I started M. Scott Peck's Further Along the Road Less Traveled: The Unending Journey Toward Spiritual Growth.
In my latest reading, one topic that Peck discussed was forgiveness.
According to Peck, some people act as if forgiveness is an easy task.
Peck refers to a "a very popular New Age book called Love Is Letting Go of Fear,
by Gerald Jampolsky, a fellow psychiatrist" (page 41), and Peck
characterizes Jampolsky's position on forgiveness to be that we should
not judge people but rather should seek out the good that is within
them. Peck believes that such an approach ignores the reality of evil.
For Peck, while there may be a reason that somebody hurt us, such as
damage that he received during his childhood, his hurting us was still
wrong. Forgiveness is us acknowledging that the person who hurt us was
wrong, and then choosing to forgive him. As Peck says on page 42, "Only after a guilty verdict can there be a pardon."
It's a lot of hard work for us to forgive, according to Peck, and yet
it is necessary, for unforgiveness is like us chewing our leg: we're
hurting ourselves when we don't forgive.
Do I agree with Peck?
I'm not exactly in a position to critique what he says about
forgiveness, for I know for sure that I'm not too good at forgiving
people! But I doubt that practicing what he says about forgiveness will
help me to forgive. I already know that people did me wrong. My
problem is that I revisit those wrongs in my mind over and over again,
often imagining myself telling people off.
So what should I tell
myself to help me to forgive? Although I'm not good at forgiveness,
some thoughts do help me better than others. Trying to remind myself
that we're all imperfect human beings in need of forgiveness helps me to
have a better attitude towards others, including those who have done me
wrong. While that works (somewhat) for me, however, I'm not in any
position to tell someone else (such as a victim of abuse) that it
absolutely must work for him or her. But, overall, I agree with Peck
about what forgiveness is: recognizing that someone has done us wrong,
and making a choice to let that go, to release its hold on us.