To Forgive Is Human

Forgiveness is often taken to be something divine, as Swift says, or divinely inspired. I don't doubt that it is. But like Christ himself, it is also deeply human. Whether we regard it as an act, a virtue, or a spiritual power, forgiveness is intimately tied in to the human experience.

Pamela Hieronymi writes that “any wrongdoing leaves in its wake some amount of damage or cost, be it physical, financial, emotional, relational, or social…. With forgiveness, the offended agrees to bear in her own person the cost of the wrongdoing and to incorporate the injury into her own life without further protest and without demand for retribution. (In some cases forgiveness can be uncomfortably intimate: You must allow me to creatively incorporate the scars that bear your fingerprints into the permanent fabric of my life, and trust that I can do so.)”

Forgiveness is costly, like the wounds we inflict on one another. It's not something to be taken glibly or to grant unreflectively in serious cases of wrongdoing (at the cost of respect for one's own person). But it's also necessary, it seems, to the construction of one's own identity.

In the first case, human beings will inevitably inflict wounds on one another. Our limited understanding, combined with the desire for preservation and expansion of the self, leads us to transgress the boundaries of other selves. Forgiveness, is required to repair the inevitable damage.

Secondly, because our identity is to some degree socially constructed, and interpersonal wounds are an inescapable feature of our social life, forgiveness empowers us to write our own stories in innovative and redemptive ways that might otherwise be impossible. We come to understand who we are (and who we aspire to be) by observing role models, practices, and values in our environment, then incorporating these into our own actions and practices. This happens with varying degrees of awareness and intention. We might deliberately test new ways of, say, being more assertive, like straightening a stick that is bent. Or we might passively enact unhelpful modes of conflict resolution (or lack thereof) based on what we observed as children. The point is that we must draw from the resources around us as we enact who we are and want to become, and this includes experiences both pleasant and painful.

Forgiveness enhances our agency in face of the painful experiences inflicted on us. Sure, one could exercise power and creativity without forgiveness, e.g., in exacting retribution (and to a lesser degree in harbouring resentment). But forgiving opens more possibilities for the construction of one's sense of self and destiny. Take, for example, someone who was verbally and emotionally abused by a partner, and left the relationship as a result. The cognitive and emotional release that happens in forgiveness (e.g., not thinking about or harbouring resentment toward this person) frees up other elements of this relationship to be incorporated into this person's sense of self and destiny.* Perhaps this person experienced a host of things they would not have experienced had they not been with this partner. After all, there must have been good alongside the bad. And despite fantasies about what might have been, what has happened has happened: for mortals, time marches on and cannot be won back. No doubt they learned a lot about the world and themselves from the relationship - intimacy is educative - perhaps they learned a new culture or language. Forgiveness liberates them from the cognitive and emotional burden of calculating and seeking retribution for the wrongdoing (probably an impossible task) as well as the pain that exists alongside the neutral and good. It is in this respect forward-looking. And forgiveness enables them to see these experiences as candidate textures and shapes for the mold of self-formation, for determining one's place and purpose in the world. Could these possibilities be envisioned or had without forgiveness? Perhaps. But given the cognitive and emotional limits of being human, they are probably out of reach.

There is a further, third sense, in which forgiveness is deeply human. Though it may not be logically implied in forgiving the wrongs of others, an awareness of one's own ability to inflict pain, whether that pain is intentional or not, would seem to accompany an awareness of the conditions that cause and constitute pain in oneself. If forgiveness were a virtue - a character trait - then it might be that it entails knowledge that is self-reflexive, encouraging humility toward the external world in the face of one's own imperfection and weakness. In this way, forgiveness is at once a window into the possibilities and limitations of being human. It is divine and, without diminishment, deeply human.

*Perhaps one could achieve cognitive and emotional release without forgiving, through therapy, for example, or through simply forgetting. While this might be possible, it's unlikely. What is more likely is that without forgiveness the old wounds would open up whenever time with that person is remembered, making that separation more difficult to achieve.