essay on importance of forgiveness

Why is Forgiveness Important?

Scroll down to find out more on the importance of forgiveness and how it can neutralize anger and resentment.

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This Article Contains

How can forgiveness free us from anger, the relationship between forgiveness and healing, self-forgiveness and the value of forgiving yourself, why forgiving others is the best thing you can do for yourself, forgiveness and compassion, gratitude and forgiveness, a take-home message.

Negative life events, if significant enough, can get encoded in memory and often cause us to have physical reactions to remembering the painful experience. From the perspective of psychological research holding a grudge is considered an “imagined emotional response” (Witvliet, Ludwig, & Laan, 2001).

This would suggest that one must fuel the negative emotions in order to sustain them over a long period of time. For example, vengeful thoughts that embellish and describe the event with contempt only intensify the emotional imagery and physiological experience.

There is research, however, that shows the desire for revenge to be in some instances stronger than empathic motivation, especially in men. Participants in a Singer and Lamm’s study did not respond with empathy toward a person that was suffering, especially when they felt the person deserved punishment (2009).

One moment of anger can wipe out a lifetime of merit.

Interventions such as perspective-taking that result in empathetic compassion can help one in overcoming anger and resentment.

This cultivation of empathy involves connecting to the common humanity between oneself and the offender as well as trying to see the situation from the other person’s perspective and attempting to understand what might have contributed to the behavior that caused one harm (Witvliet et al., 2001).

Many argue that empathy should be cultivated early on through forgiveness education. When inner turmoil ensues in adulthood, it may be tough to find our way to forgiveness if we’ve never practiced it before.

It is very much like asking someone who has never worked out to run a marathon. Many believe that children and adolescents should begin learning at a young age what forgiveness is and how people go about forgiving.

Teaching forgiveness is especially important to help reduce anger in children who have suffered injustice sufficient enough to compromise their emotional health.

Forgiveness can also help students, now and later as adults, forge stable and meaningful relationships without anger causing discord and division.

Finally, forgiveness can play a big part in how communities thrive when people begin to see more deeply the inherent worth of others.

Cultivating forgiveness is important because there are senseless crimes committed in a fit of anger where one brief moment can alter the course of many lives. People whose lives are affected by these crimes may not have the ability to forgive, thereby contributing to more resentment and anger in the world.

The message of the Dalai Lama in his book Healing Anger sees human ability to inflict harm on oneself and others as part of human nature, where some individuals are more prone to it than others (1997).

He explains that some acts of violence are committed out of ignorance or carelessness. Yet others are prompted by circumstances. All of which are presented as outside of a person’s control when one’s mental, emotional or circumstantial conditions are concerned.

In light of this perspective, he suggests that it becomes pointless to hold it against those who hurt themselves or injure others.

Forgiveness can neutralize anger and resentment. The Dalai Lama suggests that the best way to deal with continually getting angry after being wronged by another person is to see them from a different angle and see that perhaps they still have positive qualities.

He also suggests that the negative events can be a source of opportunities otherwise not possible, a form of re-framing toward the positive (Dalai Lama, 1997).

Generating universal compassion is another way of dealing with anger that aids in cultivating forgiveness and can be accomplished through reflecting on how we are all connected because we all share in the experience of pain and all wish to overcome suffering.

The Dalai Lama reminds us that cultivating “ acceptance of harm and injuries inflicted by others ” is a form of patience and tolerance and can be practiced alongside an appreciation of the complexity of human condition and nature of reality (Dalai Lama, 1997).

Buddhist approach to anger and resentment suggests that cultivating the virtue of forgiveness is closely tied to developing practices of patience and tolerance. These forms of practice encompass cultivation of mindfulness and wisdom, giving or generosity, as well as honesty and sincerity.

The English language has no equivalent in meaning to the word patience as an internal strength. Buddhist tradition, however, recognizes many different aspects of patience ( sopa ) and speaks to how these concepts relate to each other, namely:

• resilience,
• forgiveness,
• tolerance and

Buddhist tradition also distinguishes between different kinds of patience depending on the context: the patience of not retaliating, the patience of accepting hardship, and patience of accepting reality.

The Dalai Lama also encourages us to contemplate our impermanence which allows us to have more appreciation for the time we have. Reflecting on impermanence can give us a sense of perspective and urgency and allow us to see human potential and the value of our existence.

He reminds us that the tendency to rehearse after being hurt is common, but reliving the pain and suffering is optional. If we consider the explanation that resentment is considered “ a commitment to remain angry (or to resume anger periodically) ” holding a grudge seems to be an equivalent of cultivating anger (Dalai Lama, 1997).

The Dalai Lama proposes that instead we either develop a sense of indifference towards the aggressor or further develop compassion for those who are afflicted with such tendencies. He believes that practicing awareness of the nature of suffering can help one develop the ability to connect to other people’s pain.

The practice of loving-kindness and other positive states is one application of this wisdom to a difficult situation.

The Dalai Lama also suggests that with the help of humility and patience one can resist the urge to retaliate and counteract what he refers to as “ deluded states of mind .” Finally, his Holiness suggests that we take it a step further by deliberately familiarizing ourselves with the nature of suffering so we can become more tolerant of it.

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Studies show that being an object of transgression can be a significant cause for developing depression and that practicing forgiveness can alleviate feelings of anger, avoidance and vengeful-ness that lead to negative consequences in one’s emotional and physical health as well as relationships (Brown, 2003; McCullough et al., 1998).

Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.

Steven Wright

Cultivating forgiveness as a means for neutralizing anger and resentment can be a form of coping strategy, while deliberate replacement of negative feelings with positive emotions can become a form of personal transformation that can lead to emotional healing.

Interventions such as perspective taking, benefit finding, connecting to the greater good, cultivating empathy, and neutralizing hostility can help one in overcoming anger and resentment (Witvliet et al., 2001; Worthington & Scherer, 2004).

Forgiving responses like developing feelings of empathy and granting forgiveness can reduce arousal, negative emotions, and stress responses.

One study found that letting go and adopting a merciful attitude toward the offender contributed to fewer cardiovascular and immune system problems (Witvliet et al., 2001).

Other studies found forgiveness to be positively associated with five measures of health:

• physical symptoms,
• medications used,
• sleep quality,
• fatigue, and
• somatic complaints (McCullough, Sandage, & Worthington, 1997; McCullough & Worthington, 1994; Thoresen, Harris, & Luskin, 2000).

According to the Mayo Clinic, deliberate letting go of negative emotions, particularly those that are strong and have been linked to forgiveness brings with it plenty of health benefits, including improved relationships, decreased anxiety and stress, lower blood pressure, a lowered risk of depression, and stronger immune and heart health.

Letting go of negative emotions can often have a remarkable impact on the body.

Self-forgiveness is an important aspect of one’s ability to forgive others, in the same way as self-compassion is crucial to one’s predisposition to be compassionate toward other human beings.

Being kind to yourself and forgiving of your own shortcomings can give us much needed perspective on suffering and imperfections of others.

It allows us to connect to others on the level of common humanity and can often be a humbling experience when evaluating what motivates other people’s behavior.

Studies in conflict resolution show that we tend to invent intentions for others when in most situations we know only our half of the story.

Self-forgiveness has been defined as “a willingness to abandon self-resentment in the face of one’s acknowledged objective wrong, while fostering compassion, generosity, and love toward oneself ” (Enright, 1996, p. 116).

Wenzel, Woodyatt, and Hedrick (2012) argued that self-forgiveness is best understood as a process by which we sever the negative link between taking responsibility and positive self-regard, which is a process that Holmgren (1998) referred to as genuine self-forgiveness.

The scope of psychological research on self-forgiveness to date has examined it across a range of contexts. Self-forgiveness has been related to:

• drug and alcohol addiction or use (Gueta, 2013; McGaffin, Lyons, & Deane, 2013),
• mothering (Gueta, 2013),
• smoking (Wohl & Thompson, 2011),
• gambling (Squires, Sztainert, Gillen, Caouette, & Wohl, 2012), and
• disordered eating (Peterson et al., 2017).

Although the impact of self-forgiveness in different contexts have varied from study to study, forgiveness has been studied in population groups including:

• cancer patients (Toussaint, Barry, Bornfriend, & Markman, 2014),
• people living with HIV/AIDS (Mudgal & Tiwari, 2015),
• military service members (Bryan, Theriault, & Bryan, 2015),
• hypersexual disorder patients (Hook et al., 2015), and
• complex trauma survivors (Worthington & Langberg, 2012).

According to Enright and Fitzgibbons (2015), self-forgiveness entails releasing negative emotions directed at oneself and involves a meaningful interpretation and successful resolution of negative emotions or attitudes directed at oneself.

Self-forgiveness also entails fostering of positive emotions directed toward oneself; and the definition of self-forgiveness not only included the abandoning of self-directed negative emotion, but also the increase in positive or benevolent emotion like compassion , generosity, and love toward the self (Enright & Fitzgibbons 2015).

We can examine self-forgiveness in its many facets as:

• a response to guilt and shame ,
• a step toward processing transgressions,
• a means of reducing anxiety, and
• an essential component of, or under some circumstances a barrier to, psychotherapeutic intervention.

Self-forgiveness as an applied discipline relates to diverse psychosocial contexts such as:

• addiction and recovery,
• couples and families,
• healthy aging,
• the workplace, and
• the military.

Although productive self-criticism is crucial to personal improvement after moral or another failure, it is important to understand the emotions of shame, humiliation, and guilt frequently associated with it.

These self-conscious emotions relate to either competitive or caring motivational systems and understanding these suggests that self-forgiveness will operate very differently depending on the emotions and motivations to which it relates.

The table below shows distinctions between shame, humiliation, and guilt.

Adapted from P. Gilbert (2010)  Compassion Focused Therapy

Adapted from P. Gilbert (2009) The Compassionate Mind

Self-forgiveness has significant implications for relationships and couple and family therapy, particularly when going through the challenges of a rupture due to an offense.

Self-forgiveness is an integrative process within a person in which the self that committed the wrongdoing is acknowledged, accepted, and provided the opportunity to move forward.

The theoretical concepts of attachment, differentiation of self (DoS), and intersubjectivity must be considered to create an integrative relational process of self-forgiveness where we can anticipate the common barriers to the process.

Loren Toussaint, an associate professor of psychology at Luther College in Iowa, discovered that if people were highly forgiving of both themselves and others, that characteristic alone virtually eliminated the connection between stress and mental illness.

Toussaint reminds us that without forgiveness we don’t have a buffer against stress and often will feel its raw effects. Even something as seemingly insignificant as a short prayer or a brief meditation on forgiveness can help people take the edge off (Toussaint, Kamble, Marschall, & Duggi, 2016).

Worthington and Scherer (2004) found that unforgiveness, when considered as a negative emotional and cognitive construct, causes stress.

Inability to forgive was also linked to anger and hostility, and those negative tendencies have proven to have a negative health effect, especially with regard to cardiovascular conditions.

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

Marcus Aurelius

Although dwelling on injustice, holding onto grudges and exacting vengeance are tempting options, study after study shows that forgiving those who have harmed us can systematically reduce distress and increase satisfaction with life.

Several studies linked forgiveness to more positive emotions and fewer symptoms of physical illness. One study found that forgiving on one day resulted in participants reporting higher levels of happiness on the next day (Witvliet et al., 2001; Worthington & Scherer, 2004).

Forgiving was also found to be an effective emotion-focused coping strategy that could contribute to overall health and was also linked to more frequent experiences of positive emotions of empathy and compassion.

Positive emotions, in turn, have been linked to well-being as in Barbara Frederickson’s broaden-and-build theory that suggests that increase in positive emotion improves cognitive abilities and relational skills, and had long term health effect measured through longevity studies (2004).

Social neuroscience found credible evidence that empathy, defined as being able to feel the pain of another in contrast to sympathy, compassion or emphatic concern, is in fact physiologically represented as automatic correlations in brain activity between the person suffering and one empathizing.

Singer and Lamm (2009, p. 81) tell us that “ consistent evidence shows that sharing the emotions of others is associated with activation in neural structures that are also active during the first-hand experience of that emotion. Part of the neural activation shared between self- and other-related experiences seems to be rather automatically activated. ”

The empathizer’s response can be amplified or inhibited depending on the context and relationship of those involved, as well as the perspective of the one who empathizes (Singer & Lamm, 2009).

This tendency also has been referred to as “ mirror neurons ” and lands significant support to the Buddhist teachings that claim that love and compassion are grounded in “ experience and in reality ” (Dalai Lama, 1997).

The role of empathy and apology in the process of forgiveness as well as their link to each other were based on the hypotheses that “ the relationship between receiving an apology from and forgiving one’s offender is a function of increased empathy for the offender ” in a study done by McCullough and colleagues (McCullough, Worthington, & Rachal, 1997).

Specifically, they presented a model of forgiveness based on the levels of empathy experienced by the victim toward the transgressor.

Interpersonal forgiveness in close relationships was defined as a motivational transformation where a person was less likely to retaliate and avoid and more inclined towards reconciliation and goodwill. Empathy toward the offending partner was found to be a key condition that facilitated forgiveness (McCullough, Worthington, & Rachal, 1997).

These findings were also consistent and supported by Gottman’s research on the role of shared history and positive attachment in the wellbeing of a close relationship (Lisitsa, 2013).

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one getting burned.

Scholars from contemplative traditions, however, have raised concern for science’s reduction of emotions and mental states to mere neural activities and argued against the methodology that relies heavily on the correlates of neural activities to determine nebulous concepts such as empathy and other mental states.

The Dalai Lama reminds us about the importance of patience and tolerance when cultivating a successful practice of love and compassion and that opportunities to combat anger should be welcomed as enhancement of one’s practice.

He even suggests that one should be grateful towards the one that hurt us, although many may find that to be an advanced example of the benefit finding approach to forgiveness.

The suggestions for cultivating patience and reframing experience into gratitude towards the offender would have to be a form of “extreme” positive psychology. It is hard to imagine a person to be capable of unconditional forgiveness without introducing some form of significant spiritual practice.

Initially developed by Goldstein in 2015, the S.A.F.E. self-compassion exercise aims to ease an agitated mind.

In challenging times, this method helps shift you from automatic reactions, enabling you to accept your emotions as they occur, identify your genuine needs, and appreciate the shared human experience of your difficulties.

