one doesn’t have to reconcile
in order to get the positive effects of forgiveness. Indeed, one can move on
emotionally, though it might be harder.
"Many don't have to forgive in order to resolve their
feelings," Safer says. "They say, 'I can never feel OK about these
terrible things, but I'm not going to be vengeful’…What's important is working
it through and achieving resolution, whether it leads to forgiveness or not.
Forgiveness involves wishing the other well. You're already there if you don't
wish them ill."
I’d like to end this with a personal discussion of
forgiveness, if you don’t mind. Leaving the research and academia behind, I’d
like to just say that I find forgiveness to be a glossy concept, a photograph
that looks so easily put together that one might never notice the thousands of
ink dots that are shoved together to create the singular image. If I can get
even more personal than usual for a moment - my apologies - I have these scars
that I don’t like to discuss, and I have but briefly touched on them before.
Most of them come from high school and from growing up as an obviously gay,
overly sensitive child with too many questions about religion and an aversion
to sports in a Texas town of less than 600 people surrounded by folks who felt
sports was a religion and that god was a white guy who told them who to
dislike. I had a difficult time making friends, an even harder time trying to
find myself in the cacophony, and a harder time still trying not to let the
physical and emotional abuses I suffered at the hands of people who were bigger
(both in a physical and mental way) than me get so bad that I wanted to end my
life. It was hard, and sometimes I dream of showing up to a high school reunion
and kicking the collective asses of the guys that made my life hell for 13
years. For the record, in my dream I have Uma Thurman, Kill Bill style kung-fu
abilities and an enviable six pack. This is how I know it’s a dream.
I still have dreams that feel so real I am shocked to wake
up and not find myself back in my hometown. I relive some of these tortures and
situations still. I’ve gone to therapy and I’ve moved on to a point, but I
share this to say that there are some scars and some wrongs that one might
never truly forgive. I relate to the last bit of research the most, the idea
that we can be ok emotionally without the need to give forgiveness to a person
or group that has wronged us. I daresay, however, that I am not emotionally
whole and that this is invalid for me. I do not believe that if I were truly
moved on from the event that I would still relive these nightmares. I believe
that this is the grain of the photograph, to continue the metaphor.
This is where one looks close and sees that the photograph
isn’t so glossy and perfect, but that it’s this chaotic mass of dots
haphazardly strewn across paper. Close examination sees that red and yellow and
blue and green and black are just slapped next to each other in groups both
large and small in hopes that others think it looks nice.
I understand why it took researchers a long time to want to
study forgiveness, because, when it’s left in a realm of religion and
ultimately up to the divine, it’s easier to feel human. That is, it’s easier to
accept that as human creatures we don’t necessarily ever go back to a pre-crime
state. We don’t go back to that first 5 minutes of the action movie, because we
can never erase on a cellular level in the memory banks of our brains the most
hurtful of wrongs done to us and that we have done to others.
The point of forgiveness, if I may be so bold, is that we
try. We try to move on each and every single day, sometimes it’s a moment by
moment process. We consciously decide to forgive. We consciously decide to inch
ourselves back from the chaos of dots and fix our eyes upon the coalescing of
the red, the yellow, the blue, the green, and the black into the formation of
the bigger picture.
So, can I forgive someone that does great harm to the
innocent? Can I forgive myself, or my high school tormentors? Well, I made it
through today, and I’ll work on tomorrow when it gets here. Maybe…just maybe…the
magic I was taught as a child, the power of those ancient words, will take
hold.
Love and Lyte,
Fire Lyte
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgiveness
Empathy, Selfism, and
Coping as Elements of the Psychology of Forgiveness: A Preliminary Study. Varda Konstam , William Holmes ,
Bethany Levine. 2003
Mea Culpa: a sociology
of apology and reconciliation. Nicholas Tavuchis. Stanford University Press.
1991
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_transgression
http://www.webmd.com/balance/guide/forgive-forget?print=true
Holy crow! You've really thought about this. I went through my own mental journey with this subject when divorcing myself from my childhood Christian belief. I was raised a conservative baptist, and we believed in forgiveness times 72. So I had to re-examine all my own beliefs and reasoning behind the concept of forgiveness when I no longer felt as connected with Christianity—and therefore, held Christian tenets as the sole basis for my ethical and moral values.
ReplyDeleteForgiveness became a new and frightening prospect in my life. I had only known what my former religion said we should do regarding forgiveness and loving thine enemy etc. When I branched out beyond that (eventually discovering that I was pagan at the core), I had to recognize that forgiveness was a choice that was not mandated by divine decree, and that like all other choices, only the individual could determine when, where, and why.
There are consequences to forgiveness just as there are consequences to non-forgiveness. And the act of of non-forgiveness is not necessarily a grudge, nor hatred, nor revenge. For me, it is a brave-new-world of decisions, as I no longer believe the promise of blessings and righteousness of being a "forgiver" by an almighty God. It has become a heart-wrenching issue (especially regarding crimes and depravity such as you described), and one in which I feel decidedly alone.
I still agree with many aspects of the Christian ethic regarding forgiveness, but in the areas that I disagree, I suffer the daunting task of whether or not to take-on the considerable burdens of forgiveness...or non-forgiveness as the case may be. I do believe that there are some things that are unforgivable, but this is still a relatively new concept for me. I always felt that way, but was taught that it was a wrong (sinful) way of thinking that needed to be corrected. Now that I'm faced with taking full responsibility for my own ethics, I'm still learning where I stand on forgiveness.
You are so right! We were always taught that if you suddenly had a strong feeling about someone who had crossed over, or if we had a dream about them, we should light a candle in front of their picture and say a prayer...:) a lovely memory
ReplyDeleteI am right there with you on not sure if I could forgive the guy in California either. My first husband was abusive and a generally disgusting person. He sold me (I was 16! bad parents)to his drug dealer in exchange for drugs and convinced me I was doing it to save our marriage and our son. Then he did the same thing to our son when he was older while I was stationed in Germany. I told everyone who would listen what he did to us and no one cared. They all rallied to protect the abuser (which is unfortunately what usually happens) and left us out in the cold.
ReplyDeleteWhile I no longer care if anything happens to him for what he did to me, I can never forgive him for hurting my child like that. I will ALWAYS hope he suffers as much as any person could for that.
However, the universe doesn't work that way. I went and got my kid back when I returned to the states and have had him in therapy ever since. His dad though is always "Poor babied" that he lost so many years with his son. Even my kid believes the bullshit that his father is a victim of me just being mad at him and that he wasn't allowed to see his dad because of that.
My kid doesn't remember who exactly perpetrated the abuse and doesn't know that his father had it done to him on purpose. I believe that there are some things kids don't ever need to be told and this is one of those things. If I have to live the rest of my life with my son harboring some sort of anger towards me for keeping him from his father for stupid reasons I will be OK with that. I think it's better than him knowing the truth about what his father did to him. He's finally gotten to a place where he has moved past the whole thing, and has gotten on with his life. I'd rather not start the whole trauma over again.
So yeah, some things are not forgivable in my book. Although so far this is the only one I have encountered directly in my life, and hopefully ever will!