Definition of Forgiveness

by Gerard 12 Replies latest jw friends

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  Gerard

  As many of you, I am angry at the Watchtower for their deceptions and damage it has caused to my wife's family and I harbor negative feelings that actually work against my healthy state of mind. I can't forget but I want to forgive. But what is the kind of forgiveness that will make me a better person?

  I found this definition by psychologists and I wanted to share it with you.

  G

  Forgiveness is the overcoming of negative affect and judgment toward the offender, not by denying ourselves the right to such affect and judgment, but by endeavoring to view the offender with benevolence, compassion, and even love, while recognizing that he or she has abandoned the right to them. [...] this loving response occurs despite the realization that there is no obligation to love the offender (Subkoviak, Enright, Wu, Gassin, Freedman, Olson, Sarinopoulos, 1992, p.3).

  From a psychological perspective, using the Enright definition of forgiveness as the primary framework, interpersonal forgiveness involves the affective, behavioral and cognitive systems of the forgiver, how one feels about the offender, behaves toward him and thinks about him. It is letting go of the negative feelings about the perpetrator and the emotional consequences of the hurt, especially the bitterness and resentment (Walters, 1984; DiBlasio, 1992). The negative behavior toward the perpetrator is replaced with positive behavior. The choice is not to retaliate but to respond in a loving way (Studzinski, 1986) and giving up the right to hurt back (Pingleton, 1989). The negative thoughts regarding the offender are changed as the intellectual decision to forgive is made (Fitzgibbons, 1986).

  http://www.forgivenessweb.com/RdgRm/definitionpsychological_.htm

  The Forgiveness Process is a FREELY MADE CHOICE AND DECISION to no longer continue to harm or punish yourself, nor to continue to diminish your overflowing love, joy or freedom because of the real or imagined wrongs done by others, or because of any outer circumstances. The Forgiveness Process is the CANCELLATION of all the conditions in you that are preventing the flow of love, joy and vitality through you, independently of the behaviour of others or any circumstances.
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  ButtLight

  Forgiveness sometimes is easier said than done.........thats a toughy!
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  onacruse

  Forgiving is a two-way street.
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  Dagney

  I was ranting about this yesterday with another ex-JW.

  Sometimes I feel like I have really moved on. Then other times, I'll see or hear something that snaps me back into anger and resentment. And I really don't want to.

  I had an e-mail yesterday with a quote that said something to the effect "Not forgiving is like giving space in your brain out rent free."

  Another definition I am working through is "Forgiving is giving up the idea that history can be changed."

  I feel like they stole my youth and I was forced to be who they wanted me to be, not who I really should be, with the right to choose.

  Today is a better day than yesterday.
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  Madame Quixote

  The easiest way to arrive at forgiveness and to stay in that beautiful mode is to stay away from exploitive, abusive situations and avoid such people.

  Learning to recognize the abusiveness before it can happen might be a trick for those accustomed to the lifesyle of familiar pain, but it can be done. I doubt that most people experience a continuous state of sublime, blissful forgiveness of their abusers, 24-7. However, it is possible to arrive at the state of willingness to forgive, whether the abuser deserves forgiveness or not; the ability to get there and to mostly maintain such an attitude of forgiveness is the goal, and is not for the abuser's benefit. It is for the benefit of the victim, really, with the added benefit that perhaps the abuser will be less enabled by the victim to do further damage by BOTH the victim's refusal to be victimized and by their willingness to let go of the past in more than a theoretical way. Often times that has to involve the victim's willingness and capacity to stay the hell away from the abuser.

  Dagney said:

  Sometimes I feel like I have really moved on. Then other times, I'll see or hear something that snaps me back into anger and resentment. And I really don't want to.

  The exact same thing happens in regard to my JW family, particularly my mom who is very provocative and unpredictable due to mental illness. It is easy to forgive her, to tell myself and come to terms with her meanness, and with her inability to act truly loving by just staying away from her. However, it is impossible to "let go of the past" if it continually repeats itself in my milieu. In returning to get love from the abusive parent, I often kept the past with me because she did too, repeating the same old tapes, the same old damaging scenarios, the same old pain.

