I notice that nobody has bothered to define “forgiveness.”
Some years ago, someone advised me that I had a problem with forgiveness that I ought to take a look at. I realized, when I really looked at it, that I really didn’t know exactly what the word meant. I started reading books, essays—everyone seemed to have a different understanding of what it meant...
In the NT, the Greek word most often translated as forgiveness is aphiemi, which means to let go, to release, to set free—in other Greek writings, it can even mean divorce. apoluo is the word next most often rendered as forgiveness, and has similar meanings, with the added connotation of “throwing forth” (and is, in context, also translated as “divorce” ).
So, to pick one word, forgiveness means to release. Release of enmity, say. Letting go of anger, or a grudge, or your right to “get even.” Reconciliation is a whole other matter, and may or may not be desirable or possible. Whether or not the forgiveness is communicated, and whether it is wise to do so, is also another question.
Forgiveness may really have little to do with the other person at all. Suppose, for example, that someone says they forgive you for something about which, upon honest examination, you do not judge yourself guilty, or in need of forgiveness, at all. It still may be a “releasing” that is necessary for that person’s well-being. So, perhaps you just let it be.
But if forgiveness is release of attitudes that cause destructive inner turmoil, it is certainly rational to “let it go.” In Buddhist jargon, the “first noble truth” is that in life there is anguish (suffering). The “second noble truth” is that anguish is ultimately caused by clinging, clutching, grasping. The “third noble truth” is that there is a way to escape anguish. The “fourth noble truth” is that the way to escape anguish is following the eightfold path—which is too many “folds” for me to ever keep track of. But, if forgiveness means exactly the opposite of clinging/clutching/grasping, then the radicality of the Christian concept certainly has a kind of “Zen” ring to it.
From that perspective (which is mine), the discipline of forgiveness is the discipline of letting go of whatever it is you clutch at (or that seems to clutch at you) that causes anguish—and may lead you to think that you can escape from that anguish by imposing it on someone else. Jesus’ message (in part)—and the Buddha’s too (in part)—was that God (or the Tao or the universe, in the Buddhist view) does not cling to your errors and failures (moral or otherwise: the real, literal meaning of the word “sin” ), nor insist that you do either.
The discipline of forgiveness does not mean that I will not protect myself, or those in my care, from the actions of others. It simply means that I will not participate in the cycle of anguish (which I call the “soap opera” ), my own or another’s—neither to make another’s my own, nor to lay my own on another, nor to insist to myself that I cling to my own. Ivanhoe knows as well as anyone that my discipline is not perfect. As Ivanhoe also knows, sinking into the anguish of despair at failure is, in a sense, the worse sin: because it keeps you in the cycle. Perfectionism is, in either Christian or Buddhist terms, a kind of “faithlessness.”
So, for me, based on my understanding of the term, forgiveness is eminently rational—passivity or response in the face of another’s actions, or maintaining a relationship despite another’actions, are totally different matters.
20 Feb '07 15:14
Being rational ..... and forgiveness
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