What I don't understand about forgiveness

[sudy]

I think that you should focus on patience and gentleness, and praying for them. I know it can be frustrating at times but freedom allows each of us to find God in our own time. The verse 2 Timothy 2:25 tells us that it is God who works within us and who leads us to repentance.

 

[vivnes]

For anyone: I would not underestimate the danger of idleness. Idle words, those that are not necessary or pious. (cf. Mt 12:35-36; St. Thomas Aquinas, Matt, C. 12 L. 2) Words are from the heart. If the heart be completely converted so that there is desire for assiduous help from God and pardon in regard to observe the precepts of charity (in order words a hopeful heart rather then a presumptuous heart) then love is ordered rightly.

Love for creatures will be seen or try to be seen in there proper worth (in other words through a process of detachment and abandonment). For forgiveness is under the virtue of hope. The Our Father prayer is the truthful and proper summary of what a faithful soul ought to hope/desire. (cf. CCC 2763, 1820)

“treasures of wickedness will profit nothing” (Prov 10:2).

 

[adgloriam]

@Annie, you can see that everything the OP wrote echoes EXACTLY what JPII wrote:

Choice and responsibility

Perhaps nowhere else in the whole book than here does its title,
which speaks of “love and responsibility,” seem more relevant. There
exists responsibility in love—responsibility for the person, the one who
is drawn into the closest community of being and acting, who in a way
is made one’s possession by taking advantage of his self-giving. And
therefore there exists responsibility for one’s own love : is it mature and
thorough enough that in its boundaries this enormous trust of the other
person, the hope generated from his love—the hope that one does not
lose one’s “soul” by giving oneself, but, quite the contrary, finds the
greater fullness of one’s existence—is not going to suffer a disappointment.
Responsibility for love is reduced, as is evident, to responsibility
for the person, proceeding from it and also returning to it. Therefore,
this responsibility is enormous. However, its magnitude can be understood
only by the one who has a thorough sense of the value of the
person. (…)

After all, this sense implies concern for the true good of the person—the quintessence of all altruism and at the same time an infallible sign of some expansion of one’s “I,” of one’s existence, with this “other I” and with this other existence, which is for me as close as my own.
The sense of responsibility for the other person is at times full of concern, but it is never in itself unpleasant or painful. For what comes to light in it is not a constriction or impoverishment of man, but precisely his enrichment and expansion. Therefore love separated from the sense of responsibility for the person is a denial of itself, and, as a rule, is always egoism. The more the sense of responsibility for the person, the more true love there is.

 

[adgloriam]

The commitment of freedom

Only the truth about a person makes a real commitment of freedom
in relation to this person possible. Love consists in a commitment of
freedom because, after all, love is self-giving, and to give oneself means
precisely to limit one’s freedom on account of the other person. The
limitation of one’s own freedom would be something negative and
unpleasant, but love makes it something positive, joyful, and creative.
Freedom is for love. Freedom that is unused, not employed by love,
becomes precisely something negative—it gives man a sense of emptiness
and unfulfillment. Love engages freedom and fills it with what the
will clings to by nature : it fills freedom with the good. The will tends to
the good, and freedom belongs to the will, and therefore freedom is for
love, for through love man most fully participates in the good. This is
the essential basis for the primacy of love in the moral order, in the
hierarchy of virtues, and in the hierarchy of the healthy longings and
desires of man.Man longs for love more than for freedom—freedom
is the means, whereas love is the end. Man, however, longs for true love,
because the authentic commitment of freedom is possible only when it
is based on truth. The will is free, but at the same time it “must” seek the
good, which will correspond to its nature; it is free in seeking and choosing,
but it is not free from the very need to seek and to choose.
However, the will does not bear having an object (as a good) imposed
on it. It wants to choose by itself and affirm by itself, for a choice is
always an affirmation of the value of the chosen object.

(…)

The will loves only when man consciously commits his freedom
toward another human being as the person whose value he fully
acknowledges and affirms. This commitment does not consist above all
in desiring that person. The will is a creative power capable of giving the
good from within itself, and not only of assimilating the good that
already exists. The love of the will is expressed above all in desiring the
good for the beloved person. To long for a person for one’s own sake
does not yet reveal the creative potentiality of the will, and it also does
not yet constitute love in the complete positive meaning of the word.
The will by nature wants the good—the good without limits, that is,
happiness.