The S.A.F.E. acronym stands for:

• Soften : Surrender to the sensation. Inhale deeply and accept the presence of the emotion. What emotion are you experiencing? Where is it most prominent in your body?
• Allow : Accept the emotion without judgment. Inhale and exhale, embracing the feeling without resistance or attachment. Simply allow it to exist.
• Feel : Pay gentle attention to the emotion and explore your needs. Examine the feeling. What does it make you think about yourself? What does it require at this moment?
• Expand : Broaden your consciousness to include others who grapple with this emotion. Realize that you are part of a larger human experience. Everyone faces hardships and makes errors. You are not isolated in this emotional state. Let this realization bring you comfort.

Practicing gratitude has been consistently linked to greater wellbeing in a study done by Emmons and McCullough, where it was measured by mood, coping behaviors, health behaviors, physical symptoms, and overall life satisfaction appraisals (Emmons & McCullough, 2003).

Positive affect had the most significant results in terms of increase but only when gratitude was practiced with greater frequency. Gratitude was found to improve overall life satisfaction and increased feelings of optimism about the future, at least in the short term.

Gratitude contributed to fewer physical health complaints when gratitude was practiced once per week. When the gratitude practice was intensified to daily exercises, there was an increase in positive affect and pro-social behavior within the two-week study, and better sleep and better close relationships with the three-week intervention.

Emmons and McCullough speculated that emotional and interpersonal benefits may be a result of a conscious focus on blessings. Intense gratitude practice increased pro-social behavior and empathy as the subjects reported the instances of helping others (Emmons & McCullough, 2003).

Since gratitude has been linked to empathy and empathy was found to have implications for forgiveness, there is potential that fostering gratitude could improve one’s capacity toward forgiveness.

Therapies like Naikan focus on recalling what we have received from others, which as reflective practice is a form of gratitude.

As gratitude can be other-focused, this would imply that it can enhance a sense of greater connectedness to others, which in turn can lead to compassion and empathy, and down the road can create a fertile ground for cultivating forgiveness.

Finally, Richard Moore’s talk on the importance of gratitude in the cultivation of forgiveness is centered on gratefulness being a better approach to life in general. He believed that focus on what one has versus on what is missing can make all the difference, both in appreciation of what is as well as a form of coping mechanism with what has happened.

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The value and benefits of cultivating forgiveness are evident and start with us. Self-forgiveness is an important aspect of one’s ability to forgive others and can be a gateway to living a more fulfilled and loving life.

For more information on the benefits of forgiveness be sure to check our other articles on the topic, such as Forgiveness Exercises .

Thanks for reading and let us know below why forgiveness is important to you. I’d love to hear from you!

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Emotional Intelligence Exercises for free .

• Brown, R. P. (2003). Measuring individual differences in the tendency to forgive: Construct validity and links with depression.  Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin ,  29 (6), 759-771.
• Bryan, A. O., Theriault, J. L., & Bryan, C. J. (2015). Self-forgiveness, posttraumatic stress, and suicide attempts among military personnel and veterans. Traumatology, 21 (1), 40-46.
• Dalai Lama. (1997). Healing anger: The power of patience from a Buddhist perspective. Snow Lion Publications.
• Emmons, R. A., & Mccullough, M. E. (2003). Counting blessings versus burdens: An experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology ,  84 (2), 377-389.
• Enright, R. D. (1996). Counseling within the forgiveness triad: On forgiving, receiving forgiveness, and self‐forgiveness.  Counseling and Values ,  40 (2), 107-126.
• Enright, R. D., & Fitzgibbons, R. P. (2015).  Forgiveness therapy: An empirical guide for resolving anger and restoring hope . American Psychological Association.
• Fredrickson, B. L. (2004). The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences ,  359 (1449), 1367-1377.
• Gilbert, P. (2009).  The compassionate mind . Robinson.
• Gilbert, P. (2010). Compassion focused therapy: A special section.  International Journal of Cognitive Therapy, 3 (2), 95-96.
• Goldstein, E. (2015). Uncovering happiness: Overcoming depression with mindfulness and self-compassion . Simon and Schuster.
• Gueta, K. (2013). Self-forgiveness in the recovery of Israeli drug-addicted mothers: A qualitative exploration. Journal of Drug Issues, 43(4) , 450-467.
• Holmgren, M. R. (1998). Self-forgiveness and responsible moral agency.  The Journal of Value Inquiry ,  32 (1), 75-91.
• Hook, J. N., Farrell, J. E., Davis, D. E., Van Tongeren, D. R., Griffin, B. J., Grubbs, J., … & Bedics, J. D. (2015). Self-forgiveness and hypersexual behavior.  Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity ,  22 (1), 59-70.
• Lisitsa, E. (2013). An introduction to the Gottman Method of relationship therapy. The Gottman Institute.  Retrieved from https://www.gottman.com/blog/an-introduction-to-the-gottman-method-of-relationship-therapy/
• McCullough, M. E., Rachal, K. C., Sandage, S. J., Worthington Jr, E. L., Brown, S. W., & Hight, T. L. (1998). Interpersonal forgiving in close relationships: II. Theoretical elaboration and measurement.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology ,  75 (6), 1586-1603.
• McCullough, M. E., Sandage, S. J., & Worthington Jr, E. L. (1997).  To forgive is human: How to put your past in the past . InterVarsity Press.
• McCullough, M. E., & Worthington Jr, E. L. (1994). Models of interpersonal forgiveness and their applications to counseling: Review and critique.  Counseling and Values ,  39 (1), 2-14.
• McCullough, M. E., Worthington Jr, E. L., & Rachal, K. C. (1997). Interpersonal forgiving in close relationships.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology ,  73 (2), 321-336.
• McGaffin, B. J., Lyons, G. C., & Deane, F. P. (2013). Self-forgiveness, shame, and guilt in recovery from drug and alcohol problems.  Substance Abuse ,  34 (4), 396-404.
• Mudgal, S., & Tiwari, G. (2015). Self-forgiveness and life satisfaction in people living with HIV/AIDS. The International Journal of Indian Psychology, 3 (1), 101-108.
• Peterson, S. J., Van Tongeren, D. R., Womack, S. D., Hook, J. N., Davis, D. E., & Griffin, B. J. (2017). The benefits of self-forgiveness on mental health: Evidence from correlational and experimental research. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 12(2), 159-168.
• Singer, T., & Lamm, C. (2009). The social neuroscience of empathy.  Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences ,  1156 (1), 81-96.
• Squires, E. C., Sztainert, T., Gillen, N. R., Caouette, J., & Wohl, M. J. (2012). The problem with self-forgiveness: Forgiving the self deters readiness to change among gamblers.  Journal of Gambling Studies ,  28 (3), 337-350.
• Thoresen, C. E., Harris, A. H. S., & Luskin, F. (2000). Forgiveness and health: An unanswered question. In M. E. McCullough, K. I. Pargament, & C. E. Thoresen (Eds.),  Forgiveness: Theory, research, and practice  (pp. 254–280). Guilford Press.
• Toussaint, L., Barry, M., Bornfriend, L., & Markman, M. (2014). Restore: The journey toward self-forgiveness: A randomized trial of patient education on self-forgiveness in cancer patients and caregivers.  Journal of Health Care Chaplaincy ,  20 (2), 54-74.
• Toussaint, L., Kamble, S., Marschall, J. C., & Duggi, D. B. (2016). The effects of brief prayer on the experience of forgiveness: An American and Indian comparison.  International Journal of Psychology ,  51 (4), 288-295.
• Wenzel, M., Woodyatt, L., & Hedrick, K. (2012). No genuine self-forgiveness without accepting responsibility: Value reaffirmation as a key to maintaining positive self-regard. European Journal of Social Psychology ,  42 (5), 617-627.
• Witvliet, C. V. O., Ludwig, T. E., & Laan, K. L. V. (2001). Granting forgiveness or harboring grudges: Implications for emotion, physiology, and health.  Psychological Science ,  12 (2), 117-123.
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How do we forgive though? I wish this article talked more about how we can forgive rather than why it’s good.

Hi Tyrone, Thanks for reading. You raise a good point! Perhaps we’ll prepare an article about this at some point soon. But in the meantime, you can read more on the topic of how to forgive here. – Nicole | Community Manager

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Forgiveness: Letting go of grudges and bitterness

When someone you care about hurts you, you can hold on to anger and resentment — or embrace forgiveness and move forward.

Who hasn't been hurt by the actions or words of another? Perhaps a parent constantly criticized you growing up, a colleague sabotaged a project or your partner had an affair. Or maybe you've had a traumatic experience, such as being physically or emotionally abused by someone close to you. These wounds can leave lasting feelings of resentment, bitterness and anger — sometimes even hatred.

But if you hold on to that pain, you might be the one who pays most dearly. By embracing forgiveness, you also can embrace peace and hope. Consider how forgiveness can lead you down the path of physical, emotional and spiritual well-being.

What is forgiveness?

Forgiveness means different things to different people. But in general, it involves an intentional decision to let go of resentment and anger.

The act that hurt or offended you might always be with you. But working on forgiveness can lessen that act's grip on you. It can help free you from the control of the person who harmed you. Sometimes, forgiveness might even lead to feelings of understanding, empathy and compassion for the one who hurt you.

Forgiveness doesn't mean forgetting or excusing the harm done to you. It also doesn't necessarily mean making up with the person who caused the harm. Forgiveness brings a kind of peace that allows you to focus on yourself and helps you go on with life.

What are the benefits of forgiving someone?

Letting go of grudges and bitterness can make way for improved health and peace of mind. Forgiveness can lead to:

• Healthier relationships.
• Improved mental health.
• Less anxiety, stress and hostility.
• Fewer symptoms of depression.
• Lower blood pressure.
• A stronger immune system.
• Improved heart health.
• Improved self-esteem.

Why is it so easy to hold a grudge?

Being hurt by someone, particularly someone you love and trust, can cause anger, sadness and confusion. If you dwell on hurtful events or situations, grudges filled with resentment and hostility can take root. If you allow negative feelings to crowd out positive feelings, you might find yourself swallowed up by bitterness or a sense of injustice.

Some people are naturally more forgiving than others. But even if you tend to hold a grudge, almost anyone can learn to be more forgiving.

What are the effects of holding a grudge?

If you struggle with finding forgiveness, you might:

• Bring anger and bitterness into new relationships and experiences.
• Become so wrapped up in the wrong that you can't enjoy the present.
• Become depressed, irritable or anxious.
• Feel at odds with your spiritual beliefs.
• Lose valuable and enriching connections with others.

How do I move toward a state of forgiveness?

Forgiveness is a commitment to change. It takes practice. To move toward forgiveness, you might:

• Recognize the value of forgiveness and how it can improve your life.
• Identify what needs healing and who you want to forgive.
• Join a support group or see a counselor.
• Acknowledge your emotions about the harm done to you, recognize how those emotions affect your behavior, and work to release them.
• Choose to forgive the person who's offended you.
• Release the control and power that the offending person and situation have had in your life.

What happens if I can't forgive someone?

Forgiveness can be hard, especially if the person who hurt you doesn't admit wrongdoing. If you find yourself stuck:

• Practice empathy. Try seeing the situation from the other person's point of view.
• Ask yourself about the circumstances that may have led the other person to behave in such a way. Perhaps you would have reacted similarly if you faced the same situation.
• Reflect on times when others have forgiven you.
• Write in a journal, pray or use guided meditation. Or talk with a person you've found to be wise and compassionate, such as a spiritual leader, a mental health provider, or an impartial loved one or friend.
• Be aware that forgiveness is a process. Even small hurts may need to be revisited and forgiven again and again.

Does forgiveness guarantee reconciliation?

If the hurtful event involved someone whose relationship you value, forgiveness may lead to reconciliation. But that isn't always the case.

Reconciliation might be impossible if the offender has died or is unwilling to communicate with you. In other cases, reconciliation might not be appropriate. Still, forgiveness is possible — even if reconciliation isn't.

What if the person I'm forgiving doesn't change?

Getting another person to change isn't the point of forgiveness. It's about focusing on what you can control in the here and now. Think of forgiveness more about how it can change your life by bringing you peace, happiness, and emotional and spiritual healing. Forgiveness can take away the power the other person continues to have in your life.

What if I'm the one who needs forgiveness?

The first step is to honestly assess and acknowledge the wrongs you've done and how they have affected others. Avoid judging yourself too harshly.

If you're truly sorry for something you've said or done and want forgiveness, consider reaching out to those you've harmed. Speak of your sincere sorrow or regret. Ask for forgiveness without making excuses.

You can't force someone to forgive you. Others need to move to forgiveness in their own time. Remember, forgiveness is a process. Whatever happens, commit to treating others with compassion, empathy and respect.

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• Rakel D, ed. Forgiveness. In: Integrative Medicine. 4th ed. Elsevier; 2018. https://www.clinicalkey.com. Accessed Nov. 2, 2022.
• Forgiveness can improve mental and physical health. American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/monitor/2017/01/ce-corner.aspx. Accessed Nov. 2, 2022.
• Silva RS, et al. Forgiveness facilitation in palliative care: A scoping review. JBI Evidence Synthesis. 2020; doi:10.11124/JBISRIR-D-19-00286.
• Martinez-Diaz P, et al. Victim's perspective of forgiveness seeking behaviors after transgressions. Frontiers in Psychology. 2021; doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.656689.
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66 Forgiveness Essay: Examples, Titles, & Thesis Statement

A forgiveness essay is an exciting yet challenging task. In our article, you can find good forgiveness essay examples in literature, history, religion, and other spheres

📝 Writing a Forgiveness Theme Statement

🏆 best forgiveness essay examples, 🔍 simple forgiveness titles for essay, 💡 interesting forgiveness essay examples.

In your forgiveness essay, focus on different aspects of forgiveness. Some good forgiveness titles for the essay reveal themes of revenge, justice, and personal forgiveness. You can write an excellent reflective or argumentative essay on forgiveness – it is a versatile topic.

Regardless of your forgiveness essay’s specific topic and type, you should develop a strong thesis statement. Below we will provide recommendations on making a good forgiveness theme statement. This will help you come up with a solid base and arguments to prove your position.

