Can I learn to forgive?

I am a Catholic.  I haven't just decided this, I was baptised, had holy communion at Catholic Primary School, which was run by nuns and confirmed in Secondary School and spent years in Church Youth Club and even though this was the case, for many years forgiveness was not in my mind, let alone my vocabulary. At home, I was taught to believe that forgiveness was a sign of weakness, and I was certainly not to forgive anyone who hurt me.  

Over the years, I have engaged in revenge which I thought was the right thing to do at those times. How wrong I was. I have since learned the power of forgiving both others and myself.

Forgiveness is one the best things you can learn to do for yourself. It can free you, eradicate anger over time, and leave you open to receiving wonderful things in life.  In my life, I have been hurt and I have hurt others.  I have done some incredibly stupid things and had some incredibly awful things done to me.  Focusing on the past and holding all this anger definitely does me no good.

In the past, the only thing holding me back from forgiveness is fear, the fear of letting someone “off the hook,” the fear of being hurt again in the future, the fear that I may have to change, the fear that I may be perceived by my friends as weak.  These fears, I know seem rational, but they have stopped me from leading a loving, forgiving open life.

Forgiveness is hard, especially as life moves on and each passing moment brings new experiences and new ways we can all be upset or hurt.  Like everyone, I have had my moments of anger at the world, my family, and mostly, myself. I regret some of the things I’ve done in the past, but I know the best apology I can ever give is changed behavior, and that is exactly what I have done. I have changed how I treat others and how I respond when they hurt me.

When I was working on becoming open and eradicating all my blocks, it opened me up to possibility.  I knew that when I was holding in anger, I was carrying the particular situation or individual with me, therefore I was hurting myself more. I knew that I would never move forward unless I learnt to properly let go.

I try so hard to not get mad at myself when I make a mistake, and I try not to get mad at other people as much now.

When I slip up, I forgive myself and realize where I can do better next time. I don’t want negative emotions or memories inside me, so each time they come up I work on releasing them.  When someone hurts me or upsets me I try and be assertive and approach the situation to sort it. 

That does’t mean I always forgive instantly; for some things, it takes me some time.  

Forgiveness for yourself if you aren’t the weight you think you should be, forgiveness to the ex for hurting you, forgiveness for yourself for hurting them, forgiveness for the times you messed up, because you simply cannot take these things back.

Christ’s most famous injunction regarding forgiveness is found in the Our Father prayer,  "Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors" (Matt. 6:12—and it is debts in Greek though the common English translation uses the word trespasses).

So focusing on Jesus, he clearly shows that You have to forgive if you want to be forgiven.

What does it actually mean to forgive someone? there are certain things that commonly go under the name of forgiveness that are difficult or impossible for us to do.  For example, we often think of forgiving people in terms of not being angry with them anymore. When we tell people that we forgive them for what they did, we often smile and try to convey the impression that we have warm feelings even though we still may feel angry.

Since our forgiveness before God is conditional on our willingness to forgive others, a person with a feelings-based understanding of forgiveness could conclude that he isn’t forgiven by God until he has rosy feelings about everyone in the world. This would lead him to try to manufacture positive feelings for others. When these feelings are not forthcoming, it can make him scared for his salvation, emotionally dry, frustrated, or even angry with God for making his salvation contingent on what kind of feelings he has when he doesn’t have full control of them. That way lies despair.  But the feelings-based view of forgiveness is wrong for precisely the reason that we don’t have full control of our feelings, we can influence them. If a particular subject makes us angry, we can try to think about something else. We can ask ourselves questions like "Was it really that bad?" or "What good can come from this?" or "What can I learn from this?" to put the subject in perspective.

As of today, I have not found a way to reach into my body and flip a switch that causes the anger to vanish and be replaced by rosy feelings.  What I can’t control, I believe I am not responsible for because I have only indirect influence on my feelings, I can be responsible for how I strive to manage them but not for having them.

Anger is something God built into us, it plays a useful function. It motivates us to protect things that need protecting, whether they are tangible like family or intangible like our reputation.

The problem for me was that I often experienced too much anger, or anger over the wrong things, and, motivated by anger, all I did was harm rather than help. Overreacting in anger leads us to hurt both others and ourselves.

If everyone stayed angry over each past offense and determined to exact retribution for each one, society would completely fall apart. Society depends on a substantial amount of forgiveness, of "letting things slide" in order to function, and individuals who don’t display the necessary level of forgiveness end up isolating themselves from others.

What I would really like in getting someone’s forgiveness is for things to be just as if I had never offended them.  I would like things to go back to exactly the way they were.  That rarely happens. Even if someone’s ill feelings for us go away, prudence may dictate that they will not treat us in exactly the same way. 

Not everybody is forgiven.  God doesn’t like people being unforgiven, and he is willing to grant forgiveness to all, but he isn’t willing to force it on people who don’t want it. If people are unrepentant of what they know to be sinful, they are not forgiven.  Jesus died once and for all to pay a price sufficient to cover all the sins of our lives, but God doesn’t apply his forgiveness to us in a once-and-for-all manner. He forgives us as we repent. That’s why we continue to pray "Forgive us our trespasses," because we regularly have new sins that we have repented of.