(…)

The great moral power of true love lies precisely in this longing for
the happiness of the other person, that is, for his true good. Thanks to
this, love is able to regenerate man—it gives him a sense of interior
richness, of interior fertility and creativity : I am capable of wanting the
good for the other person, so I am in general capable of wanting the
good. True love forces me to believe in my own spiritual powers. Even
when I am “bad,” true love—if it is awakened in me—commands me to
seek the true good for the sake of the person, to whom it turns.

 

[TULIPed]

When in doubt, go first to your knees, then to the Bible, then the Catechism, then your pastor, and then…Don Henley:

"I’ve been trying to get down
To the heart of the matter
But my will gets weak
And my thoughts seem to scatter
But I think it’s about forgiveness
Forgiveness
Even if, even if you don’t love me

I’ve been tryin’ to get down
To the heart of the matter
Because the flesh will get weak
And the ashes will scatter
So, I’m thinkin’ about forgiveness
Forgiveness
Even if , even if you don’t love me any more"

 

[jack63]

For me, hurt seemed to produce, not a desire to pay someone back, but an overwhelming, desperate sense of needing to convince them to understand what they’re doing. Most of the time I struggle and have to actually go out of my way to make myself feel enough anger to not run back for a false reconciliation. I find myself almost obsessively longing to fix things, to somehow make them understand what it’s like for me, for them to reach the point where they genuinely want to fix things.

It feels like you’ve already forgiven, and you are struggling with what to do next. Can you make them understand what it is like for you? Can you genuinely change their heart? Yes, it is my experience that you can but rarely with words and not quickly.

Perhaps these emotions and desires you have to change their heart and make them understand are good and should be there. Use them to love the person, don’t try to hurt them, and use your actions to try to prove them wrong over time. In my experience, people do change over time when they see the results of their actions and the actions of others.

I liked what @adgloriam said. Sounds like you’ve forgiven, but the questions is about wisdom.

 

[DarkLight]

It seems to me that you are still trying to be in charge of some of their future–that you want to make them feel sorry, etc., when you should be leaving even that up to God.

So you don’t feel any sort of upset or disappointment or negative feeling about the other person? Because those are all along the same spectrum as anger.

I suspect the state is less a virtue and more based in some sense of fear/insecurity. It would be good for them to recognize what they did wrong, but I get the sense it’s something I want primarily because it would make me feel a lot safer. It just feels so helpless, trying to understand how people can hurt you and keep hurting you and thinking they’re completely justified, especially since a lot of times if you try to push back or protect yourself that means you’ll get hurt even more and be seen as the aggressor.

I really don’t like “blame your childhood for everything”, but there’s a decent chance it’s true here. I think in general I’m having a lot of trouble reconciling what I’m told about psychological recovery and what I’m told my duties are as a christian. I was the kid who wasn’t supposed to be angry because it’s all “for your own good”. So you end up spending a lot of time trying to make it up to a parent that’s angry at you for no reason because you’re just a kid and what else are you going to do? Being hurt doesn’t make me feel angry so much as terrified, and I need the other person to see what they did so I know they’re not going to keep hurting me.

It often seems I have to actively make myself feel anger and deliberately and explicitly remind myself of the wrong things other people have did. Because my instincts are to just go back and pretend nothing happened, and that’s usually not a good idea with people who aren’t repentant. It’s hard to make myself take enough action against other people in order to protect myself, and I feel like in order to do so I have to do basically the exact opposite of what you’re supposed to do in order to forgive people, actually making yourself focus on what someone’s done wrong and how you should be angry at them.

 

[Annie]

There
exists responsibility in love—responsibility for the person, the one who
is drawn into the closest community of being and acting, who in a way
is made one’s possession by taking advantage of his self-giving

Is all this referring to married people?

 

[adgloriam]

adgloriam:

There
exists responsibility in love—responsibility for the person, the one who
is drawn into the closest community of being and acting, who in a way
is made one’s possession by taking advantage of his self-giving

Is all this referring to married people?

No. It is NOT ONLY referring to married people - it extends to love in the family.

Since both kinds of love (between man and woman, child and parents) are set within marriage and family, what I quoted of JP2 is common to both (that one single phrase you highlighted being the only difference in form and nature).