Check these tips to make a powerful forgiveness thesis statemen:

• Determine the primary idea. What are you trying to prove? Can anything be forgiven, or are there cases when it’s not possible? Introduce your one main idea and the angle from which you will look at it. You can also include some facts or opinions about the acuteness of the topic.
• Work out your argumentation. It is crucial to have a firm structure in your forgiveness essay. You need to support the thesis statement with several arguments and evidence to demonstrate the consistency of your paper.
• Think of the opposing views. Every argument has a counterargument. When working on your forgiveness theme statement, always keep an opposite thesis statement in mind. Having considered counter positions, you gain additional arguments for your position.
• Don’t quote others in your thesis statement. A thesis statement is the first and foremost chance to introduce your point of view. Use your own strongest words to reach a reader. This is where they get the first impression about the whole work.

We also have lots of other tips on developing A+ thesis statements. Check our free thesis statement generator to discover more information and get a perfect forgiveness theme statement.

• Divine and Human Forgiveness in “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” By Samuel Taylor Coleridge After killing the albatross who was suppose to provide them with wind, all the people in the ship died but he managed to survive because he had asked God to forgive him all the sins […]
• Hamlet and Forgiveness: A Personal Reflection Some of the most prominent themes in the story are the ideas of mutual forgiveness, people’s motivation to be proactive and take risks, and their willingness to forgive and ask for forgiveness.
• Christ’s Atonement and the Concept of Forgiveness This study will connect the atonement of Jesus Christ and attitudes towards forgiveness through the revision of the current church, Love and God’s commandment to forgive.
• Service Recovery and Customer Forgiveness Studies suggest that after apologizing to customers plus taking responsibility for the problem, getting to the root of the problem is very important to prevent such occurrences in the future. Getting to the root of […]
• Racial Inequality Targeted Student Loan Forgiveness Programs The research into this topic seems highly significant as the reduction of racial inequality was one of the most debated topics in the U.S.for the last several decades.
• Forgiveness in the Christian Texts and the World Today The apostle calls upon the church’s people to stop the punishment of the wrongdoer and forgive, comfort, and affirm their love for him. It instructs Muslims to follow God and forgive others instead of following […]
• Philosophy of Forgiveness I believe that if anyone had gone through all the pain and horror that Simon had, and was asked to forgive Karl, the instinct, and most humane reaction at that moment would be to strongly […]
• Forgiveness for Workplace Conflict Resolution The problem with the relationship between the two workers is that Jake feels that Monica is a relatively malicious individual. In the outlined scenario, Jake is doing all that he can to avoid dealing with […]
• The Effects of Forgiveness Therapy After gathering the relevant data, the researchers compared the recovery of the participants to their controls to determine the effects of forgiveness therapy.
• Self-Forgiveness: The Step Child of Forgiveness Research Other than the similarities and the differences, the two types of forgiveness relate to each other as self-forgiveness facilitates interpersonal forgiveness, this is through allowance of one to identify with one’s offender.
• The Amish Philosophy of Forgiveness It is important to note that the immediate forgiveness of the enemy does not mean that the Amish will let the perpetrators of crime go free.
• Review: “Interventions Studies on Forgiveness: A Meta-analysis” by Baskin T. and Enright R. In the church, members come to the pastor with a variety of social and psychological issues. The first step the pastor should undertake is to sympathise with the victims.
• Self-Forgiveness as the Path to Learning to Forgive the Others The key issues that the given research responds to or, at least, attempts to solve, are the definition of self-forgiveness, the relation between self-forgiveness and interpersonal forgiveness, and the means to differentiate between self-forgiveness and […]
• The Effects of Forgiveness Therapy on Depression, Anxiety and Posttraumatic Stress for Women After Spousal Emotional Abuse Enright forgiveness model applied in the study proved effective since it systematically addressed the forgiveness process identified the negative attributes caused by the abuse, and prepared the women for positive responses.
• Forgiveness & Reconciliation: The Differing Perspectives of Psychologists and Christian Theologians Based on the research design there is evidence of measures put in place to control against most of these biases which strengthens the study findings; this is the strength to the study.
• Forgiveness and Reconciliation Critique Availability of literature; as stated in the literature though the area of forgiveness is new in the field of psychology, but there is enough literature to cover the study.
• Forgiveness in Simon Wiesenthal’s Work The Sunflower Taking into account the major themes of the book The Sunflower, one is to make a conclusion that such response to atrocities as forgiveness is considered to be the key aspect of humanity.
• Forgiveness in Martin Luther’s Movement for Rights Blacks The bible teachings tell us that God exists in the holy trinity and the only way to forgive others is for us to be able to forgive our own transgressions.
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The Many Benefits of Forgiveness, and How to Do It

Elizabeth Scott, PhD is an author, workshop leader, educator, and award-winning blogger on stress management, positive psychology, relationships, and emotional wellbeing.

Carly Snyder, MD is a reproductive and perinatal psychiatrist who combines traditional psychiatry with integrative medicine-based treatments.

The Challenge of Forgiveness

The importance of forgiveness, how to forgive.

Betrayal, aggression, and just plain insensitivity: people can hurt us in a million ways, and forgiveness isn’t always easy.

Whether you’ve been cut off in traffic, slighted by your mother-in-law, betrayed by a spouse, or badmouthed by a co-worker, most of us are faced with a variety of situations both serious and mundane that we can choose to ruminate over or forgive. But forgiveness, like so many things in life, is easier said than done.

That being said, there are so many benefits inherent in learning how to forgive—even more benefits for the person doing the forgiving than the person receiving the forgiveness. You don't have to forget what they said, despite the old adage, but letting go of anger and resentment toward someone can do wonders for your mental health.

Forgiveness can be a challenge for several reasons. Sometimes forgiveness can be confused with condoning what someone has done to us: “That’s OK. Why not do it again?” Even for people who understand the distinction between accepting someone's bad behavior as "okay" and accepting that it happened, forgiveness can be difficult because these two are easily confused.

Forgiveness can also be difficult when the person who wronged us doesn’t seem to deserve our forgiveness. It can feel like you are letting them "off the hook." While this feeling is completely understandable, it's vital to remember that forgiveness allows us to let go of a connection we have to those who have wronged us and move forward—with or without them.

Sometimes, it’s hard to remember that forgiveness benefits the forgiver more than the one who is forgiven.

Ultimately, forgiveness is especially challenging because it’s hard to let go of what happened. Forgiving someone who has committed unacceptable behavior can be difficult when we are having trouble letting go of anger or hurt surrounding the event itself.

Forgiveness is good for your heart—literally. One 2017 study from the Annals of Behavioral Medicine was the first to associate greater forgiveness with less stress and ultimately better mental health.  Increases in forgiveness made for less perceived stress, which was followed by decreases in mental health symptoms (but not physical health symptoms).

Other research in 2017 showed that 'state' forgiveness —an intentional, purpose-driven disposition bent toward forgiveness—produced in those participants who undertook forgiveness perceived senses of mental well-being, which included reductions in negative affect, feeling positive emotions, experiencing positive relations with others, discerning sensibilities of spiritual growth, and identifying a sense of meaning and purpose in life as well as a greater sense of empowerment. 

Research reported slightly earlier, in 2015, linked forgiveness with the proverbial forgetting. Emotional, intentional forgiveness influenced subsequent incidental forgetting. Determined, purposeful emotional forgiveness causes forgetting and is an important first step in the forgiveness cascade.

To sum it up, forgiveness is good for your body, your relationships, and your place in the world. That’s reason enough to convince virtually anyone to do the work of letting go of anger and working on forgiveness.

Get Advice From The Verywell Mind Podcast

Hosted by Amy Morin, LCSW, this episode of The Verywell Mind Podcast shares why it's OK to give second chances, featuring Purple Heart recipient Craig Rossi and Fred.

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Forgiveness may not always be easy, but it can be easier with a few exercises and the right mindset. First, keep in mind that forgiveness is something you do for  yourself  to sever your emotional attachment to what happened. (Think of taking your hand away from a hot burner on the stove—it remains hot, but you move away from it for your own safety.)

Let Yourself Be Angry, and Grieve

The first step in learning to forgive isn't really about the act of forgiving at all, it's kind of the opposite. Before you can get to a point where you're able to practice forgiveness, you need to properly feel your feelings about the problem.

That means really letting yourself be angry about what happened. This isn't about making yourself a victim or making the person who hurt you out to be a monster of some kind, it's just allowing yourself to feel your anger without suppressing it. Allow yourself to grieve if you lost a friend because of the situation, and get the emotions out of your body. This can take time and can involve practices like journaling or talk therapy.

Practice Empathy

When someone hurts you, betrays you, or is downright mean to you it can be hard to put yourself in their shoes. You would never do that to someone, you tell yourself, and maybe you wouldn't. But that doesn't mean you haven't been in situations where you behaved badly towards someone else in a way that may have been unintentionally hurtful.

It can help to keep this in mind when debating whether or not to forgive someone—maybe that person generally thinks the same thing about themself. Are they truly a malicious person? Or did they just mess up and have a major lapse in judgment? Sometimes trying to reframe someone's behavior in this way can get you a little closer to being able to forgive.

Identify The "Why" in Yourself

You might also take the time to contemplate why you're still holding onto the anger that you're experiencing. Even if the thing the person did to you has drastically impacted your life, is it serving you to stay angry? Is it helping in your healing process? If you answered no, forgiveness might be a good next step.

Set Boundaries

When learning how to forgive, it's important to remember that forgiveness doesn't mean you have to let that person back into your life. If someone isn't good for your well-being it's totally ok to cut them out of your life or set strict boundaries on the time you spend with them. Forgiveness is for you, not the person who hurt you.

Also, remind yourself that you are moving forward, and forgiving this person allows them (or at least what they've done) to stay in the past as you move on.

Toussaint LL, Shields GS, Slavich GM. Forgiveness, Stress, and Health: a 5-Week Dynamic Parallel Process Study .  Ann Behav Med . 2016;50(5):727–735. doi:10.1007/s12160-016-9796-6

Akhtar S, Dolan A, Barlow J. Understanding the Relationship Between State Forgiveness and Psychological Wellbeing: A Qualitative Study.   J Relig Health . 2017;56(2):450–463. doi:10.1007/s10943-016-0188-9

Lichtenfeld S, Buechner VL, Maier MA, Fernández-Capo M. Forgive and Forget: Differences between Decisional and Emotional Forgiveness.   PLoS One . 2015;10(5):e0125561. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0125561

By Elizabeth Scott, PhD Elizabeth Scott, PhD is an author, workshop leader, educator, and award-winning blogger on stress management, positive psychology, relationships, and emotional wellbeing.

Greater Good Science Center • Magazine • In Action • In Education

Forgiveness Defined

What is forgiveness.

Psychologists generally define forgiveness as a conscious, deliberate decision to release feelings of resentment or vengeance toward a person or group who has harmed you, regardless of whether they actually deserve your forgiveness.

Just as important as defining what forgiveness is , though, is understanding what forgiveness is not . Experts who study or teach forgiveness make clear that when you forgive, you do not gloss over or deny the seriousness of an offense against you. Forgiveness does not mean forgetting, nor does it mean condoning or excusing offenses. Though forgiveness can help repair a damaged relationship, it doesn’t obligate you to reconcile with the person who harmed you, or release them from legal accountability.

Instead, forgiveness brings the forgiver peace of mind and frees him or her from corrosive anger. While there is some debate over whether true forgiveness requires positive feelings toward the offender, experts agree that it at least involves letting go of deeply held negative feelings. In that way, it empowers you to recognize the pain you suffered without letting that pain define you, enabling you to heal and move on with your life.

While early research focused on forgiveness of others by individuals, new areas of research are starting to examine the benefits of group forgiveness and self-forgiveness .

For More: Read forgiveness expert Fred Luskin’s essay, “ What Is Forgiveness? ,” and Jack Kornfield’s thoughts on what forgiveness means . Learn more about forgiveness research in this summary of key studies and recent white paper , and consider: Is anything unforgiveable?

What are the Limitations?

Does Forgiveness Make Men Feel Weak?

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Which Feels Better, Forgiveness or Revenge?

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Why Evolution Made Forgiveness Difficult

Nature endowed humanity with both revenge and forgiveness as tools of conflict resolution.…

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Why Practice It?

We often think of forgiveness as a kind, magnanimous act—an act of mercy or compassion extended to someone who wronged us. While that can be true, research over the past few decades has revealed enormous personal benefits to forgiveness as well. According to that research, here are some of the most compelling ways forgiveness is good for us, our relationships, and our communities.

• Forgiveness makes us happier : Research suggests not only that happy people are more likely to forgive but that forgiving others can make people feel happy , especially when they forgive someone to whom they feel close.
• Forgiveness protects our mental health : People who receive therapy designed to foster forgiveness experience greater improvements in depression, anxiety, and hope than those who don’t. Forgiveness may also play a role in preventing suicide .
• Forgiveness improves our health : When we dwell on grudges, our blood pressure and heart rate spike—signs of stress which damage the body; when we forgive, our stress levels drop, and people who are more forgiving are protected from the negative health effects of stress . Studies also suggest that holding grudges might compromise our immune system, making us less resistant to illness.
• Forgiveness sustains relationships : When our friends inevitably hurt or disappoint us, holding a grudge makes us less likely to sacrifice or cooperate with them, which undermines feelings of trust and commitment, driving us further apart. Studies suggest that forgiveness can stop this downward spiral and repair our relationship before it dissolves.
• Forgiveness is good for marriages (most of the time): Spouses who are more forgiving and less vindictive are better at resolving conflicts effectively in their marriage. A long-term study of newlyweds found that more forgiving spouses had stronger, more satisfying relationships . However, when more forgiving spouses were frequently mistreated by their husband or wife, they became less satisfied with their marriage.
• Forgiveness boosts kindness and connectedness : People who feel forgiving don’t only feel more positive toward someone who hurt them. They are also more likely to want to volunteer and donate money to charity, and they feel more connected to other people in general.
• Forgiveness can help heal the wounds of war: A research-based forgiveness training program in Rwanda , for instance, was linked to reduced trauma and more positive attitudes between the Hutus and Tutsis there. A study of people who learned forgiveness skills in war-torn Sierra Leone found that they reported feeling less depressed, more grateful, more satisfied with life, and less stressed afterward. Perhaps most famously, South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission is widely credited with encouraging forgiveness and reconciliation after the end of apartheid in that country. Archbishop Desmond Tutu , the commission’s chairman, has argued that forgiveness is the path to “true enduring peace.”
• Forgiveness is good for kids and teens: Kids who are more forgiving toward their friends have higher well-being. Forgiveness training can help adolescent girls who are bullies and bullied decrease their anger, aggression, and delinquency, while increasing their empathy and improving their grades.
• Forgiveness is good for workplaces : Employees who are more forgiving are also more productive and take fewer days off, partly thanks to reduced stress around their relationships.
• People who practice self-forgiveness tend to have better physical and mental health . Forgiving ourselves may also improve our relationships .

