Forgiveness I

Is Forgiveness A Selfish Act?
James Dempsey

So what is it with this forgiveness thing anyway? “My enemies are real. And they are nasty hate filled fear mongers. Right?? They are awful people who take advantage of others for their own gain, at my expense. They are conservative. They are ignorant liberals. They are illegal immigrants stealing my tax dollars. They are poor. They are the worst kind of sinners. They have wronged me. They have stolen from me. They have terrorized me. How can I possibly forgive them?”

How can you?

When I was taught the concept of forgiveness I was in sister school. Forgiveness was taught to us as if it was a lovely virtue that was somehow so far above our lowly ability to pull it off, that I often wondered why they were bothering to explain the concept to us in the first place. Still, those nuns were right about one thing. Forgiveness isn’t easy.

Forgiveness is an enigma. We were jerks if we didn’t forgive others (even if those others were jerks too). The priests in the pulpit and nuns in the classroom never really explained forgiveness in a way that ever really made any sense to me and I spent the vast majority of my life wondering how to be a forgiving person. My teachers had always avoided the best way to look at it. Forgiveness is self preservation.

The word selfish gets a bad rap in religious circles, but forgiveness is essentially a selfish act. The reason I should forgive my back stabbing ex best friend is so I can let it go. Harboring a lingering resentment over the actions of another is often way more detrimental to a person’s spiritual condition than the actions ever were in the first place. Forgive and forget is good advice not because it makes one virtuous, but because it can keep one from dwelling in a puddle of hate.

Jesus said we should forgive our enemies. What never gets explained in most religious instruction is “why.” Why indeed?  It really isn’t as if you are letting your enemy, or transgressor off the hook anyway. What you are really doing is letting YOURSELF off the hook of resentment now and in the future. Until I looked at it like this, forgiveness really didn’t make much sense to me in practice.

Resentment is like drinking poison and hoping the other person will die. Why would you let a jerk that hurt you live in your head rent free? Forgiveness really isn’t for them anyway, it’s for you. You deserve to be free of the chains of resentment, and forgiveness is the key that will unlock them.