Steve Mensing, Editor
♦ While I don’t hold membership in any traditional religion or spirituality, I do see a great value in sincerely FELT forgiveness. I helps the forgiver and not the perpetrator.
Real forgiveness takes time–its an internal emotional process where someone feels through their anger, rancor, and hatred and other related emotions that eat away at folks and clouds and distorts how they view others and the world around them. It’s eventually healing for the forgiver. They don’t have to carry this stressful baggage around–that’s what hatred and rancor are. Even when the individual eventually fully forgives, they maintain a clarity of awareness about the perpetrator whether they still are a danger or have truly mended their ways.
While I can’t speak for the folks who showed up at Dylann Roof’s bond hearing and spoke about “forgiving” him at yesterday’s confrontation, if they sincerely felt what they were saying this may have been an important first step toward experiencing forgiveness and the emotional freedom it provides. People who arrive at full forgiveness never forget what happened to them, they just don’t carry the intense anger and hatred any more. They acknowledge and accept what happened and viscerally experienced it through to emotional closure.
One thing about devout racists, besides their pronounced hatred, is an inability to forgive. Their anger and hatred often sticks with them for life. On occasion some racists will have a “turning about” where they will begin to see others in a new light divorced from stereotypes and hatred. They will have undergone a period of intensive inner reflection and feeling,
Genuine forgiveness is a great healing balm and it resides within us.
