Greetings ad peace be with you Serinity;
Not always, I'd say. Sometimes forgiving may encourage more wrongdoing or crimes.
You can forgive someone a past wrongdoing, that does not make you into a doormat, you don't have to live with continued violence. People have the right to be angry, sadly in life there are so many times we cannot get justice for the things that are done to us and our loved ones. If we cannot get justice and we hold onto anger it eats away at us, we often take out our anger on those closest to us.
When we forgive, we give up the right to think with clenched fists, hoping the other person suffers. The chances are we are not perfect, we need to be forgiven for things we have done, we pray for forgiveness, but this makes more sense if we can first forgive others.
And I don't think forgiving someone stealing 10$ is the same as forgiving someone for killing a loved one.
I believe that forgiveness is the same in both cases, the difference is the grief you suffer. I could not imagine the grief I would suffer, if my son died of cancer or some other natural cause. If I lost £10, I would be annoyed, but I would get over it.
But if I found out a coworker had stolen £10 from me, there is a mixture of feelings, both anger and loss. Now it almost seems that the anger of theft becomes more important than the grief I would have suffered if I had just lost the money. It would be the same mixture of feelings for the loss of my son, whether it was natural causes or criminal blame.
I have experienced forgiveness twice, in circumstances that made the difference between death and life. One lady was in the process of committing suicide, after the death of a loved one. I spent a couple of hours with her talking about forgiveness. I said death is not the problem, we all die at some point, but it is not in your nature to die a bitter, twisted and angry person, even if you continue taking the pills, search in your heart for a way to forgive this person. She chose life and forgave the person.
I think there are limits to forgiving. Or at least, there are ways of doing it. Sometimes forgiving can be a good thing, other times it will be a bad thing.
I believe I was unfairly sacked from a job I had been doing for ten years. I never had a day of sick, I did a lot of the jobs other people were afraid to do, caring for people with challenging behaviour and learning disabilities.
Even to this day I think it was unfair, but I feel it is better to forgive and strive to overcome any anger I have for them. So, to help me overcome my anger, I have done about fifteen hundred hours of voluntary work for the people who sacked me. I shall be going back again on Friday to do another five, and in November I will voluntarily take a couple of the guys on holiday for a week. At minimum wages I have probably given them about £10,000 of my time. Every now and then, I come into contact with the people responsible for my sacking.
People say I am mad, I should have sued for compensation, and I agree with them. But I cannot explain the profound sense of peace that I feel, it is beyond money. At the old age of 62, I found another job, the day after being sacked.
About six months after being sacked, another branch of the company that sacked me, asked me to come and work for them part time. So now I have been working for about five years for the people who sacked me, crazy. I don’t understand life at all, I should have retired a couple of years ago.
My belief is, that the person who is able to forgive, gains more than the transgressor who is forgiven. I believe it is important to forgive, even if the other person does not say sorry.
Holding onto anger eats away at you. Anger is like picking up a burning coal, with the intention of throwing it at the person who angers you, and the person who gets burned the most is you. The longer you hold onto the burning coal of anger the hotter it becomes.
And Allah :swt: knows best.
Amen.
In the spirit of praying to a merciful God.
Eric
