Myths about Forgiveness

Part 1 in a Series

Photo by Alex Shute on Unsplash

In January, I began taking a yearlong class based upon Steven Levine’s book, A Year to Live. One of our recurrent topics is forgiveness. Every time it comes up, people in the class struggle with it. Since I’ve taught a few seminary courses on forgiveness and reconciliation, I thought it’d be a good idea to do a series on it.

Forgiveness is one of those words that we like to invoke without actually knowing what we’re talking about. In Christianity, especially, we are taught that we have to forgive, but we are given few, if any, practical ideas about what that means and how to do it. And frankly, a lot of what we do learn about forgiveness is toxic, especially if those lessons come from people who want to exploit it.

So today, let’s start by discussing a few myths about forgiveness.

Myth #1: Forgiving someone means forgetting what they’ve done to you.

Many of us have heard the admonition that we need to “forgive and forget,” the idea that if we truly forgive a person for wronging us, we will never again think about or bring up what they’ve done. But that’s nonsense. Unless you have a brain lesion, trauma, or some other injury, it is impossible to forget. Generally, if an experience is painful enough to need forgiveness, then it’s significant enough that it’s going to be encoded into memory.

You’re going to remember. Forgiving is about how you remember. You might work at refraining from repeating the story to yourself or others in ways that reinforce the negative feelings. You can gently remind yourself, “This isn’t the same situation,” when the memory is triggered at the wrong time. You can intentionally recall your good experiences with the person who wronged you (especially if it’s someone you remain in relationship with). It’s okay to forgive and remember. In fact, in the case of a repeat offender, you may need to remember in order to protect yourself from future harm.

There is no “forgive and forget.”

Myth #2: Forgiveness means never feeling angry about the incident again.

Memories aren’t neutral recollections of events and people. They are encoded with emotion. That means that when memories arise, they may bring up the emotions that we experienced at the time – hurt, anger, offense, sadness, fear, terror disgust. That can happen even long after we have forgiven the person. Our emotions surrounding the event and our emotions surrounding the offender aren’t necessarily the same.

Sometimes our emotions are not about the offender at all, but about the fact that we went through the experience. Some hurts leave a long emotional residue. They impact us in ways that we may grieve for a lifetime, even if we are working to forgive the offender. It’s okay to to be angry about the abuse you experienced as a child, the car accident that left you disabled, or the financial devastation you experienced because you were done wrong on the job. Those are shitty things that shouldn’t happen to people. Let those residual feelings remind you to be compassionate and tender toward yourself. We can hold those feelings at the same time that we work to release the offender. And as we do our healing work, those feelings will lessen over time.

Forgiveness doesn’t take away the hurt.

Myth #3: You either forgive or you don’t.

We often talk about forgiveness as if it is a one-time decision that, once made, is unchanging. Perhaps it works that way when a harm is relatively mild, is an isolated incident, or doesn’t result in lasting injury. But when the harm is more severe, recurrent, and has lasting impact, forgiveness is more complicated. It requires healing and recovery work on our part. And that takes time.

Sometimes our desire to forgive and our capacity to forgive may not align. We may want to forgive before we have adequately processed and integrated what happened to us. We may feel pressured to forgive by the offender, by other people, or by religious and cultural beliefs. But forgiveness cannot be rushed and can have disastrous consequences if it is forced. It is not an event or decision, but rather a process with its own timeline.

Even when we allow the process to take its course, forgiveness may not be “one and done.” Sometimes we go through life changes or developmental transitions that flare up old hurt. New traumas or losses may make us remember parts of the old incident that we hadn’t noticed before. We may realize there’s some old resentment buried away that we still need to forgive. If we’ve been honest with our forgiveness work the first time, it’s often easier to reach forgiveness again.

Forgiveness is a process, not an event.

Myth #4: Forgiveness requires apology and reconciliation.

Forgiveness is inner work directed toward another person. But it doesn’t require the offender’s participation. In fact, it’s often less about the offender than it is about the person who has been harmed. There’s a popular saying that “Unforgiveness is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” There’s some truth to that. Holding onto resentment damages us, in a very real way through its impact on our nervous system. Forgiveness, then, is about releasing what holds us to the offender: our anger at them. In other words, we forgive mostly for our own sake.

In the process, though, we offer a gift to the offender. There are no strings attached to this gift, either on our end or theirs. They do not have to apologize, or even recognize the harm that they caused, in order for us to forgive them (because we’re doing it for ourselves) . Likewise, we do not have to communicate our forgiveness to them. Forgiveness doesn’t require us to be in continued relationship with the offender at all. That’s the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation. Forgiveness is about letting go; reconciliation is about restoration. We can forgive without reconciling. Sometimes that’s the most we can hope for, especially if the offender remains unrepentant or unchanged.

Forgiveness does not require reconciliation.

What questions do you have about forgiveness? What would you like me to address in this series? Drop me a comment or come join the convo in the chat and let me know.