  Only you can change the environment and with help find some new "tapes" to listen to. Love and forgiveness!
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  What-A-Coincidence

  When we hate our enemies, we are giving them power over us: power over our sleep, our appetites, our blood pressure, our health, and our happiness. Our enemies would dance with joy if only they knew how they were worrying us, lacerating us, and getting even with us! Our hate is not hurting them at all, but our hate is turning our own days and nights into a hellish turmoil.

  How will trying to get even hurt you? In many ways. According to Life magazine, it may even wreck your health. “The chief personality characteristic of persons with hypertension [high blood pressure] is resentment,” said Life. “When resentment is chronic, chronic hypertension and heart trouble follow.” So you see that when Jesus said, “Love your enemies,” he was not only preaching sound ethics. He was also preaching twentieth-century medicine. When he said, “Forgive seventy times seven,” Jesus was telling you and me how to keep from having high blood pressure, heart trouble, stomach ulcers, and many other ailments.

  Hatred destroys our ability to enjoy even our food.

  Wouldn’t our enemies rub their hands with glee if they knew that our hate for them was exhausting us, making us tired and nervous, ruining our looks, giving us heart trouble, and probably shortening our lives?

  Let’s love ourselves so much that we won’t permit our enemies to control our happiness, our health, and our looks.

  I once asked General Eisenhower’s son, John, if his father ever nourished resentments. “No, Dad never wastes a minute thinking about people he doesn’t like.”

  Let’s never waste a minute thinking about people we don’t like.

  Bernard Baruch – advisor of 6 presidents. “No man can humiliate me or disturb me, I won’t let him.”
  No one can humiliate or disturb you and me, either – unless we let him.

  One sure way to forgive and forget our enemies is to become absorbed in some cause infinitely bigger than ourselves. Then the insults and the enmities we encounter won’t matter because we will be oblivious of everything but our cause.

  Laurence Jones, a black teacher and preacher in 1918 in Mississippi. When asked afterward it he didn’t hate the men who had dragged him up the road to hang him and burn him, he replied that he was too busy with his cause to hate – too absorbed in something bigger than himself. “I have no time to quarrel,” he said, “no time for regrets, and no man can force me to stoop low enough to hate him.”

  We reap what we sow. Epictetus said, “In the long run, every man will pay the penalty for his own misdeeds.”

  ...QUOTES from Dale Carnegies How to Start Living and Stop Worrying
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  Dagney

  Really good advice WAC.

  Thanks.
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  Madame Quixote

  I agree, WAC, except that recent research on stomach ulcers shows they are created by something microbial, not by emotional problems, as was once thought.

  http://www.kidshealth.org/teen/diseases_conditions/digestive/ulcers.html

  Certainly, emotional problems like resentment don't help with such physical problems, though.
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  avidbiblereader

  Real good advice WAC

  When we hate our enemies, we are giving them power over us: power over our sleep, our appetites, our blood pressure, our health, and our happiness. Our enemies would dance with joy if only they knew how they were worrying us, lacerating us, and getting even with us! Our hate is not hurting them at all, but our hate is turning our own days and nights into a hellish turmoil.

  The only one that it bothers is you, the only one walking around with the monkey on the back and the grudge is you,

  I once heard it put this way "Forgivness is such a selfish act, because it brings more benefits to the forgiver than the forgiven"

  abr
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  Gerard

  Forgiving is a two-way street.

  I always thought so, but I discovered that for my health, it is not a requirement. Although The WT does not deserve it, I am going to try stop the feelings of anger but still share my /our experience with anybody who may benefit of it.

  I don't think I will try to 'love' the WT but want to think of forgiveness as a deliberate choice to not retaliate.

  I'm getting even kicking their ass the day I make the WT irrelevant.