What is the true nature of forgiveness?
Originally, I think forgiveness was promoted as letting a person you might hate or hold a grudge against for something which they had done off the hook. It was promoted as one way of showing your love for your fellow men. The benefit to OTHERS, when you forgave them, was all-important.
With most people refuting guilt, refusing to accept blame, the pop psychological thrust of forgiveness came to the fore: The idea being that we forgive for our OWN good, to get our own accounts and Karma straight, with the benifit of forgiveness to the other party of secondary interest.
My question is, what is the true nature of forgiveness? What is the true motive for forgiveness? Do we forgive others to do ourselves good, as part of an overall stress-reduction plan, or do we forgive others for THEIR good?
I forgive others because ultimately all lousy things — done by me and done by others — is in the hands of God. If He can make every thing that ever happened to be okay — and I’m say ‘IF’ — then who am I to want some rotten interpersonal problem to persist forever.
Ideas to Reduce Stress During the Holidays
