Forgiveness

[snookums]

So this morning I got to thinking about the invisible but blatant culture of forgiveness our society is soaked in. I wondered if anyone else had thought along these lines…..so I started ‘googling’.

 

I put ‘culture of forgiveness’ into the search engine, and got back a bunch of bucolic crap about how forgiveness comes through Jesus, and how good, wonderful, and shiny forgiveness is…mush mush mush.

 

 

Well...yeah. I've researched it some time ago (as part of my study etc)- the 'forgiveness' trip has blazed trials into the counselling profession like you would n't believe!

As if everybloody thing is fixed when a person who has been bumfucked by their father or grandfather....is forgiven.

 

Get my drift?

 

Also (unfortunately) many so called professionals (pyschologist etc) are using this to fast stream cleints out of their offices - specially 'difficult' clients and its easier on the ol' professional pride to blame the client for their inability to 'forgive' or as some are terming it.......'to find closure'.

 

I'm not against any kind of feeling anyone has (obviously) but only the way they are used by 'professional' and of course in churchy practise.

 

I think Forgiveness is the new pop flavor of the decade.

[Unknowing1]

Apologies are just a way for someone who wrongs someone to feel right. I actually had someone who hurt me deeply apologize by saying "God, says I must ask your forgiveness". My reply, "your apology is not accepted, tell your God to shove it up his ass and you go fry in hell. I suggest professional help and not through your church either". What else can you say to someone who apologizes like that?

[Japedo]

I may tend to forgive if the offense isn't that great. I sometimes can be an overly loyal friend, however if there are lines crossed and I feel I'm taken advantage of or people are making unrealistic demands... I have not hesitated in the past to cut people completely out of my life forever, no matter how close. I usually send a nice fuck you letter listing their faults and request no apology as it wont help matters. If I'm sent one, (Only once I got a reply) I toss it with out opening it. I honestly have Zero interest in what they have to say. I end the friendship, and it is my 'closure'.

 

My mother forgives entirely to easy, no matter how horrific people treat her. I can not express how much it angers me and because she forgives so freely she's completely taken advantage of, both by her church and her friends. When I find out about things I usually cause stress as I'm like a bee in the offenders bonnet, but someone's gotta stand up for her.. she sure won't do it herself.

 

WR, what an outstanding piece you wrote, thank you for it! With constant 'forgiveness' the offender gets off with almost zero consequence for their actions, and it in fact encourages said behavior. If forgiveness is needed it should be earned and not freely granted just because, again this is depending on the degree of the offense.

[Lorena Rodriguez]

I may tend to forgive if the If forgiveness is needed it should be earned and not freely granted just because, again this is depending on the degree of the offense.

 

This is one of the christian contradictions. They tell you that you HAVE to forgive everyone on the spot. You are given no choice but to forgive.

 

Yet god, they say, doesn't forgive anyone if we don't ask HIM for forgiveness. If god were to forgive the way christians want us to forgive others, the concept of hell would not exist.

[godlessgrrl]

Ahh, yes. The F-word.

 

I've spent the past decade or so participating in a non-player MUD for abuse survivors, going from simple user to uberadmin. I am an abuse survivor myself. We have a long running semi-joke about forgiveness and do indeed call it "the F-word" on the forum, and that only partly tongue-in-cheek.

 

Most of the abuse survivors I've known (myself included) come from a world where forgiveness was demanded, but never offered in return. Abusers did all kinds of horrible things to their victims and then demanded forgiveness as a way of wiping the slate clean so that they could do the same horrible things all over again. They weren't sorry in the least, they were manipulative and cruel, and simply wanted to get away with whatever it was they did, taking their victims' absolution as a sign that whatever they were doing was really just fine.

 

On the flip side, forgiveness for normal human errors, mistakes, imperfections, or transgressions was something never offered by any perp or abuser I've ever known or heard about. Anything less than godlike perfection was not acceptable in my house, and was never forgiven. To this day I am reminded of and chastised for things I did as a child, and I am not alone - survivor friends report a similar phenomenon from their own abusive families.

 

Needless to say, I and other survivors have grown up with a particularly skewed picture of guilt and forgiveness. I suspect that a lot of people who parrot the words "I'm sorry" repeatedly probably came from a household in which they were told somehow that they were a bother for existing, and in which violent or painful things happened if they didn't somehow placate the abuser they had offended.

 

To complicate matters, a lot of survivors (again, myself included) have a very hard time figuring out what is really something to apologize for, and what isn't. A lot of things really probably don't require an apology - even offending someone doesn't always require it. But when you come from a place where, say, breathing wrong really could spark retribution of some kind (as I did), it can be hard to figure out when an apology is really warranted - because it's hard to figure out when you've really actually done something wrong and harmful for real.

 

So I sort of figure there are a couple of aspects to forgiving someone. I think there are things that can't be forgiven, and some people are more forgiving than others, for whatever reason. Mostly I think that genuine forgiveness isn't something that one person can ask for from another, it's something that an offended or harmed person just has to come to on their own, unforced, unhurried, in their own time. And it's a matter of degree and something deeply personal.

 

I use the words "I'm sorry" as a starting point, and I take them that way. They signal to me an acknowledgement that somebody has screwed up. Hopefully the next step is a willingness to fix whatever the screwup was, as much as possible. Most of the time if I screw up I don't need somebody to forgive me for the screwup, I just hope they'll allow me an attempt to rectify things, if I can. But, well, that's optional.

 

I don't like to say sorry when I'm not, either. But then sometimes people seem to expect it. (The gal that headed the graphics place I'm leaving expected other people to apologize to her for her screwups.) So I don't know. Sometimes I'll apologize if it seems the best way to keep the peace, and if keeping the peace is my goal, sorry or not.

 

It makes sense to me to be pretty laid back about stuff too, and give people the benefit of the doubt a lot of the time. Most offenses for me really aren't a big deal at all. Spilling milk at the table was a killing offense when I was a kid, now it's just a matter of "oops, go get a towel; no harm, no foul." It doesn't make sense to me to get offended at every least little annoying imperfect thing about everybody I meet - I mean shit, nobody's perfect, people have bad days, bad moments, whatever.

 

Anyway. I'm kind of rambling now anyway so I'll stop for now.

[Unknowing1]

Saw a church sign yesterday on my way home from work (really). It said "Want to lose some weight? Try forgiveness".

[Scarlett]

Ah I used to get into arguements all the time with my family when I was a Christian over the issue of forgiveness. I was told that as a Christian I should forgive everyone, wether or not they asked for it, or did anything to make admends. I would argue that they would have to ask me for forgiveness first before I cosidered forgiving them. This pissed people off alot and I could never understand why. My family finally stopped pestering me about it when I renounced Christianity though.

 

 

 

For some reason, it really seems to offend certain people if you tell them that you do not automatically forgive them when they have wronged you. I ask them if they would rather I lied to them and tell them that I forgive them when in fact I do not. Incredibly, very few people apppreciated this...they would rather I just lie to them to make them feel better. I really hate this because this means if or when I did something to hurt them and apoligized, 9 times out of 10 they'll tell me that they forgive me when in fact they don't, they just lied and they are holding a grudge and are still very angry.