(December 12, 2015 at 11:22 am)Catholic_Lady Wrote: They don't have to be mutually exclusive at all. The more common thing is for it to be both. Forgive because it helps the healing process and because you feel it is the right thing to do.
No. The first thing - that's what happens. The latter - that's just what sanctimonious people say in order to appear more noble, and/or to cover the fact that they haven't dealt with the issue at all - they're just going through the motions, because they were indoctrinated since childhood into believing, that it's what they're supposed to do.
How can you tell, if a person truly is at peace with the injustice that happened to them, if all their life they were told, that you want to hear, that they are?
Forcing people to issue blanket forgiveness is like indiscriminately putting only a band-aid on every wound, regardless of its severity. Some people have scratches and a band-aid works well enough, although they could have gone without it altogether. Other people have serious wounds and simply sticking a one-size-fits-all band-aid only makes them fester.
"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one." - George Bernard Shaw