For More: Learn more about the benefits of forgiveness in researcher Everett Worthington’s article, “ The New Science of Forgiveness ,” and in Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s essay, “ Forgiveness + Reconciliation .”

How Do I Cultivate It?

According to Robert Enright , Fred Luskin , and other experts, forgiveness isn’t just for the deeply magnanimous among us; it’s both a choice and a trainable skill that almost anyone can learn. Fortunately, research suggests that the capacity for forgiveness is an intrinsic part of human nature . Here are some research-based strategies for tapping into that capacity, whether you’re trying to forgive others, forgive yourself, or seek forgiveness from someone else.

• View forgiveness as something for you, not a gift to someone else: In his Nine Steps to Forgiveness program, Fred Luskin emphasizes that forgiveness is best seen as something that will bring you peace, closure, and reduce your suffering—a point echoed by Jack Kornfield in this video.
• Articulate your emotions : If you want to forgive or be forgiven, be willing to express how you’re feeling to others and to yourself. Ruminating on negative feelings is both unhealthy and unproductive. As the GGSC’s Christine Carter argues, this is an important lesson to teach kids as well.
• Look for the silver lining: This can be a controversial tip, but research suggests that after someone hurts you, you can forgive more easily by reflecting on the personal benefits you may have gained through the transgression. Writing about those benefits might be especially helpful.
• Make an effective apology: If you’re seeking forgiveness from others, studies suggest that apologizing will help—but weak apologies might only make things worse. Researcher Aaron Lazare has studied apologies for years, concluding that an effective apology has four parts: It acknowledges the offense, offers an explanation for the offense, expresses remorse or shame, and involves a reparation of some kind.
• Cultivate empathy : When someone has been hurt, they’ll be more likely to forgive—and less likely to retaliate—if they can sense or imagine the distress or remorse felt by the person who hurt them. This might explain why apologies foster forgiveness.
• Practice mindfulness: Training in mindfulness can help college students become more forgiving, perhaps because awareness of painful feelings is part of the process of forgiveness. More mindful people are also more forgiving of betrayal .
• Humanize the Other through contact : Research in Northern Ireland found that people on both sides of the violence there were more likely to forgive if they came into contact with someone from the other side, perhaps because it reduced feelings of anger and encouraged them to see the other’s humanity.
• Don’t let yourself off too easy: Research suggests that forgiving yourself for mistakes can sometimes reduce your empathy for others and your motivation to make amends. For a more healthy way to forgive yourself, read these research-based steps , which include empathizing with your victim and honestly reflecting on what you did wrong, or follow this process recommended by Rick Hanson.
• Seek peace, not justice: In his forgiveness program , Robert Enright emphasizes that forgiveness is separate from justice. The people who hurt you may never get their just desserts, but that shouldn’t prevent you from moving on with your life.
• Understand that forgiveness is a process : True forgiveness doesn’t happen in an instant; instead, it takes time and energy to achieve, and might not come easily.
• Overcome barriers to forgiveness: Research reveals some common fears and concerns to address if we are resistant to forgiving.
• Foster a forgiving school: Build a school climate of care and fairness in order to facilitate forgiveness among teachers and staff.
• Raise forgiving kids : Parents can help kids learn forgiveness by modeling it themselves, and allowing kids to move through the process of forgiveness at their own pace.

For more: Check out Christine Carter’s tips for teaching forgiveness skills to children, adapted from Luskin’s nine steps. And she offers these tips for fostering forgiveness in families.

Leading forgiveness researchers have also developed their own evidence-based programs to foster forgiveness, including the following.

• Luskin’s Nine Steps to Forgiveness , which involve a mix of cognitive and meditative strategies, from articulating your grievance to shifting your expectations from life to revising the way you look at your past.
• Robert Enright’s Forgiveness Process Model , which consists of 20 steps divided into four phases : the Uncovering Phase , where one becomes aware of the true emotional stress he has suffered; the Decision Phase , where one commits to forgiving rather than continuing to focus exclusively on his suffering; the Work Phase , where one comes to accept—but not condone—the pain he has suffered, no matter how undeserved; and finally the Outcome/Deepening Phase , where one recognizes the relief and meaning he is gaining from forgiveness. Read Enright’s tips for moving through this process .
• Everett Worthington’s REACH method for forgiveness, which involves five steps: R ecall the hurt, E mpathize with the person who hurt you, offer an A ltruistic gift of forgiveness, C ommit to forgive (ideally publicly), and H old onto that forgiveness.

• Knowledge Base
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Forgiveness Essay

• Author Kimberly Ball
• Category Popular Essay Topics

Disclaimer: This paper has been submitted by a student. This is not a sample of the work written by professional academic writers.

Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this work are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of StudySaurus.

Topic: Why is forgiveness important

Throughout your life, you will have to forgive people. Often times, forgiveness can be difficult. A wise man once declared, “Holding a grudge does not make you strong; it makes you bitter. Forgiving does not make you weak; it sets you free.” Forgiving others allow you to overcome your anger, to heal spiritual wounds, and to be set free.

First, forgiving others allows you to overcome your anger. If you hold a situation against someone, you begin to also hold a grudge. This is also known as bitterness. Bitterness builds up over time and eventually, you become a negative form of yourself. Anger is not something you should hold in. It’s proven that anger is more than just an emotion, it has physiological effects on you.

Secondly, forgiving allows you to heal spiritual wounds. Matthew 6:14-15 “ For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” Once you forgive others, our Father in Heaven will forgive you. Healing spiritual wounds will allow you to grow closer to Jesus and your family in Christ. With spiritual wounds, you will never be fully whole.

Last, forgiving simply sets you free. Forgiving others will allow weight to come off your shoulders. When you do not forgive, a bad feeling exists inside of you. It makes you feel hatred. One element of life is loving everyone, you cannot do this until you forgive. You have to be a blessing. With bitterness in your thoughts and mind, you cannot do this.

Overall, you will have to forgive people every day. Everyone makes mistakes. You should forgive people as fast as you would want them to forgive you. Forgiving gives you the chance to overcome your anger, to heal your spiritual wounds, and to set you free. Forgiveness is the key to life.

Explain why it is important to forgive

The Freedom of Forgiveness

It is very important to forgive others. Forgiveness means to forget someone’s bad deed or mistake. Life becomes easier when you learn to accept an apology you never received. You react to someone else’s mistake can be vital to your life and the lives of the others around you. Avoiding forgiveness can leave frustration in your heart and destroy your personality. You must learn to forgive others and yourself. It is very important to forgive.

First of all, it is important to react in the right way to someone else’s mistake. When you act in a response to an act or mistake, it could cause damage to good and bad sides. Fighting or taking revenge will only make a situation worse and it also means that you would commit a bad deed as well. If you do not fight or take revenge, but choose to forgive, you are at a higher place than the other person. By acting mature and not fighting or taking revenge, you will not damage your self-respect. Also, there will be peace between you and the other person because you both acted in a mature way. It is important to react in the right way to someone else’s mistake.

Secondly, it is important to forgive because avoiding forgiveness causes frustration in your heart and destroys your personality. If you forgive someone, you will feel better about yourself. Your heart and your mind will become more relaxed because you have peace in knowing that you do not have to be angry with anyone. In history, war broke out because countries could not forgive each other. If you simply learn to forgive, your mind and heart will be at peace instead of at war. Forgiveness is very important.

Lastly, forgiveness is important to you and the people around you. If you do not find forgiveness in yourself, others can become victims of your ego and revenge. If you are too prideful to forgive someone, you need to change your mindset. If someone does you wrong, you must treat everyone in a kind way because it is not their fault. If you don’t forgive yourself, you can’t forgive others. Forgiveness is very important to you and the people around you.

In conclusion, it is very important to forgive others. It is important to react in the right way to someone else’s mistake. It is important to never avoid forgiveness. Also, the way you react to forgiveness will affect you and the people around you. It is very important to forgive others.

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Forgiveness

8 reasons to forgive, practicing forgiveness points to at least eight positive developments..

Posted April 16, 2018 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

• The Importance of Forgiveness
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Forgiveness within psychology is relatively new, having emerged as a research focus in the later 1980s (Enright, Santos, & Al-Mabuk, 1989).

Over the next three decades, a host of studies have emerged within the mental health professions showing that Forgiveness Therapy is beneficial for the client, for the one who forgives (Baskin & Enright, 2004; Wade et al., 2014). We have to be careful with these findings primarily because a false conclusion could emerge: Forgiveness is only for, or primarily for, the one who forgives; it has little to do with the one forgiven. This, actually, does not seem to be the case. A reflection on what forgiveness accomplishes, its purpose or goal, suggests at least eight purposes to forgiving.

What does it mean to forgive? Although there may be different behaviors across the wide variety of cultures to express forgiveness, in its universal essence, forgiveness can be defined as a moral virtue, centered on goodness, that occurs in the context of being treated unfairly by others.

The one who then chooses to forgive deliberately tries to eliminate resentment and to offer goodness of some kind toward the offending person, whether this is kindness, respect, generosity , or even love. The one who forgives does not automatically go back into a dangerous relationship. The forgiver can forgive and then not reconcile. The forgiver does not excuse the unfair behavior but offers goodness in the face of the unfairness. The forgiver should not think in "either/or" terms, either forgiving and abandoning a quest for justice, or seeking justice alone without forgiving. The two moral virtues of forgiveness and justice can and should be applied together.

With this understanding in place, here are at least eight reasons to forgive. Which of these are in your conscious awareness when you offer this virtue to those who have wronged you?

When I forgive, I do so:

• To become emotionally healthier. Forgiving can reduce unhealthy anger .
• To repair relationships as it helps me to see the other’s worth.
• To grow in character because it can help me to become a better person.
• To be of assistance, within reason, toward the one who acted unjustly. Forgiveness extends the hand of friendship even though the other may reject this.
• To help me to assist other family members to see that forgiveness is a path to peace. Forgiveness for peace, in other words, can be passed through the generations.
• To motivate me to contribute to a better world as anger does not dominate.
• To help me to more consistently live out my own philosophy of life or faith tradition if that worldview honors forgiveness.
• To exercise goodness as an end in and of itself regardless of how others react to my offer of forgiving.

To forgive is to exercise goodness even toward those who are not good to you. Forgiveness is perhaps the most heroic of all of the moral virtues (such as justice, patience, and kindness, for example). I say it is heroic because which other moral virtue concerns the offer of goodness, through one's own pain, toward the one who caused that pain? Do you see this—the heroic nature of forgiving—as you extend it to others?

Baskin, T.W., & Enright, R. D. (2004). Intervention studies on forgiveness: A meta-analysis. Journal of Counseling and Development, 82 , 79-90.

Enright, R. D., Santos, M., & Al-Mabuk, R. (1989). The adolescent as forgiver. Journal of Adolescence , 12, 95-110.

Wade, N.G., Hoyt, W.T., Kidwell, J.E.M., & Worthington, Jr., E.L. (2014). Efficacy of psychotherapeutic interventions to promote forgiveness: A meta-analysis. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 82, 154-170.

Robert Enright, Ph.D., is a professor of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a licensed psychologist who pioneered the social scientific study of forgiveness.

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Essay on Forgiveness

Students are often asked to write an essay on Forgiveness in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Forgiveness

Understanding forgiveness.

Forgiveness is when we stop feeling anger towards someone who has done something wrong to us. It’s like letting go of a heavy burden.

The Power of Forgiveness

When we forgive, we feel lighter and happier. It helps us to move on and not dwell on past hurts.

Forgiveness and Relationships

Forgiveness strengthens our relationships. It helps us to understand and accept others, despite their mistakes.

Learning to Forgive

Forgiving is not easy, but it’s important. We can learn to forgive by understanding that everyone makes mistakes.

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250 Words Essay on Forgiveness

Introduction.

Forgiveness, a virtue often preached yet seldom practiced, is the act of pardoning an offender. It is a complex psychological phenomenon that involves an intricate interplay between emotions, cognition, and actions.

The Significance of Forgiveness

The importance of forgiveness lies in its ability to release the negative emotions of anger, resentment, and the desire for retribution. This cathartic process promotes emotional well-being, reducing stress, and enhancing interpersonal relationships. It is a testament to human resilience and our capacity for empathy and compassion.

The Psychology of Forgiveness

From a psychological perspective, forgiveness is a conscious, deliberate decision to relinquish feelings of resentment or vengeance. This process involves a cognitive shift, a change in one’s attitude towards the offender, and a willingness to let go of negative emotions. It does not necessarily mean forgetting the offense or reconciling with the offender, but rather, it is about finding inner peace and moving on.

Forgiveness as a Social Construct

Sociologically, forgiveness is a social construct that helps maintain social harmony. It promotes reconciliation and prevents the perpetuation of a cycle of revenge and hostility. In this sense, forgiveness is an essential component of social cohesion and stability.

In conclusion, forgiveness is a powerful tool for personal growth and social harmony. It is a testament to human strength, resilience, and our capacity for empathy. The decision to forgive is a journey towards inner peace, one that requires courage, humility, and a profound understanding of the human condition.

500 Words Essay on Forgiveness

Forgiveness is a multifaceted concept, deeply embedded in human interactions and fundamental to the continuity of social relationships. It is a conscious decision to let go of resentment or vengeance towards an individual or group who has harmed us, regardless of whether they deserve our forgiveness.

The act of forgiveness is a psychological process that involves a change in emotion and attitude towards an offender. It is a voluntary and deliberate act that requires effort and emotional resilience. The process is often complex, involving feelings of hurt, anger, and betrayal. However, it also opens the door to healing, peace, and the possibility of reconciliation.