A very interesting extension -one we wouldn’t immediately think of, at first glance- particular to this thread, is the case when the family imposed such hardship on one of its members (in this case a child) that the aforementioned member of the family needs to analyze the love for their family and the love of their family for them.

It was not by chance the formulation by the OP is an exact overlap of what JPII wrote. (Indeed, the OP made a remarkable synthesis which managed to express and capture all the same essence as JP2, without missing anything.)

 

[vsedriver]

to go from longing for them to repent to not being particularly concerned with it.

It may seem like the wrong direction but it is the right direction. In the first place you have no power to change anyone. Once you acknowledge that you will be much happier. Then tell yourself they are in the Holy Spirits hands and leave it up to him.

Forgiveness doesn’t require reconciliation. Real forgiveness is when you tell God that you hold nothing against the person who harmed you even though you are entitled to God’s perfect justice.

Forgiveness is not a feeling, it is an act of the will. It is normal to feel righteous anger against someone who has wronged you. It’s not normal to think that they must change so that you will feel better.

 

[adgloriam]

adgloriam:

the one who is drawn into the closest community of being and acting, who in a way
is made one’s possession by taking advantage of his self-giving

Is all this referring to married people?

@Annie, Look closely: “my child”, “my mother”, “my father”, “my son”, “my daughter”. ← Here you see the “possession”, the “closest community” of “acting and being”, “drawn into the closest community”. The “self-giving” arises in crisis, when for some reason (in this case between the child and the parents) the former is called into question, which does not change its nature.

Thus, at first glance, you’d think of the sentence you quoted in terms of “taking a spouse” and “giving oneself to marriage (matrimony)” however, in its nature -which is also sacred, and of sanctity- estranged parents and children face “self-giving” in loving their family.

God bless.

 

[adgloriam]

Forgiveness doesn’t require reconciliation.

Love wants reconciliation. Love longs for reconciliation.

Forgiveness is not a feeling, it is an act of the will.

Longing for reconciliation is a fruit of love.

It’s not normal to think that they must change so that you will feel better.

As JPII said:

Love engages freedom and fills it with what the
will clings to by nature : it fills freedom with the good. The will tends to
the good, and freedom belongs to the will, and therefore freedom is for
love, for through love man most fully participates in the good. This is
the essential basis for the primacy of love in the moral order, in the
hierarchy of virtues, and in the hierarchy of the healthy longings and
desires of man

 

[vsedriver]

Love wants reconciliation. Love longs for reconciliation.

I was speaking of Forgiveness, not love. Of course Love wants reconciliation. I personally would love to reconcile with someone who has hurt me deeply. But that is out of my control no matter how much I love them and long for reconciliation.

But this was a question about forgiveness for the OP.

 

[DarkLight]

The thing here that I think @vsedriver is getting at is, a lot of people say “reconciliation” when what they really mean is “let’s pretend it never happened and I get to keep hurting you.”

 

[Mary888]

I don’t define forgiveness as letting go. Forgetting is actually very hard and counterproductive for.me. it doesn’t happen. I pray and think all is fine. Then situations hit me in dreams and I go back to that place and realize nothing is changed I haven’t forgiven.
I read a study done by doctors that actually forgetting something takes more mental effort than remembering something. That seems accurate to me.
The only way I see forgiveness is in terms of sacrifice. Even though I know this is self-justifying and probably proud and probably very self-empowering and all that. But when I know that I just have to make the sacrifice of not accusing certain people in my head, just not do it, even if I want to, I ask God for help and can move forward. Like the living sacrifices of… having to wake up earlier in the morning to do some work and chore you don’t want to and are angry that you have to. But you do it. Hopefully at the end of day you are exhausted enough to go to a deep sleep.
I read the Psalms and the life of King David and family hits me as very hard, emotionally, spiritually and physically. But he had to do it, had to live it.
I don’t believe in letting go to anger jbut I believe in the sacrifice of not feeding it and also the sacrifice of not letting myself behave according to my emotions and pretend all is fine and I was the guilty party for getting angry in the first place. No, it’s not. It is as it is. And that’s all, folks!

 

[Annie]

I don’t define forgiveness as letting go. Forgetting is actually very hard and counterproductive for.me.

