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The National Association for Christian Recovery

You are here: Home / NACR Institute for Recovery Ministry / Recovery 101: Pastoral Care and Abuse / Forgiveness and Recovery

Forgiveness and Recovery

There are few topics more dangerous than ‘forgiveness’ when the context is abuse. Forgiveness has been (and is) used against people who have been abused. It is presented as something you must do — under threat of divine punishment. It is presented as something you ‘should’ have done a long time ago. It is as if you become the ‘bad person’ in a relationship if you fail to forgive. . . and nothing can fix that, nothing is more important — not even the abuse you are trying to forgive. On top of all this, there are all kinds of things that mimic forgiveness without having any of it’s substance. You can forget what happened and pretend that is the same as forgiveness, but it’s just forgetting, not forgiving. You can stop feeling about what happened and pretend that is the same as forgiveness, but it’s just not-feeling, not forgiveness. So what is forgiveness? Is it good for us? And how the &^%$ do you actually do it?

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LECTURE NOTES:

When a person harms another person both parties acquire tasks that need to be done. The person who did the harm must somehow find the serenity, courage and wisdom to confess, to repent and to make amends (there are many other language sets that might be used here). The person who is harmed must somehow find the serenity, courage and wisdom to grieve the losses associated with the abuse, work through the many steps which lead to healing of the trauma and to forgive. Both of these sets of tasks are difficult. There is hard work to be done by all involved parties.

There are, of course, many difficult questions which arise such as: What exactly constitutes ‘forgiveness’?, When is it appropriate? When is it inappropriate? What exactly is involved in confession? In repentance? In making amends? And when are these spiritual disciplines appropriate or inappropriate? Is it desirable–or even possible–to forgive someone who has not made amends? For some of my thoughts on this I recommend watching the video of a lecture I give on this topic. It is 45 min. long, so you may need to plan some time for it. You can find it HERE [opens a new window]

I hope the video has given you a lot to think about. The only thing I’d like to add here are some thoughts about two very practical questions: 1) How can someone in a pastoral role help someone who has been harmed to do the work they need to do? And 2) How can someone in a pastoral role help someone who has harmed another person to do the work they need to do?

Helping someone who has been harmed to do the work they need to do

What helps(encourage this)What doesn’t help(discourage this)
getting helpisolation,self reliance
safety (Does this person have a safe place to go when they leave your office? A safe place for the children?)fear
remembering the offenseforgetting what happened, or remembering without support or adequate safety
acknowledging the harm donedenying or minimizing the harm
expecting forgiveness to be a kind of ‘reclaiming’ of selfexpecting forgiveness to be a kind of ‘giving in’ to the person who did the harm
freely choosing to forgivechoosing resentment or revenge, ‘choosing’ forgiveness under compulsion
knowing that forgiveness need not imply restoration of relationshipexpecting that forgiveness will make things ‘like they were before it happened’
participation in a culture that values forgivenessparticipation in a culture that values forgiveness but is clueless about confession, repentance and making amends
understanding that forgiveness is the endpoint of a process that takes timepremature forgiveness, skipping important parts of the process
telling the truth about the process of forgiveness, letting the process take as long as it takespretending to forgive, ‘turning it into ministry’ as quickly as possible
resisting shame/blameobsessing about ‘what I did wrong’
declining to answer unanswerable qustionsanswering unanswerable questions
accept common humanity with offendertreat offender as ‘other’
restructuring of power in relationship to offenderunchanged power dynamics in relationship

Helping someone who has harmed another person to do the work they need to do

What helps (encourage this)What does not help (discourage this)
confessiongeneric, perfunctory or formal apologies (e.g. “I’m sorry if you were offended,” “Tell your sister you’re sorry. . .I’m sorry” etc.)
listening to what the person who has been harmed sayscontrolling the dialog
accepting responsibilityasking for forgiveness (esp. attempts to transfer obligation, “I’ve done my part, now it’s your turn”)
acknowledging that things can’t stay the sameapology as a strategy to maintain status quo
refusing to defend behaviorexplaining ‘why’ it happened
repentance, clear evidence of contritionself-harm, self-loathing (expecting this to change attitude of person harmed)
working on your own issuestrying to be ‘helpful’ to person who we harmed
relinquishing powerinsisting on continuation of existing power structure
resisting shame/blameincreasing shame/blame as strategy to make us more ‘forgivable’
participating in a community with a high capacity for telling the truthisolating, participating in a community of people who are unable to be honest about their problems

I’m sure there are important points I’ve left out, but I hope this will give you some ideas about how to be helpful. Additional very helpful stuff can be found here:

Recommended articles:

The F Word: Forgiveness
, An interview with David Augsburger
Finding the Freedom in Forgiveness
by Juanita Ryan
On Forgiveness
by Dale Wolery


RECOMMENDED READING

Helping People Forgive
, David Augsburger (Westminster John Knox Press, 1996) ISBN-10: 0664256864
The New Freedom of Forgiveness, David Augsburger (Moody Publishers, 2000) ISBN-10: 0802432921

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