Psychologists suggest that forgiveness can be a transformative process that promotes mental health, reduces anxiety, and enhances our well-being. It is a coping strategy that allows us to deal with interpersonal conflicts and emotional injuries. By forgiving, we free ourselves from the chains of bitterness, enabling us to move forward without the burden of past hurts.

The Philosophy of Forgiveness

Philosophically, forgiveness is seen as a virtue, an act of grace and compassion. It is a moral decision to absolve another of their wrongdoings, not out of obligation, but out of understanding and empathy. This perspective emphasizes the ethical dimension of forgiveness, viewing it as a moral duty or obligation.

However, forgiveness does not mean forgetting or condoning the wrongdoings. It does not eliminate the need for justice or accountability. Instead, it allows us to separate the person from their actions, acknowledging the harm done while choosing to let go of the resentment it has caused.

Forgiveness in Practice

Practicing forgiveness requires a high degree of emotional intelligence and maturity. It begins with acknowledging the hurt and allowing oneself to feel the pain. The next step is to empathize with the offender, trying to understand their perspective. This is followed by making a conscious decision to forgive, which often involves a verbal or mental declaration of forgiveness.

Forgiveness is a personal journey and there is no right or wrong way to go about it. It can be a slow and challenging process, but it also brings about personal growth and emotional liberation.

In conclusion, forgiveness is a powerful tool for personal and social transformation. It is a complex process that involves a conscious decision to let go of resentment and anger. While it can be challenging, the benefits of forgiveness extend beyond the individual to the broader community, promoting peace, reconciliation, and social harmony. Ultimately, forgiveness is a testament to the strength of the human spirit and its capacity for compassion, understanding, and love.

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The Ethics of Forgiveness: A Collection of Essays

Christel Fricke (ed.), The Ethics of Forgiveness: A Collection of Essays , Routledge, 2011, 212pp., $125.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780415885430.

Reviewed by Linda Radzik, Texas A&M University

Christel Fricke's rich collection of essays arose from a conference held in Oslo in 2008 on Charles L. Griswold's 2007 book Forgiveness . However, very little of the text is spent critiquing Griswold's work. Instead, Fricke's authors use Griswold's text as a map that points to areas worthy of further exploration. Like Griswold, most of these writers resist the temptation to develop simple, unified accounts of forgiveness and instead dedicate themselves to plotting the complexities of human interaction in the aftermath of wrongdoing. The examples the authors use along the way range from subtle, personal failings to large-scale atrocities. While most of the contributions are works in moral theory, the volume also represents other disciplinary approaches to issues of forgiveness, including literary criticism and linguistics. The result is a satisfyingly diverse range of perspectives on the nature, justification and limits of forgiveness.

Part I includes a pair of essays dedicated to the interpretation of particular, historical traditions of forgiveness. In "Forgiveness and Forbearance in Ancient China," Christoph Harbsmeier surveys the language of forgiveness in Chinese, arguing that, "for a Chinese person to forgive, is always to forgive 'in terms of' one of the concepts outlined" (21). Harbsmeier goes on to present twenty-nine different terms in ancient and modern Chinese related to "forgiveness." To me, their differences were not as remarkable as their similarity. All seemed to portray forgiveness as a matter of letting the wrongdoer off, in some way, from the possible consequences of wrongdoing. Shù , which Harbsmeier suggests as the best translation for 'forgiveness,' involves a general sort of empathetic forbearance.

So far, the virtue of shù will seem familiar enough to contemporary Westerners. But Harbsmeier emphasizes that it must be understood in a hierarchically structured culture, where, he tells us, "egalitarianism is not in any way envisaged or aspired to at any level, practical or psychological" (13). Shù is something one shows to people below oneself on the social scale. What one owes to people above oneself is, in contrast, zhong , "doing one's moral best" (22). When those above oneself commit wrongs, then, the question of forgiveness does not really arise. Instead the question for the underling is how to continue to do his duty to his superior in this new context. Harbsmeier's analysis helps explain, for example, why in China the question "whether they forgive or do not forgive Deng Xiaoping [for the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989] has become purely academic (i.e., quite irrelevant)" (14).

Ilaria E. Ramelli's contribution on forgiveness in Christian thought argues that what is almost invariably labeled as "the Christian view" is historically inaccurate. It is commonplace for contemporary writers on the ethics of forgiveness to assert that Christianity requires its followers to forgive wrongs unconditionally , that is, to forgive whether or not their abusers have met any conditions, such as apologizing, repenting or making amends. Ramelli painstakingly reviews an impressive range of ancient sources to show that, throughout the early history of Christianity, forgiveness was always predicated on repentance. Her argument is so convincing that I was left wondering how it has come to be that most contemporary writers -- and, I would add, all my students who self-identify as Christians -- have come to see a commitment to unconditional forgiveness as central to Christianity.

Part II on "Forgiveness and Selfhood" begins with Fricke's contribution, "What We Cannot Do to Each Other: On Forgiveness and Moral Vulnerability." Fricke provides an admirable description of the normative terrain of forgiveness and specifically the interconnections between moral and social norms. Fricke anchors her discussion of forgiveness in a social, relational understanding of the nature and consequences of moral wrongdoing. Wrongdoing damages the trust that normally marks relations among victims, wrongdoers and their communities; forgiveness is one way of repairing that damage.

Fricke goes on to emphasize that, as complex selves, we relate to one another, not just as moral agents, but also as friends, partners and neighbors. This leads her to distinguish between personal forgiveness, in which personal relationships such as friendships are repaired, and moral forgiveness, in which victims come to once again see their abusers as having intrinsic moral value as human beings. She argues plausibly that one may morally forgive a wrongdoer without personally forgiving. I was less convinced by her claim that "personal forgiveness always implies moral forgiveness" because "any close personal relationship includes mutual respect of moral value or dignity" (63). Might not someone who does not value humanity as such (say, a mafia hitman) value his personal relationships (with other mafiosos)? This combination of attitudes may not be able to be held in a fully, rationally consistent way, but it seems psychologically possible. The last portion of the essay poses the question of whether wrongdoers can deserve forgiveness and victims can be morally required to forgive in either of the two senses of forgiveness; however, Fricke provides no clear answers to those questions.

The next pair of articles pursues Griswold's claim that forgiveness requires a narration of the past, one which will both acknowledge its wrongful character yet allow for the forgiver to overcome her negative attitudes toward the wrongdoer. Garry L. Hagberg and Peter Goldie each ask how this might work in cases of self-forgiveness. Both worry whether "in self-forgiveness there is not the possibility of a narrative accounting from an appropriate distanced perspective" (Goldie, 83-4). In "Self-Forgiveness and the Narrative Sense of Self," Goldie suggests that such distancing is enabled by the wrongdoer's ability to think about herself in a way that is "essentially ironic" and involves seeing one's past, wrongdoing self as, in a sense, another person (87):

This opens up the epistemic and evaluative ironic gap that is at the heart of the notion of narrative: an epistemic gap because one now knows what one did not know then; and an evaluative gap because one can now take an evaluative stance which differs from the stance that one took then (87).

Hagberg, in "Forgiveness and the Constitution of Selfhood," rejects this dyadic view of the self as phenomenologically inaccurate. Instead, he believes that self-forgiveness is enabled by "one identity seeing bi-focally, not two persons gazing from a distance upon each other" (75). Hagberg draws on literary concepts to explain his view, comparing self-forgiveness to the experience of reading fiction, wherein "we simultaneously identify with a character in fiction but also stand apart from that narratively-entwined persona" (75). For Hagberg, this narrative process is not performed by a later self that is independently distinguishable from the wrongdoing self, but is instead what constitutes the new, forgivable self. Both Goldie's and Hagberg's essays provide satisfyingly complex examples of processes of self-forgiveness. Goldie's essay is also notable for its discussion of the odd case of self-pardoning, in which one regards one's own action as involuntary on the grounds that the circumstances overstrained one's nature without actually undermining one's freedom.

Part III includes six essays that address the limits of forgiveness, that is, a variety of possible restrictions on the possibility or permissibility of forgiveness. For example, almost all theorists of forgiveness claim that forgiveness is not possible where there is no wrong. But in "Forgiveness Without Blame," Espen Gamlund defends the position that forgiveness can occur even when harm-causing is not blameworthy but rather excused or justified. Cases of agent-regret (such as the regret felt by an unlucky driver who faultlessly kills a child), disagreements over culpability between the harmed and the harm-causer, and moral dilemmas all present disruptions to peace of mind and social relations that can be solved by the sorts of interactions and changes in view that we associate with forgiveness and self-forgiveness. While critics may insist that forgiveness requires culpability by definition, Gamlund's discussion will lead many readers to find such a stipulation unsatisfying.

A major debate in the literature on forgiveness is whether forgiveness is "conditional," meaning that forgiveness is only appropriate in cases where the wrongdoer has met some sort of requirement, such as repentance or moral improvement. Jerome Neu's essay, "On Loving Our Enemies," defends the conditional view. Drawing on work by Jeffrie Murphy, Neu argues that resentment is a morally appropriate reaction to being victimized that can be set aside only for a moral reason. Also working within a conditional framework, Arne Johan Vetlesen asks whether there are cases where no moral reason could justify forgiveness and where forgiveness is, therefore, wrong. In this rather unwieldy essay, Vetlesen emphasizes the relevance of the characteristics of the wrongful acts themselves, rather than the characteristics of the agents who perform the acts, claiming that "some acts are worse, morally speaking, than any individual agent" (161).

Eve Garrard and David McNaughton, in contrast to Neu and Vetlesen, defend the position that forgiveness is unconditional by addressing objections posed by Griswold and others. The authors argue that some critics of unconditional forgiveness conflate two senses in which forgiveness can be unconditional: "(1) forgiving no matter what condition the wrongdoer is in; and (2) forgiving no matter what the reason for doing so is" (102). While defending the view that "there is sufficient reason to forgive a wrongdoer whatever his state of mind" (97), Garrard and McNaughton go on to identify reasons for extending such unmerited forgiveness. While the points made in favor of unconditional forgiveness are perhaps not novel, the skill with which the issues are explained and defended makes this essay a good candidate for course syllabuses on forgiveness.

Geoffrey Scarre strays slightly from the theme of forgiveness to look at issues of apology. In "Apologising for Historic Injustices," Scarre dives into the controversy surrounding Australia's official apology to the "Stolen Generations," which addressed the century-long practice of removing aboriginal children from their parents' care, a practice that ended only in the late 1960s or early 1970s. In 2008, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd delivered an official apology for this history, which was met with general approval from both the aboriginal and settler populations. Scarre argues that the apology was not appropriate because the people doing the apologizing did not have "ownership" of the wrongful deeds. While he defends the legitimacy of "insider-regret," a particular form of negative reactive attitude towards one's group's historical injustices, Scarre denies that this attitude can ground the practice of apology. Debates about the nature of collective responsibility are well established in the literature and are not much advanced by the arguments to be found here. However, Scarre's essay does provide opportunity for reflection on the nature and functions of apology. Scarre's clear and straightforward account of when an apology can be given and what functions it can perform is quite narrow and so leaves the reader reflecting on what a broader concept of apology might look like.

Finally, literary scholar Jakob Lothe provides a reading of W. G. Sebald's novel Austerlitz . Sebald was a writer who was born in Germany in 1944 but who lived most of his adult life in England. His fiction and non-fiction writings have become important to current discussions of how German identity has been shaped by the memory of World War II and the Holocaust. The narrator of the novel, who, like Sebald, is a German exile of the immediate postwar generation, develops an unusual friendship with a Jewish man who survived the Holocaust as a child and is now attempting to recover the story of his parents' lives and deaths in the camps. Lothe argues that Sebald's narrative techniques reveal that the main theme of the novel is forgiveness. This claim remains puzzling for much of the essay, but by the end it becomes clear that Lothe's theme is not 'what is involved in granting forgiveness,' but instead 'what it is like to feel the need to be forgiven for the injustices of previous generations.' As such, the essay is fruitfully paired with Scarre's contribution.

Griswold, C. L., Forgiveness: A Philosophical Exploration , Cambridge University Press, (2007).

Murphy, J. G. and J. Hampton (eds.), Forgiveness and Mercy , Cambridge University Pres, (1988).

Murphy, J. G., Getting Even , Oxford University Press, (2003).

Deborah Cotton Made Us Face the Truth About America’s Past

D eborah “Big Red” Cotton and I met by getting shot together. It was a Mother’s Day afternoon during Barack Obama’s second term as America’s first Black president. We were two of 19 people gunned down in the biggest mass shooting in the modern history of New Orleans, a city stained by racism and violence since its time as the biggest slave market in North America. The shooting targeted a second line parade, an iconic local ritual that evolved from the burial rites enslaved Africans brought with them to Louisiana starting in 1722 and that later helped give birth to jazz. To desecrate such a sacred gathering, New Orleans singer John Boutte said, was “ like bringing a gun to church and starting to shoot people. It’s just hateful.”

Gravely wounded, Cotton was not expected to live through the night. But she held on long enough to dictate a statement that a close friend delivered to a hastily called City Council meeting. A day after the shooting, a surveillance video had surfaced that showed a Black man watching as the parade passed left to right. Suddenly, the man plunged into the crowd—which consisted almost entirely of Black men, women, and children—and began firing a handgun at point blank range. As people ran and threw themselves to the ground in terror, the gunman kept firing until he emptied his weapon, then ran away.

Cotton’s City Council statement implored the people of New Orleans to stop and think before passing judgment. “Do you know what it takes to be so disconnected in your heart that you walk out into a gathering of hundreds of people who look just like you and begin firing?” she asked.  Alluding to the bleak circumstances facing many young Black men in New Orleans—parents absent or impoverished, abysmal schools, rampant gang and police violence, few job options beyond menial labor or drug dealing—she added, “These young men have been separated from us by so much trauma.”

Thanks to what Cotton and the police officers investigating the shooting both labeled “a miracle,” she did live through the night. In fact, I connected with her in New Orleans a few months later. She’d been discharged from the hospital by then, though her return to normal life was uncertain at best. Some vital organs had been severely compromised or outright removed. The doctors said she had many more surgeries ahead.

