Note: I have combined 3 of my most popular articles about forgiveness: Forgiving Gets Easier With Practice, Forgiving The Unforgivable, and Giving & Forgiving, into a free downloadable/printable ebook: On Forgiving: A Primer, which is featured here.
Download the free ebook On Forgiving: A Primer here.
I’ve come to believe that true giving, and true forgiving, should both be offered unconditionally.
Giving
As for giving, Leo Tolstoy characterizes the act nicely in his collection A Calendar of Wisdom:
“Kindness and virtue come from the heart, and should be performed without thought for the opinion of others, or of future rewards.”
“We do good to people not in hope of reward, but because we see the divine spirit within everyone.”
“The best and easiest way to thwart evil in this world is to respond to it with kind words, return an evil action with good.”
And in Mind is the Master | The Secret of Abounding Happiness, renowned author and philosopher James Allen writes:
“As you rise above the sordid self; as you break, one after another, the chains that bind you, will you realize the joy of giving, as distinguished from the misery of grasping—giving of your substance; giving of your intellect; giving of the love and light that is growing within you. You will then understand that it is indeed “more blessed to give than to receive.” But the giving must be of the heart without any taint of self, without desire for reward. The gift of pure love is always attended with bliss. If, after you have given, you are wounded because you are not thanked or flattered, or your name put in the paper, know then that your gift was prompted by vanity and not by love, and you were merely giving in order to get; were not really giving, but grasping. Lose yourself in the welfare of others; forget yourself in all that you do; this is the secret of abounding happiness.”
Forgiving
As for forgiveness, the word “forgive” comes from the Old English for– (“completely”) + giefan (“to give”), forming forgiefan, which meant “to give up” or “to give entirely”. The Germanic word functioned as a loan-translation (a word or phrase borrowed from another language by translating its components literally and word-for-word into the borrowing language) of the Latin perdonare (composed of per- (“through, completely”) and donare (“to give as a gift”), to mean “to give completely” and evolved into the Middle English forgiefen, which meant “to give up” or “to allow”, or “to remit (a debt)” or “to pardon an offense,” and eventually became forgive in modern English.
Further: The sense of “giving up the desire or power to punish” arose in late Old English, reflecting the idea of completely letting go of a grievance. The Latin root for the concept of “giving” (from do-, “to give”) also appears in words like pardon and condone, both related to forgiving.
So in reality, the concept of forgiving is nearly the same—or at least evolved from—that of giving.
And just as in giving, we cannot truly forgive someone while harboring any expectation of apology, remorse, or any change in their behavior, or even in their attitude.
Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu writes of this in The Book of Forgiving:
“Forgiveness is not dependent on the actions of others. Yes, it is certainly easier to offer forgiveness when the perpetrator expresses remorse and offers some sort of reparation or restitution. Then, you can feel as if you have been paid back in some way. You can say, “I am willing to forgive you for stealing my pen, and after you give me my pen back, I shall forgive you.” This is the most familiar pattern of forgiveness. In this understanding, forgiveness is something we offer to another, a gift we bestow upon someone, but it is a gift that has strings attached.
The problem is that the strings we attach to the gift of forgiveness become the chains that bind us to the person who harmed us. Those are chains to which the perpetrator holds the key. We may set the conditions for granting our forgiveness, but the person who harmed us decides whether or not the conditions are too onerous to fulfill. We continue to be that person’s victim. “I will not speak to you until you say you are sorry!” my young granddaughter, Onalenna, will rage. Her older sister, thinking the demand unfair and unjustified, refuses to apologize. The two remain locked together in a battle of wills bound by mutual resentment. There are two routes out of the impasse: the older Nyaniso can apologize, or Onalenna can decide to forgo the apology and forgive unconditionally.
Unconditional forgiveness is a different model of forgiveness than the gift with strings. This is forgiveness as a grace, a free gift freely given. In this model, forgiveness frees the person who inflicted the harm from the weight of the victim’s whim—what the victim may demand in order to grant forgiveness—and the victim’s threat of vengeance. But it also frees the one who forgives. The one who offers forgiveness as a grace is immediately untethered from the yoke that bound him or her to the person who caused the harm. When you forgive, you are free to move on in life, to grow, to no longer be a victim. When you forgive, you slip the yoke, and your future is unshackled from your past.”
So, just as in the act of giving—that we should give to others without expectation of reciprocity, reward, or even appreciation—the same holds in the act of forgiving—that we should forgive others unconditionally, even for seemingly unforgivable acts.
And in Mind is the Master | Byways Of Blessedness, James Allen also writes:
“Hatred ceases by not-hatred—by forgiveness, which is very beautiful, and is sweeter and more effective than revenge. It is the beginning of love, of that divine love that does not seek its own; and he who practises it, who perfects himself in it, comes at last to realise that blessed state wherein the torments of pride and vanity and hatred and retaliation are forever dispelled, and good-will and peace are unchanging and unlimited. In that state of calm, silent bliss, even forgiveness passes away, and is no longer needed, for he who has reached it sees no evil to resent but only ignorance and delusion on which to have compassion, and forgiveness is only needed so long as there is any tendency to resent, retaliate, and take offence. Equal love towards all is the perfect law, the perfect state in which all lesser states find their completion. Forgiveness is one of the doorways in the faultless temple of Love Divine.”
In Summary
We should simply give, or forgive, out of love—and that is all.
Note: I have combined 3 of my most popular articles about forgiveness: Forgiving Gets Easier With Practice, Forgiving The Unforgivable, and Giving & Forgiving, into a free downloadable/printable ebook: On Forgiving: A Primer, which is featured here.
Download the free ebook On Forgiving: A Primer here.
Related Articles:
Forgiving The Unforgivable
Forgiving Gets Easier With Practice
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