There are few topics more dangerous than ‘forgiveness’ when the context is abuse. Forgiveness has been (and is) used against people who have been abused. It is presented as something you must do — under threat of divine punishment. It is presented as something you ‘should’ have done a long time ago. It is as if you become the ‘bad person’ in a relationship if you fail to forgive. . . and nothing can fix that, nothing is more important — not even the abuse you are trying to forgive. On top of all this, there are all kinds of things that mimic forgiveness without having any of it’s substance. You can forget what happened and pretend that is the same as forgiveness, but it’s just forgetting, not forgiving. You can stop feeling about what happened and pretend that is the same as forgiveness, but it’s just not-feeling, not forgiveness. So what is forgiveness? Is it good for us? And how the &^%$ to you do actually it?
As you might imagine, this is a huge topic and deserves some careful consideration. For the time being I recommend you read the following articles:
The F Word: Forgiveness, An interview with David Augsberger
Finding the Freedom in Forgiveness by Juanita Ryan
On Forgiveness by Dale Wolery
RECOMMENDED READING
Helping People Forgive, David Augsburger (Westminster John Knox Press, 1996) ISBN-10: 0664256864
The New Freedom of Forgiveness , David Augsburger (Moody Publishers, 2000) ISBN-10: 0802432921
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Thank you for calling attention to this important subject!
The pressure I felt to forgive prematurely was the biggest stumbling block I encountered during my recovery from abuse.
From my blog:
For decades, I heard from friends, relatives, therapists, and fellow Christians, that I needed to forgive my abusers in order to heal. This advice – and the attempts I made to forgive before I’d learned to exercise personal boundaries – left me open to further injury and damaged me deeply.
When I finally mustered the courage to buck societal expectations; not to forgive; and to put my own healing and well-being first, I achieved a level of healing that I never thought was possible. My period of Not forgiving created the space necessary to achieve the greatest emotional growth of my life. Wow!
The unintentional by-product of this healing, was – ironically – forgiveness.
At that time, I realized that the old adage, “Forgive and Heal,” was backwards. For me, it was “Heal and Forgive!”
If I only knew *then* that adequate healing had to come first, it would have saved me a great deal of time and pain. So, now I shout it from the roof tops “Heal first, THEN Forgive!”
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