When we spoke, after telling me to call her "Deb," she shared that she often felt nauseous, anxious, and sometimes depressed these days. Yet she evinced not the slightest anger toward the two gunmen who had shot us and seventeen other people at a ritual that, as she well knew, was sacred to Black identity in New Orleans. Instead, she reiterated her initial response.

“I try to put myself in other people’s shoes in life,” Cotton told me. “I asked myself, ‘What has happened to put those young men in such a dead-hearted place that they would shoot into a crowd of people who looked just like them?’  That’s what’s so striking to me. They weren’t shooting at white men; they weren’t shooting at Black women. They were shooting at other Black men. There’s a level of self-hatred there that is so profound. It’s like they’re trying to wipe themselves out.”

Today, Cotton’s message of mercy and understanding toward people who have done us harm, or who we fear will do us harm, is much-needed balm for a nation that has been polarized by figures and forces spreading division and hatred.  When I first got to know her, Cotton’s ability to forgive made me think of her as a saint.  As I went on to write a book about the Mother’s Day shooting, I also came to see her as a prophet.  

Cotton’s belief in forgiveness, I learned, was no straightforward act of Christian charity; it was accompanied by her clear-eyed, historically grounded warning that horrors like the Mother’s Day shooting—and, for that matter, the election of an unabashed racist to succeed the nation’s first Black president—would continue to happen in the United States until the circumstances underlying those horrors were honestly named and confronted. Elaborating on her reasons for forgiving the Mother’s Day gunmen, she later explained to me that, “Racism can kill Black people even when a Black finger pulls the trigger.”

Read More: James Baldwin Insisted We Tell the Truth About This Country. The Truth Is, We’ve Been Here Before

To remedy the legacies of slavery that fueled such horrors, she advocated a strategy of truth and reconciliation, a version of which had helped South Africa to navigate the transition from apartheid to democracy in the 1990s. (As Cotton and I got to know one another, we were happy to discover that the anti-apartheid struggle had loomed large in both of our political comings of age. She even confessed to feeling a tiny bit jealous that I had been arrested with Archbishop Desmond Tutu protesting apartheid at South Africa’s embassy in Washington, D.C.)

When Nelson Mandela emerged from 27 years in prison to lead a new South Africa, the country had just fought a bloody civil war after nearly 100 years of repression of the Black and mixed-race majority by the white minority.  It was far from clear that South Africa would not descend back into violence, much less that it could evolve into a unified country with freedom and equality for all.

South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission was designed to enable South Africans to move forward “on the basis that there is a need for understanding but not for vengeance, a need for reparation but not for retaliation, a need for ubuntu [an African word connoting communal solidarity] but not for victimization.”  The Commission conducted a nationwide conversation about what happened during apartheid. Victims were invited to testify about injustices. Security officials could apply for amnesty from prosecution, provided they told the whole truth about their wrongdoings. The Commission aimed to establish a truthful record of what apartheid had done, present this truth to the South African people, and thereby lay the groundwork for a reconciliation among contending segments of the population so the country could heal.

Tutu, who chaired the Commission, later ventured that the U.S. might also benefit from a truth and reconciliation process. In words that mirror Cotton’s perception of the Mother’s Day gunmen, he wrote that victims of apartheid “often ended up internalizing the definition the top dogs had of them. . . . And then the awful demons of self-hate and self-contempt, a hugely negative self-image, took its place in the center of the victim’s being. . . . Society has conspired to fill you with self-hate, which you then project outward.”

How a racial truth and reconciliation process would operate in the U.S. is a complex question. But the necessary first step is to tell the truth. After the neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville in the opening months of the Trump presidency, civil rights leader Bryan Stevenson said that only after Americans acknowledged the truth about their past could they hope to consign such outbursts of racist hatred to history. “You have to tell the truth before you can get to reconciliation,” he said in an interview with The Guardian , “and culturally we have done a terrible job of truth telling in this country about our history of racial inequality.”

Facing unpleasant truths about America’s past is not easy, but no one should blame themselves for being unaware of those truths in the first place. America’s schools, churches, legal and political systems, and news media have obscured the truth about race and slavery since before the nation’s birth. Teachers, parents, clergy, coaches, neighbors, and employers have passed down harmful habits of word and deed to younger generations. Those inherited patterns are part of what makes racism a systemic condition rather than an individual shortcoming.

After a White supremacist massacred nine Black people in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015 hoping to trigger a race war, a white man named Garry Civitello called in to a national TV show and asked, “How can I be less racist?” Heather McGhee, a Black scholar on the show, praised Civitello for his desire to change. She suggested that he get to know some Black people and read some Black history. Civitello ended up not voting for Trump in 2016, even though nearly all the white people around him in rural North Carolina did. In a comment countless Americans might echo if they read the history books McGhee had recommended to him, Civitello marveled that, “There are so many things I did not know that I thought I knew.”

Deborah Cotton eventually succumbed to her wounds—she died four years after the shooting—but she lost her faith in truth and reconciliation.  After recovering her health sufficiently to work part-time, she took a job with the Alliance for Safety and Justice, a nonprofit that worked to reform the criminal justice system, including the mass incarceration of people of color. Shortly after Trump was elected in 2016, Cotton was invited to address a conference of government officials and legal experts in Louisiana’s state capital. The first speaker was an older white woman who had lost her son to gun violence. The woman argued forcefully against reforming current practices, insisting that her son’s killers never be allowed back on the streets.

“Then I got up,” Cotton later told me, “and I said that the young men who shot me and the other people on Mother’s Day should be punished, but I didn’t think they should spend the rest of their lives in prison. I said I thought those young men could redeem themselves and make a positive contribution to society if we would consider alternatives to life in prison. After the panel was over, a long line of people came up and wanted to talk with me, take my card, have me come speak to their organization, and whatnot. That felt so good. My statement and presence sent a very different message than people usually hear from victims of crime.”

Driving home afterwards, Cotton found herself actually feeling grateful that she’d been shot. “During the first year after the shooting,” she told me, “I often felt like I didn’t want to live anymore. I wasn’t going to take action myself, but many days I thought, ‘Just let me go.’ Now, I feel like if getting shot was what put me in the position to do this work, then I’m glad I was shot.”

“Wait—are you serious?” I asked. “Glad you got shot? I’m glad you survived, but I’m sure as hell not glad you were shot.”

“Yeah, I’m serious,” Cotton replied. “That’s just how I feel.”

Excerpted from Big Red's Mercy: The Shooting of Deborah Cotton and a Story of Race in America by Mark Hertsgaard. Published by Pegasus Books, May 7 th 2024

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Geoffrey Mak Still Hasn’t Lost Hope in the Personal Essay

By jake nevins, photographed by acudus aranyian, may 7, 2024.

Geoffrey Mak, photographed by Acudus.

Last month, when I spoke to the writer and critic Geoffrey Mak about his debut collection of essays, Mean Boys , a white flower petal floated into his coffee just as he explained how he came to reconcile with his father, a firebrand conservative minister who features prominently in one of the book’s standout pieces, a tough but largely merciful account of their strained relationship and the indignities of the Evangelical church. It was a storybook moment that struck me as almost inappropriately mawkish, since Mak is not one for heavy sentiment. In Mean Boys , he applies a fierce intellect and a certain defiant posture to subjects as varied as edgelords, art fairs, raves, agitprop, organized religion, and mass murderers, but the conclusions reached are rarely tidy or comforting. Paranoia, distrust, and violence, Mak argues, are the defining sensibilities of these strange times. But we nevertheless retain our capacity for joy and intimacy, to be found, perhaps, in the random kindness of a stranger on the dance floor, or in the act of writing itself. “When I write, I care less about admiration and more about connection,” Mak explained. “And this very rich expansion of the soul can only happen with the personal essay.” Just before his book’s release, he and I got together downtown to talk about pain, pleasure, Trump, trad caths, and the Kardashians.

NEVINS: I finished the title essay last night. I feel like I should tell you up front that a very dear friend of mine grew up with Elliot Rodger and is mentioned by name in his manifesto. She’s actually working on this short in which she imagines his mother getting the call about the murders. So that was heavy on my mind as I was reading.

MAK: Oh, wow. Yeah, the mom. I tried not to do the whole “what went wrong” thing. I don’t think anyone wanted my speculation. But I felt really bad for her because like, she wasn’t that Asian parent who wouldn’t give positive affirmation. She really did, and she really had a kind of infinite patience. I don’t think Elliot was going out of his way to portray her well and she still came out pretty loving. So I feel really bad for her. Yeah, I would definitely watch this short.

NEVINS: I’ll keep you posted. Anyway, I was reading the title essay through the lens of your author’s note, in which you kind of riff on the uses and abuses of the personal essay. I’m curious to know what the utility of the form is for you, particularly in regard to these pieces.

MAK: Oh my gosh, I’m so opinionated on this. Where do I start? The personal essay now is really evolving. There are usually two directions it takes. I mean, everybody hates it. So the question is, “How do we make this less hateable?” And you either have one of two choices, which is to make it more like fiction or to make it more like journalism. And I think the pressure to push it in the direction of journalism is to back it up with research or reporting. So it’s like, this was my childhood in the church. Now I’m going to give you the history of the Presbyterian Church in America over the last couple centuries, and then I’m going to go back to myself.

NEVINS: And then in section four, we’ll do some scene work and actually go back to the church you had disavowed…

MAK: Yes, we’ve all read it. And I do really enjoy these essays. But specifically with Elliot Roger, I wanted to ask the question of what role pain has to do in our self-reported personal essays? Because I think our culture gives enormous authority to pain, but that also depends on who you are. If your pain is femme, queer, or non-white, it’s going to be respected as a source of authority. But we don’t seem to give a lot of aesthetic value or respect to stories of class deprivation. And then, in terms of status deprivation, there’s almost no discussion whatsoever because I don’t think our culture understands that status is real. But instead of using pain as a badge, there are other ways to represent it in literature, such as using it to disarm yourself and to become more open to relationships. I mean, something that really excites me about writing a memoir is the intense intimacy I will have with strangers I might never meet. I wanted to open the door to strange and intense intimacies. When I write, I care less about admiration and more about connection. And this very rich expansion of the soul can only happen with the personal essay. It’s special to me.

NEVINS: Yeah, I agree with that. I’m curious if it is any more or less strange than the intimacies that you write about experiencing more fleetingly while, say, K-holed on a dance floor. Those people will presumably know far less about you than your readers.

MAK: That’s true. But I am pretty much an open book. My boyfriend was like, “I’ve never met someone so unembarrassable before.” I write pretty openly about these years-long dry spells where I just wasn’t having any sex. And I think what happened during those years is that my brain and body and soul became really sensitive to opportunities for other kinds of intimacy other than sex. I think that wouldn’t have been the case if I were having a regular sex life. There are so many kinds of intimacy. I was listening to a lecture by the poet, Jorie Graham, and she was talking about how there’s a layer of intelligence in the human mind that is universal, and that’s the sensory one. Another thing about intimacy is that it doesn’t actually require knowledge. So when you’re on the dance floor, you’re radically intimate with all of these people moving together in the same direction, like a flock of birds. It’s really intimate to feel intense, purposeless joy.

NEVINS: I loved the section about how you assume a sort of maternal posture on the dance floor as the person whose job it was to sort of track everyone else’s highs. You and McKenzie Wark are writing more perceptively about nightlife than most people.

MAK: That book’s [ Raving ] amazing.

NEVINS: Yeah, that book’s great. But it does feel like the exception, since a lot of nightlife writing is just like, name-droppy. 

MAK: That’s true. Speaking of, I feel a little bad. I wrote a lot about my dad and I didn’t write a lot about my mom, and I’m actually much closer to my mother.

NEVINS: Well, that doesn’t surprise me after reading about your dad.

MAK: I know…

NEVINS: Has he read it?

MAK: He got the book on Sunday.

NEVINS: You couldn’t get him a galley?

MAK: I didn’t want to because I wanted to give him a finished copy. I was like, “Is it okay if you don’t read certain essays?” And he was like, “Geoff, it’s fine. It’s not going to be a big deal.” I can’t imagine him opening the table of contents and reading the title, My Father, the Minister and not reading it immediately.

NEVINS: It’s so hard, but we’re powerless. When I was 18 and had just moved to New York, I wrote this cringe essay in New York Magazine about getting paid for sex by a very famous artist who was 50 years older than me. It was my very first byline and I didn’t name him. I was like, “Mom, I was published in New York Magazine. But you can’t read it.” I assume she went online and read it anyway.

MAK: If I was more assertive about it, I think my dad would’ve respected it. But I mean, it’s a little bit selfish for me because it actually doesn’t make a huge difference. I wanted to protect him from certain things, but if he’s like, “It’s not a big deal,” then I’d be like, “Yeah, you know yourself. I’ll trust you.” It’s tricky because there’s the essay in the book about my father and then there’s the New Yorker one, which is basically the same exact material, but kind of truncated. But in the New Yorker one, I wanted to celebrate my dad. I wanted to tell the world that it was possible for a firebrand conservative to actually change his mind. But when I wrote the one in the book, I was in utter rage. The one in the book makes me look good. I’m the wronged one. I’m the one with the emotional strength to be like, “I forgive you.” But in the New Yorker one, I look really bad. I’m the burnout, the drug addict. I’m the one who goes home penniless and my dad says, “Yeah, I’ll take you in.” I think it’s a fuller story. 

NEVINS: Well, having read them both, I think this raises interesting questions about form. Narratively, in the container of the personal essay, did you not feel that both of these truths could coexist? By which I mean, do you feel that particular story, as it exists on the page, requires the tension of a character who’s plainly virtuous and one who’s not?

MAK: Well, the two of them together is a story of mutual forgiveness and at the end of the book version, I had this epiphany that we forgive people not because we think they can earn it one day. That’s not how forgiveness works. If you can earn forgiveness, that’s just called penance. What forgiveness really means is that we forgive someone because they can never earn it. There’s this moment where I call my father a coward. It’s pretty harsh, but I had asked him if he’d tell his church about me and he said no. So this kind of really intense failure is actually why I forgive him.

NEVINS: There’s no way a flower petal just fell into your coffee.

