You're Forgiven

I said on Jamie's blog a week ago that I would write about what I was learning in one of my Social Justice classes. Well, we were talking about forgiveness and the reason I wanted to post about it is because I just could not wrap my head around what my professor was getting at. Forgiveness, well, it seems pretty simple from the surface. Someone hits you, apologizes, you forgive them, end of story. But once we started talking about it, it didn't seem so simple and I walked out of the room confused as ever. What my professor was posing is that we must forgive or we die. So you better make restitution with everyone! No no, just kidding....well, sorta....anyways. What I didn't get about his explanation was that forgiveness is mutual. I'm not so sure I agree. For forgiveness to be mutual, the wrong-doer must want to be forgiven. For example, someone walks up, smacks you in the face and walks away. You decide you're going to forgive that person even though they have not asked for forgiveness, nor are they sorry for what they have done. I guess it comes down to defining forgiveness. For the sake of this post, I looked it up on dictionary.com and was thoroughly disappointed. Dictionary.com defines forgiveness as:

1. The act of forgiving; pardon
2. 1: compassionate feelings that support a willingness to forgive 2: the act of excusing a mistake or offense

Hmmm...doesn't seem to help! Whenever I think of forgiveness, or not forgiving someone for that matter, I think of holding a grudge, or using the offence in future arguments, being angry about what happened, stewing over it, etc. So if someone murders someone I love, for example, and they don't ask for forgiveness or aren't sorry for what they did, I still think that forgiveness can apply. I can forgive someone because I don't want to hold it against them, or I want to let go of the baggage or simply because we're supposed to. I brought this up in class because I still am not sure about the whole mutuality of forgiveness. My professor said that forgiveness is then used selfishly. If you're forgiving someone simply because you don't want to hold a grudge anymore, or because you want to move on, then it's not really forgiveness at all. He states that in order for true forgiveness to take place, both members must be willing to move past the situation. Therefore, an event requiring forgiveness is an obstruction of time. Since we live moment by moment, something that happens requiring forgiveness causes the members to stop in time, so to say, and in order to get past that, forgiveness is required, otherwise the relationship is severed. There is no possible way for you to forgive someone when they do not want forgiveness and continue the relationship.

What I'm getting out of this is that you cannot forgive someone "fully" until the relationship is restored. I'm thinking that I don't agree. Situation brought up in class: What if someone's father rapes them, the father does not own up to the raping, and the person severs communication. Then ten years down the road, because of the issue, wants to forgive the father for what he did without the father acknowledging the situation, or even if he does, it doesn't make a difference. Instinct here tells me that the relationship should not be restored because of the possible danger the restoration may cause for the person. I still think forgiveness is possible in this situation. Then again, I guess you have to ask if forgiveness and letting go of something is the same thing. See, this is why I'm confused on the whole thing! So if you have any insight to this whole mess I've just created, please do tell, and hopefully you at least sort of understood what I was talking about.