I just want to clarify a couple of points. The first is that I am not talking about “forgive and forget.” I am talking about not poisoning myself by holding onto the wrong done to me but instead turning it over to God to deal with.

I may well need to remember, so I don’t let that person back into a position of trust in my life, but I do need to let go of the desire to inflict a change on the person, because I can’t do that.

I pray and think all is fine. Then situations hit me in dreams and I go back to that place and realize nothing is changed I haven’t forgiven.

Yes, the temptation to unforgiveness will keep returning! And then we have to forgive all over again. This does not mean you did it wrong the first or 17th time: this is just a part of life.

The good news is that the instances will get weaker and less frequent with time.

 

[Annie]

For me, hurt seemed to produce, not a desire to pay someone back, but an overwhelming, desperate sense of needing to convince them to understand what they’re doing. Most of the time I struggle and have to actually go out of my way to make myself feel enough anger to not run back for a false reconciliation. I find myself almost obsessively longing to fix things, to somehow make them understand what it’s like for me, for them to reach the point where they genuinely want to fix things

I added the bold. These words are why I don’t think that Dark Light is experiencing what Ad Gloriam is describing (which I am not too clear on, but which may be the feeling a parent has when they want to get rid of a vice and instill the opposing virtue in a child).

I can’t imagine that St Pope John Paul II would advocate something that is not healthy, but what Dark Night describes does not seem quite right to me, possibly due to the words she used. And I could have the wrong impression about what she is saying, but feeling obsessive and struggling to refrain from a reconciliation she knows is false doesn’t sound right.

But that always seems like the wrong direction - to go from longing for them to repent to not being particularly concerned with it.

So I think there is a middle course here that can be taken, neither obsession nor indifference. I think detachment from the outcome might explain what I mean?

So God is currently allowing this situation to continue. Either an increase in prayers (for increased grace) or patience (until God deems it the right time to act, which He might never do) is needed. Neither involves indifference.

Think of it as the Superbowl game. A lot of people are waiting patiently (albeit vociferously) for the outcome, but that in no way indicates indifference, does it? They simply know when the appointed time for the end of the conflict to occur will be, and trust that it will arrive.

The fans really want a certain outcome, but if they said and meant they were obsessed, people would think they’d gone overboard, right? So there is an anticipatory acceptance of either outcome, which could be called detachment, I think.

In some situations, we are in charge and must guide someone to an understanding of their actions. Parents, obviously, but also superiors and teachers.

In other situations, we are not in charge, and so do not have the authority to do anything. We may, however, have a relationship which would allow some good to flow from fraternal correction, which we would then be obliged to give.

It seems to me that sometimes we are in a situation in which the relationship does not allow for fraternal correction, and the other person is too far from understanding to be able to be corrected.

In this case, which seems to be what Dark Night is describing, what can we do? Short of physical force, nothing! And at that point, it seems to me, we must resort, not to indifference, but to prayer and patience. Just turn the person over to God for Him to handle.

 

[Annie]

I am not disagreeing with what @adgloriam wrote, I just think that Love and Responsibility was written about a particular type of relationship. Sometimes we need to forgive people to whom we are not married, which is a different situation.

 

[DarkLight]

The only way I see forgiveness is in terms of sacrifice. Even though I know this is self-justifying and probably proud and probably very self-empowering and all that. But when I know that I just have to make the sacrifice of not accusing certain people in my head, just not do it, even if I want to, I ask God for help and can move forward. Like the living sacrifices of… having to wake up earlier in the morning to do some work and chore you don’t want to and are angry that you have to. But you do it. Hopefully at the end of day you are exhausted enough to go to a deep sleep.

I think part of the balance for me…some people you can sacrifice and sacrifice and all your sacrifices are doing is enabling them to wear you out. The way I’ve heard it put, they’re the kind of people who will suck you dry and then get mad at you for not having more blood. I’m trying to learn it’s ok to set boundaries and tell certain people, look, you may not like what I did but that doesn’t mean I’m changing it for you. I’m not sacrificing myself for you just because you demand it. And that’s hard to know how to fit with Christian ideals.

 

[Eric_Hyom]

You will know when you have come to terms with forgiving, you will feel healed and be at peace. This is all within your power to do, and it does not depend on what others do.