MAK: Right as we got to the moment of forgiveness. And to see him change made me radically optimistic about what the human heart is capable of. This isn’t in the book, but I did return to Christianity. Watching my dad model what a Christian was capable of made it quite appealing to me. I left Christianity and embraced queerness. And then when I came back to Christianity, I didn’t leave queerness. I brought it with me. I began reading some hard theology, and by “hard theology” I mean theology that’s meant for theologians. Liberals and leftists really hate Christians. And I’m not surprised. They have reason to. I hate them too. But all of the criticisms that the left has of Christianity, theology has answered them. People just don’t care enough to read it. It’s easier to have a target that’s demonized, and what’s more easy to demonize than the Evangelical church. I mean, they’re awful. But my whole life has been about finding tiny minorities that I could find a home in. I was never going to find a big movement that I felt was speaking to me. So there were the raves, there was theology, there was X, Y, and Z. But the stuff is out there, and it’s really thrilling.

NEVINS: This makes me curious to hear your thoughts on what you might call the kind of shallow iteration of religiosity coursing through downtown New York these days, which seems to me more reactionary than genuinely inquisitive.

MAK: Oh my god, yeah. Well, it is a little reactionary. Obviously, edgelords are a really big theme in the book. It’s hard to say what’s really going on there. Okay, tinfoil hat coming on. I had this epiphany when I was watching The Kardashians . You have this family that’s probably voting liberal. I mean, Caitlin isn’t, but I think most of the family is. But the show itself is a resounding endorsement of conservative ways of being, so to have this culture so loud and syndicated everywhere is to really promote a conservative way of life. And then I began to think of Trad Caths and like, you have all of these people in Dimes Square who are certainly voting liberal.

NEVINS: Well, if they’re voting at all.

MAK: Right, or they’re not voting. But them doing the hard work of stylizing Christianity and Catholicism and making it look cool is actually endorsing a kind of conservative constituency. I can’t not have a little bit of affection for the Trad Cath movement. I kind of love it on some level. I think it’s hilarious. Some people say to me, “Oh, but they’re not real.” They’re not real practitioners, they don’t actually believe. And I’m just like, “I’m not here to police that. I’m not ever here to police who’s the real Catholic, who’s the real trans, who’s the real leftist.” We can have rings of participation and intensities and seriousness.

NEVINS: Well, it’s interesting you say that. It’s such a rhetorical cudgel, but in the last several months I’ve experienced being told I’m not a “real Jew” for being pro-Palestine, which is really frustrating because I’m not only proud to be Jewish, but I also very much partake in all its cultural traditions, which I understand to be a spirit of community and fellowship and intellectual inquiry.

MAK: Who’s saying that to you?

NEVINS: Well, it mostly comes from Zionists. And I hate to create some sort of hierarchy, but the people saying that are certainly not any more observant than I am. They just seem to think that Zionism endows them with some totally arbitrary authority to decide who really is and isn’t Jewish. So I very much appreciate that despite having returned to Christianity yourself, you don’t take it upon yourself to police its other variants.

MAK: I kind of love the Praying shirts without the praying. I don’t have one. The moment’s a little bit over. But I have a little bit of affection.

NEVINS: I want to talk about Edgelords real quick because I think it’s a really impressive and expansive essay. Forgive me if I’m misstating the thesis, but—

MAK: I mean, it’s kind of messy. There are multiple theses.

NEVINS: Chief among them is that you’re identifying paranoia as the spirit of our age. Sometimes it can feel like we’re too close to an era or a scene to really assess it accurately. You write about the ways you were driven to what you call “madness.” I’m curious how you came to this organizing theory of the times.

MAK: Oh my gosh, there’s so much to say. There was a fundamental shift in how politics mobilized culture for its own advantages. There’s this excellent book, Kill All Normies by Angela Nagle. And if anybody reads it now, they’ll be like, “Duh, this is obvious.” But it really wasn’t when it came out. And basically the observation is that before, we thought politics would get to the center of culture and move out from there, just sending out the signals from the center and it’ll reach everyone eventually. And what Nagle tracked was that culture didn’t work top-down anymore. It actually worked bottom-up. You had very obscure communities that were disparate, fragmented, but they were meeting each other online, such as gamers, and they were interacting regularly, and they were organically growing really intense political beliefs and affinities. So if you look at Hillary versus Trump, they didn’t work from the center. Well, Trump was better at doing this than Hillary, but Trump was like, “I’m going to endorse the gamers and then I’ll get them on my side. I’m not going to create the gamers. I’m not going to tell them what to do. I’m just going to look for these obscure things.” So sometimes he would tweet things that only 200 people were meant to see.

NEVINS: Just so I’m understanding correctly, you’re suggesting that, as opposed to dictating to what might be a potential voting bloc or constituency, his politics were instead kind of subordinated to theirs?

MAK: He would pick people who already agreed with him.It was more about signals. Suddenly, signals became really important in a way that I don’t think they were before. I mean, the trans bathroom thing. That was really a Tumblr thing. Just a lot of young people on Tumblr were getting really up in arms about it. And then I think the Democratic Party was like, “Oh, it’s burgeoning in the underground, we need to get ahead of this now.” And then they did. So suddenly this very obscure Tumblr thing became a national discussion. That is kind of how culture works now, but it’s also due to the collapse of the mainstream-underground binary. Now, everyone kind of has their own micro-tribe, which is utterly illegible to other micro-tribes even though they might live a couple blocks away from each other. I mean, we feel that in New York, even just looking at Tribeca versus the Lower East Side. The art worlds that exist in the two are so different, yet they’re so close. And then, to go back to the point about paranoia, the Cambridge Analytica revelations were almost as big as the NSA revelations to me. I don’t think my friends cared as much as I did. But for some reason, I was just really locked onto it. To see how the campaign was explicitly stoking paranoia in their favor was absolutely alarming to me. And then I began to look at the culture and see all of these patterns of paranoia, and this was also happening concurrently with my own psychological degradation. It’s so funny, because the paranoid would see patterns, but as a paranoid, I began to see patterns of paranoia, which actually is what Eve Sedgwick writes about—how paranoia simply looks for itself. I actually see Mean Boys as a more morally and psychologically advanced text than Edgelords . In a way, M ean B oys rejects paranoia and decides to welcome in something that is toxic and harmful, which one might call a reparative gesture. The paranoid always pushes things out, and instead, I wanted to let something in, but without compromising judgment.

NEVINS: There was something really sobering about Mean Boys . You render Elliot Rodger almost grossly human, but I didn’t feel as though you were subject to his manipulations, which I guess is what people worry about when they clutch their pearls about writers “humanizing” bad guys.

MAK: I think it goes back to forgiveness. I’ll never say I forgive Elliot Rodger. I was not the one who was harmed. But  I think there’s an affect that doesn’t have a name, where you hold love and judgment together without one diminishing the other.

NEVINS: Well, you could call that love.

MAK: You’re right. I love that. That’s just love.

NEVINS: Anyway, what are you reading these days?

MAK: I’m literally four pages in, but I am reading Then the War by Carl Phillips. I’m reading a lot of poetry these days. Oh my god, so good. He’s kind of a poet for sentence writers. I think prose writers really like him. And being a prose writer myself, I really like it.

NEVINS: I feel that way about Vijay Seshadri.

MAK: Oh, I should read them. I’ve been reading a lot of Louise Glück.

NEVINS: That makes sense.

MAK: Does it? That’s so funny. I’ve been reading the collections back to back. It’s funny because when you get a 70-page poetry book in the mail, you really can read in one sitting. So I’m just inhaling it. What are you reading?

NEVINS: I just finished Adelle Waldman’s new novel. It’s been like, 10 years since her last one.

MAK: Since [ The Love Affairs of ] Nathaniel P.

NEVINS: I fucking love that book.

MAK: Oh my god, the best. One of the people I dedicate my book to is allegedly the man that Nathaniel P. Is based off of.

NEVINS: Wait, oh my god.

MAK: Yeah, it’s him.

NEVINS: Well, we won’t name him on the record. But if anyone’s curious, go buy Geoff’s book.

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Blog / Savannah Guthrie on the “Bonus Commandment” and Two-Part Salvation

Savannah Guthrie on the “Bonus Commandment” and Two-Part Salvation

What is a favorite Bible passage of yours and why?

Choosing your favorite verse is like choosing your favorite child – it’s kind of impossible! A verse I recite to myself often is, “ I love the Lord for he heard my voice; he heard my cry for mercy. Because of this, I will call on him all the days of my life .”

I also like, “ Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his mercies never fail. They are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness. ”

I just noticed those two verses have a lot in common: mercy! I guess I always feel in need of God’s grace, and grateful to hear that it is unfailingly present.

In Chapter 3, you talk about hearing Mark 12:28-31 on your drive to work one morning, and you say, “a thought occurred, the kind of revelation that feels otherworldly and buzzes with electricity. In a way, a bonus commandment was hidden within the two that Jesus mentioned. Love the Lord God. Love your neighbor. And love yourself.” 

Have you found practical ways to put the “bonus commandment” into practice?

To be honest, it doesn’t come naturally to me. I still have that part of my upbringing that was drilled into me, “don’t think too highly of yourself” or “don’t get too big for your britches.” I am not one to sit around loving myself!

But I do believe, deeply and viscerally, that God loves me… and his loving me makes me more lovable to me. It helps me accept myself. I remember: if he can accept me, then so can I. So should I, in fact.  It is not a spiritual virtue to self-berate and self-condemn; in fact, when we do that we are substituting our own judgment for God’s. He is the judge of our souls, and because of the sacrifice of his Son, his judgment is love.

So really, this is how I can connect to this idea of loving myself. It isn’t about sitting in front of a mirror whispering sweet nothings to myself, giving myself a pep talk with motivational quotes. For me, self-love is about abandoning self-hate. Loving myself because God does.

Throughout the book, you talk about the practice of and practicing Lectio Divina .

• Do you have tips for people who would like to begin this practice?
• How do you stick with it when you are busy ?

This is something I only recently discovered when I signed up for an app called Hallow. It has a daily Lectio Divina that you can listen to – which I think is a great entry point for beginners like me. The narrator reads the verse three times to you, and you sit in silence in between each reading. You can choose how long you want the meditation to be, five minutes or up to thirty minutes!

I have an easily distracted, meandering mind. I’m not good at sitting still, but when I can do the Lectio practice, I have almost always encountered some wisdom from the passage just by sitting with it. I find it to be especially helpful with scriptures that are perplexing or off-putting. When you sit with them for a spell, in the presence of God, it is amazing how the thoughts that can come to the fore are often quite revealing and profound.

My advice is just to try it, even if it seems weird or your mind devolves into thinking about your grocery list or all the stuff you have to do. Just keep at it. Don’t give up. And whatever comes up in your mind as you sit there, no matter how odd it seems, consider whether it is something God is saying to you. I’ve been surprised and delighted many, many times during this practice at how a strange thought that pops into my head about the passage can lead to real revelation.

We ran across what may be extremely practical advice about prayer in Chapter 10 of Mostly What God Does . I’m paraphrasing, but you said that when your feelings “betray you,” you pray “with your imagination.”

• Can you describe that?
• You tie this back to Ephesians 3:20-21 , where it says, “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us” – how did you discover or connect with that verse?

Full credit where it’s due: I got this idea from Shauna Niequist, an amazing writer and now a friend who attends the same church as I do in Manhattan. Her book is called, I Guess I Just Haven’t Learned That Yet . She talks about those moments that we all experience when we are having difficulty with someone close to us, or when we are facing a problem that seems so intractable we cannot find the words to utter in prayer.

Or sometimes, I’ve found that when I am upset about something, I may find my motives to be so mixed that I’m not sure the intent of my prayers are trustworthy and I don’t even know what to pray for. I write a lot about this in the book. (Spoiler alert: I think God wants us to just bring out our whole authentic selves to him – mess and all. That’s prayer.)

Anyway, Shauna talks about praying with your imagination when words or emotions fail you. It can be as simple as imagining the person you love in a place of wholeness, of flourishing, of joy. It is a way of bringing that person to God and bringing the best of your motivations to the forefront, and letting God handle the rest. And I think Ephesians 3:20 is a wonderful corollary when thinking about our imaginations in this way, for God is “able to do immeasurably more that all we ask or imagine.” It’s almost like God had this idea first…!

You write about being tasked with memorizing Psalm 23 as a young girl.  

• How has your understanding of that verse changed over time? 
• When do you turn to Psalm 23  now? 
• You say that God’s words are “meant to be ingested and absorbed into our bloodstream.” If someone isn’t sure where to start absorbing the Bible, is Psalm 23 the passage you would recommend for them to begin?

When I first encountered Psalm 23 , I was a little girl. My older cousin gave me the challenge of memorizing it – the old King James Version to boot! I can assure you I didn’t understand one word. I certainly didn’t get why it was such a famous passage. But I dutifully memorized it, and it stayed with me. Over the years, I have found the words to be peaceful, pastoral and comforting – in my book, I write about literally visualizing the scenes in times of worry and stress. Psalm 23 is a tranquil space for an anxious mind to sit a spell. 

I’ve also come to understand it to be an astoundingly compact and efficient description of our journey of life with God. God is our caretaker, our shepherd, always with us. He provides for our needs: for rest, for sustenance. The psalm also speaks of walking through “the valley of the shadow of death” – a straightforward recognition that life is not all peaceful pastures by trickling streams. We go through dark places. But we won’t be alone. Our path is purposeful, and our destination is assured.

I truly believe Scripture holds divine possibility, especially when mulled and meditated over. To be honest, I wouldn’t necessarily suggest Psalm 23 as an entry point – it can seem a bit abstract and impenetrable at first (it did to me, at least). On the other hand, sometimes it is those verses that seem most opaque and perplexing initially that hold the most treasures once we commit to going deeper.

You quoted Isaiah 30:15 , “In repentance and rest is your salvation.” You talk about how you discovered salvation has two parts. Can you expand on that?

I think we often emphasize the repentance part – and that is appropriate, of course. Recognizing where we have fallen short of love and our need for God’s grace is fundamental. But I think God also calls us to rest in our salvation – not to continually berate ourselves or repeatedly return to our failings.

Resting in our salvation, to me, means absorbing the goodness of God’s mercy and the completeness of our forgiveness, accepting that he sees not the old, flawed us but the new, beautiful creature we are in him. To do that, if we can, is transformative. It has the potential to change how we relate to ourselves and how we move through the world.

