It takes two to forgive

cross-post from the columbia spectator

by Sarah Ngu

I don’t celebrate Yom Kippur, which occurred this past weekend, but lately, I have been thinking about what forgiveness means. It’s an issue that is stowed away in most people’s closets—there’s always a slight grievance or grudge that one isn’t fully rid of, whether it’s against a parent or an ex. Yet, it’s also a word that’s thrown around a lot, confusingly conflated with a lot of similar words such as “condoning,” “tolerance,” or “letting go.” I want to unpack the complicated dynamics behind true “forgiveness” to clear away possible misconceptions about it. Forgiveness is a two-way process that is central not just to our relationships, but also to our own self-development.

Generally, people forgive in two ways. Say a close friend lets out a huge secret that you had asked her to keep private. You either discount the wrong act (“It wasn’t that big of a secret, so whatever”) or you discount the intentionality of the wrongdoer (“She probably was drunk—she wasn’t trying to be a bitch”).

But if the secret really was a big deal and your friend was consciously trying to harm you, then you discount the relationship entirely (“I don’t give a damn about her anyhow”), freeing you from any hate and hurt. It always hurts more when a friend rather than a stranger hurts you, so you’ll just turn her into a stranger.

But say you don’t want to lose the friendship—you value it more than what she did to you. If you want reconciliation and a restoration of a relationship, then you must get to that laborious task of forgiveness.

When you offer forgiveness, you not only imply that she did something wrong (or there would be no need for forgiveness in the first place), but you also imply that you want the friendship to continue. The catch here is that forgiveness is a two-way process—it takes two to forgive. The offender must apologize and the other must accept it.

However, isn’t it the noble and high route to forgive even though your friend won’t apologize? Yes, but to offer forgiveness and to be forgiven are two different things. You can continually offer forgiveness to her out of love, as you should, but she will never be “forgiven” until she accepts your forgiveness.

For her to accept your forgiveness, then, she must acknowledge that she did indeed do something wrong and that she will never do it again. She must, in so many words, say, “I regret what I did, and I’ll never do it again. I put that secret-disclosing part of me away forever.”

She is essentially offering up a new self, putting aside her old self that hurt you. For you to follow through on your offer of forgiveness means that you have to accept this new self of hers. You must, from now on, treat her as if she never let out your secret because that was her old self—her new self would never do that. You disassociate her present self from her past wrongdoing, and the relationship begins anew.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that this model of forgiveness that I’ve set up draws heavily from how Jesus Christ forgives humankind, so it isn’t too original. Nevertheless, whether talking about God-human relationships or human-human relationships, the essence of forgiveness remains the same—to forgive is to forget. This really is a staggering task, and I don’t believe it’s entirely possible—well, humanly speaking—in certain situations. To choose to forgive is to take a risk and open yourself up to hurt, as that friend of yours might hurt you again. But you either choose to forgive or you live your life closed off, invulnerable, Ayn Rand-ian strong, and yet without love. As one of my favorite authors, C.S. Lewis, wrote in “The Four Loves,” “If you want to make sure of keeping [your heart] intact, you must give your heart to no one. … Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket … it will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”