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There's some truth to this, but this therapeutic reduction does a disservice to the traditional (and fuller) practice of forgiveness: > In the new therapeutic
by jonstaab 6y ago
There's some truth to this, but this therapeutic reduction does a disservice to the traditional (and fuller) practice of forgiveness:
> In the new therapeutic dispensation, however, forgiveness is all about the forgiver, and his or her power and well-being. We have come a long way from Shakespeare’s Portia, who spoke so memorably in The Merchant of Venice about the unstrained “quality of mercy,” which “droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven” and blesses both “him that gives and him that takes.” And an even longer way from Christ’s anguished cry from the cross, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” And perhaps even further yet from the most basic sense of forgiveness, the canceling of a monetary debt or the pardoning of a criminal offense, in either case a very conscious suspension of the entirely rightful demands of justice.
From: https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/the-post-modern-self/articles/the-strange-persistence-of-guilt https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/the-post-modern-self/artic..., which I highly recommend reading, as it's super relevant not only to our personal lives, but to the cultural moment we find ourselves in.
- jkingsbery 6y agoI agree. From a high-minded perspective, "Forgiveness has a PR problem" only if one is talking about a group that ignores the canon of religious teachers and what they've said about the importance of forgiveness and mercy, and what that actually means. From a more basic approach, I don't know what playground Holub was on as a kid leading her to say "we're taught what we'll call "traditional" forgiveness when we're 4 or 5 years old," but I was taught based on Mr. Rogers (and my daughters were taught based on Daniel Tiger), that forgiveness still requires consequences. (See: "Saying sorry is the first step, then how can I help": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oICZVpmtL4c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oICZVpmtL4c).