You turn to Scripture a lot in your book. What is the most eye-opening moment you experienced from reading the Bible while you were writing?

The biggest revelation came when I was writing an essay about the blessings of faith. “Bless” is one of those words that’s all over our culture (“too blessed to be stressed!” “have a blessed day!” “bless this mess!”), but I came to have a deeper understanding of what the word means in the context of our faith.

I knew the concept of being blessed couldn’t possibly refer to material things, or even necessarily being shown favor by God when we are the recipients of good fortune (although that certainly does happen!). If blessings simply meant “good stuff that happens to you,” how do we explain the beatitudes? (Blessed are the poor in spirit… blessed are the meek, blessed are the persecuted, etc…).

I came to understand that to be blessed in the spiritual sense is simply to receive more of God. So when I pray for a blessing – “God, please bless this travel I must take,” or “bless this difficult task before me” – I’m essentially asking for more of God’s supernatural presence and wisdom, not any particular outcome.

To be blessed is not to have all problems solved, it is to have more divine intervention and presence in a situation. When understood that way, the scriptures about blessings make much more sense to me.

“Loving strangers is hard.” That one sentence pulled from the middle of Chapter 28 rings with truth. Can you explain how God’s love transformed you to see the joy in helping others?

It is a lifelong pursuit to love and care for other humans. None of us are all that good at it. It isn’t necessarily our natural state of being. But when we truly contemplate how God loves us, and let that knowledge really penetrate us, our hearts are inevitably softened, and our horizons broadened; we see that all the love, grace, adoration and delight God has for us extends equally to every single human we encounter.

Every. Single. One.

Again, this is not a rapturous state I walk around in all the time. I live in the real world! But I try to remind myself: we are all God’s children. And if we are all his children, then every human is my brother or sister. We are siblings.

Mostly What God Does  has such a loving and encouraging message. It shows have spent a lot of time reading the Bible, in various versions, to communicate that message. What do you want people to get most out of reading your book?

I hope they receive it as a gentle call to be loved by God – and then, filled with that love, to go out and share it. I think that is the essence of our mission as followers of Jesus.

Often, people of faith recognize the service part. They are aware of our obligation to give and serve others.

But the book reminds us not to miss the first, integral step: fully absorbing and appreciating the love that God has for us. That is what imbues us with a generous spirit, where those acts of love and service are done not out of obligation, but out of an overflowing abundance of love that simply cannot be contained within. 

Mostly what God does is love you.

If we could believe this, really believe this, how different would we be? How different would our lives be? How different would our world be?

Unspooling personal stories from her own joys and sorrows as a daughter, mother, wife, friend, and professional journalist, the award-winning TODAY show coanchor and  New York Times  bestselling author explores the place of faith in everyday life.

Savannah Guthrie  is the co-anchor of NBC News’  TODAY , NBC News’ chief legal correspondent and a primary anchor for the network’s election coverage. She was named cohost of  TODAY  in 2012.

Savannah is a graduate of Georgetown Law, and a  New York Times  bestselling author for her book  Princesses Wear Pants  and the sequel  Princesses Save the World . She is the executive producer of the Netflix show “Princess Power,” based on the book series. Savannah is married to communications consultant Mike Feldman and the couple has a daughter, Vale, and a son, Charley.

Mostly What God Does   is published by HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Inc., the parent company of Bible Gateway.

Related posts:

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• God Is Our Shepherd: Meditate on the 23rd Psalm
• What Are the Beatitudes? Why Are the Beatitudes Important?
• Finding Freedom from the Fear of Not Having Enough: An Interview with Jack Alexander
• Self-Guided Tour of the Bible: An Interview with Christopher Hudson

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What Teachers Really Want for Teacher Appreciation Week

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It’s that time of year again for social media posts, emails, and gifts thanking teachers for their hard work —and legions of teachers who still report feeling unappreciated. For years, writers have taken to Education Week’s opinion pages to mark the week with both heartfelt thanks and searching reflections on how to make that appreciation last far longer than five days.

In 2021, teachers of the year from seven states came together to write “ It’s Teacher Appreciation Week. Flowers? Mugs? We’re Looking for Something More ,” expressing their hopes for appreciative gestures that won’t wilt by the end of the week.

Their No. 1 ask? “Include teachers in education decisions.”

Another former state teacher of the year came to a similar conclusion several years earlier, when 2014 Texas Teacher of the Year Monica Washington argued that messages of appreciation ring hollow when they aren’t accompanied by a seat at the decisionmaking table: “We are often told that we are ‘valued professionals’ who ‘change the lives of our students every day.’ But we are also micromanaged to immobility, not trusted to make the simplest decisions that affect students’ learning and well-being.”

Sharif El-Mekki has taken on a principal eye view of this conundrum in several recent essays. “What if we made Teacher Appreciation Week last all year?” he asked school leaders last spring , before laying out five actionable recommendations.

Several months later, the former principal kept the theme of teacher appreciation alive into the fall by offering “ The 4 Gifts Principals Should Give Teachers This Year (Hint: Not Another School Mug) .”

That’s not the only call to action opinion writers had for principals. Explaining her own approach in “ Why One Principal Is Asking Her Staff to Do Less ,” Indiana Principal Crystal Thorpe dialed in on the ABCs of school—academics, behavior, and culture—to slow down the runaway snowball of demands on teachers.

For some quick-hit ideas of how school leaders can back up those “thank you” emails with action, look no further than teacher and blogger Larry Ferlazzo’s three roundups of educators sharing the one thing principals can do to support their teachers:

• 7 Ways Principals Can Support Teachers
• Principals: Supporting Your Teachers Doesn’t Have to Be Such Hard Work
• Advice for Principals: Empower Your Teachers

Part of appreciating teachers starts with respecting their profession as more than just a steppingstone to administration or some other career changes. That’s the message of “ Why I’m Happy Being ‘Just a Teacher,’ ” in which Amanda Myers works through her response to a recent dinner party guest who pushed for answers on her “next step” after teaching. The widespread assumption that every teacher is an administrator-in-waiting undermines the valuable types of leadership that teachers bring to the job they already have, she writes.

Gratitude doesn’t just come from outside the profession: Teachers are ready to appreciate each other as well. Just look at what these teachers and student-teachers had to say about the educators who inspired them:

Those words of affirmation are just in line with instructional coach Lisa Westman’s prescriptions in the 2017 opinion essay “ Teachers, Do We Appreciate One Another? ” To help her fellow educators join the mutual-appreciation party, Westman translates the popular love languages—gift giving, words of affirmation, quality time, acts of service, and physical connection—into work-appropriate gestures to make colleagues feel valued.

“Teachers most frequently say they feel unappreciated by society and administration,” she wrote. “And it is easy to look outward at factors we cannot control, we can’t make society appreciate us. But, when we look inward, we must ask, what part do we, teachers, play in creating a culture of appreciation?”

A decade into retirement, former English teacher Laurie Barnoski was still feeling the appreciation when she sat down to write a love letter to teaching back in 2018. After reconnecting with four former students—two of whom had gone on to become English teachers themselves—she was reminded of the long-tail influence of her job.

“By taking time to say thank you,” she wrote, “my students were telling me that my 32 years in the classroom meant something; my goal to have a positive impact on my students was complete. They gave me the greatest gift human beings can give one another: They told me that I mattered.”

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I asked south dakota dog trainers about kristi noem.

The governor defends her story of killing her dog, but not everyone in her home state does.

By Jess Bidgood

Deb Davenport gets it, to a point.

Davenport, the secretary of the Western South Dakota Bird Dog Club, owns seven adult hunting dogs: mostly Spinoni Italiani with whimsical names like Confetti and Partito, and one vizsla. She has been a dog trainer and dog fancier since the mid-1990s, she said.

She knows that some dogs are “wired inappropriately” and that, sometimes, for the safety of humans and other animals, it can be necessary to euthanize. She knows that not everybody turns to a vet for that task.

“Since I live in a very rural agricultural state, there are people that do that themselves with a firearm,” Davenport told me.

What she does not get, though, is the way the governor of her state, Kristi Noem, talked about shooting her dog Cricket, as well as an unnamed billy goat, in her memoir, “No Going Back,” which came out yesterday.

“I don’t know a single person that would brag about it. Most of the time they feel bad,” Davenport, a Republican, said. “I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t at least be sad.”

By now, dear reader, you know about Noem’s shot heard ’round the world. It is a story that just won’t seem to die, unlike Cricket and the goat, partly because the leaks keep coming and partly because Noem herself keeps talking about it. Facing a firestorm of criticism from fellow Republicans — and the formation of a bipartisan Congressional Dog Lovers Caucus apparently intended to troll her — she has defended herself as the victim of unfair attacks from critics who don’t understand the hard choices people have to make on ranches and farms.

“Life is a little different in rural America,” Representative Dusty Johnson of South Dakota, a Republican, told CNN .

This is not, however, how everybody in South Dakota sees it — dog, goat and human alike.

This week, I set out to see if there was something I, the owner of Rhubarb, a mild-mannered rescue dog with bear-hunting blood who lives her life softly curled up on my couch, was missing in all the backlash to Noem’s story. But when I called members of the state’s bustling bird dog community, they were just as mystified as anybody else.

The episode seems to have snuffed out what little chance she had of being named Donald Trump’s vice president (more on that later). But even at home, the story she told to make herself look tough seems to have backfired, at least in some quarters. Dog owners like Davenport were struck less by the death itself than by her spiteful description of a dog that they said she had not set up for success.

And they want to be clear: They really, truly, absolutely do not recommend people shoot their own dogs as a matter of course.

“It’s unfortunate,” said Brian Soehl, 62, of the South Dakota Hunting Dog Club, who called the outcome of Noem’s story “unusual.”

The best dogs in the world

Soehl is an independent voter who has voted for Noem. He has owned hunting dogs for years, although he is down to just one now: a wire-haired vizsla named Gage who, he freely admits, is not the winningest dog in the club. But Soehl still loves going out in the field with him.

“We have some of the best dogs in the world in this area,” Soehl said. “The people that I know, they love their dogs.”

Pheasant hunting in South Dakota, Soehl said, is a major cultural event. Opening day of the season has a festival-like atmosphere, with small towns hosting pancake breakfasts or evening suppers. And it’s fun for the dogs, too — Soehl said his have usually jumped in the car when they see his guns, excited for the good kind of adventure.

So Noem’s story has South Dakota dog trainers abuzz with gossip and technical chatter about where, exactly, she went wrong.

In a section of her book titled “Bad day to be a goat,” Noem writes about how Cricket, the roughly 14-month-old wirehaired pointer, had come to her family from a different home where there had been problems with her “aggressive personality.”

During a particularly “stressful year,” Noem wrote, she took Cricket on a hunt with her older dogs, and Cricket began chasing birds before the hunters were in range to shoot. Noem was “livid.” After the ruined hunt, she wrote, she loaded the dogs in kennels in her truck bed — but she didn’t have one for Cricket, who was allowed to ride unconfined. When Noem stopped at a neighbor’s house, Cricket rocketed out of the back of the truck and began “systematically” chomping the neighbor’s chickens to death before “trying” to bite Noem.

“I hated that dog,” Noem wrote.

A dog trainer’s perspective

Russell Nelson, a Democrat who trains and sells gun dogs at Clover Leaf Pheasant Farms in Estelline, S.D., said he was very careful to make sure the right dogs went to the right families. And, what’s more, it’s important not to let a dog who doesn’t come when called get loose.

“It was certainly her fault for putting the dog in the back of the truck and not being in a kennel,” Nelson said. “I was wondering how it got out of the vehicle and killed the chickens.”

Noem’s account has raised legal questions as well as dog-training questions. Did Noem break the law? When I called the spokesman for South Dakota’s attorney general, Marty Jackley, though, he pointed simply to the state’s seven-year statute of limitations.

“Since it happened about 20 years ago, there’s nothing we can do,” Tony Mangan, the spokesman, said. Asked if Noem might have broken the law at the time, Mangan said any answer would be “pure speculation.”

Davenport, a self-described “common sense” Republican who did not vote for Noem, said she worried her governor’s story would reflect poorly on the state’s thriving world of pheasant hunting.

“We don’t go out shooting our dogs. We don’t shoot our goats, either,” Davenport said. When a dog must be put down, she said, “We actually have a mobile vet out here that can come to your house.”

Confetti doesn’t like loud noises, she said, so she’s not much of a hunting dog, but she’s very social. Her youngest dog, she joked, hasn’t been trained as well as her others.

“I think he’s growing up feral,” she said. “He better hope Kristi Noem doesn’t move in next door.”

A waning shot at veep

Noem’s future on the 2024 national stage is starting to look about as promising as Cricket’s future on the show-dog circuit. I asked my colleague Michael Bender , who is covering Trump’s veep search, to tell us more.

How has the story of Cricket landed in Trump World?

Trump World is looking for solutions to an already-pretty-lengthy list of crises facing the campaign, not more problems. No one around Trump wants to be answering questions about Kristi Noem, let alone questions about Kristi Noem and her puppy and her goat and her gravel pit.

How serious of a contender for vice president has Noem really been? And how has this shaped her odds?

Noem was always a long shot for Trump’s ticket. He has been impressed by Noem — she was an outspoken, young Republican member of Congress who easily won headlines. But in recent years, her star has dimmed a bit. She has alienated a number of Republicans over a long career. And she’s hitched her wagon to Corey Lewandowski, who is an adviser to Trump who is in and out of the former president’s orbit, and has his own list of enemies.

That said, one of the truisms of Trump World is that you’re never completely out unless you want to be out. Trump loves a redemption narrative, loves when people beg him for forgiveness. But it’s hard to see how a presidential candidate already losing an incredible amount of time to four criminal cases would want to give any thought to explaining the untimely end of Cricket.

Jess Bidgood is a managing correspondent for The Times and writes the On Politics newsletter, a guide to the 2024 election and beyond. More about Jess Bidgood

Home — Essay Samples — Life — Forgiveness — The Importance of Forgiveness (in 100 Words)

The Importance of Forgiveness (in 100 Words)

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Published: Mar 17, 2023

Words: 105 | Pages: 0 | 1 min read

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