Forgiveness -- Why Forgive?
Forgiving is for getting. In the self-benefit condition, we asked people to forgive for their own good. We detailed the likely health effects of chronic unforgiveness. We suggested positive health effects of forgiving. We told them, “Forgive. You’ll be free. You’ll be able to move on with your life.” We showed people how to use imagery, let go of anger, release resentment, cut the chains that bound them to the person who had hurt or offended them. We helped people relax. We taught them how to lower the stress of unforgiveness. In short, we appealed to the same motives and emotions that cried within me: Forgive so you’ll feel better.
Forgiving is for giving. In the empathy-based condition, we asked people to forgive because the perpetrator needs forgiveness. “You are the only one who can give him [or her] what he [or she] needs: forgiveness.” We appealed to people’s altruistic motives to give a gift of forgiveness because the other person needed it, rather than in order to get relief from unforgiveness.
Frankly, this is a difficult sell.
The comparison: for getting or for giving? When we compared people’s responses to the self-benefit and empathy-based conditions, we found consistent results. One study involved brief one-hour programs. The other involved eight-hour programs. When we compared one-hour programs, people who forgave in the self-benefit condition achieved more immediate forgiveness than did those who forgave in the empathy-based condition. Even when we followed up with people weeks later, we found the self-benefit program had produced twice as much lasting forgiveness as the empathy-based program.
In the eight-hour program, though, things were different. The amount of forgiveness in the eight-hour self-benefit program was the same as in the one-hour program. However, the forgiveness in the eight-hour empathy-based program was three times as large as in the self-benefit program.
Also, weeks later when we retested the people in the eight-hour programs, the people in the empathy-based program were about five times as forgiving as those in the self-benefit program. My conclusions from these two studies are clear. If a person had little time to consider forgiving, the person would probably forgive more easily to benefit his or her own physical, mental and relational health. But if the person was willing to spend more than four hours trying to forgive, then forgiving in order to bless the person who hurt him or her would produce more and longer-lasting forgiveness than forgiving just for the person’s own benefit.
We’ve all heard “Forgive and forget,” but forgiving seems to be for giving, not for getting. When we forgive, we get a quick jolt of personal peace. If we practice forgiving over a lifetime, chances are we will be healthier in the long run. Our immune systems may function better. We may have less risk of cardiovascular disease. If we forgive, we can also give a gift of peace to the person who hurt us—and we might repair the relationship and therefore have more harmonious social support systems. If we forgive, our entire community might focus less on revenge, avoidance, unforgiveness and past problems and focus more on future possibilities. Away from hurt and toward healing.
Forgiveness does benefit us. But if we forgive mainly to get, we get just a trickle of benefits. If we give a gift of forgiveness to a needy perpetrator, though, we receive freedom, peace, health and relational repair.