BOSTON (CBS) – In many cultures and religions, forgiveness plays a role in the healing of the soul.
Doctors say in a stressful world, it’s more important than ever because carrying anger or resentment just adds to anxiety.
What’s more, retention of negative emotions of anger and hatred undermine our physical health or mental health, and not surprisingly, our spiritual well-being.
WBZ-TV’s Paula Ebben reports
That’s the theory behind the book “The Forgiveness Project” by Rev. Michael Barry.
Rev. Barry actually considers the “inability to forgive” a disease which can affect our health, especially if you’re fighting a long-term illness.
“We know chronic anxiety and distress causes your digestive system to under-function, we know it effects our cardiovascular system, but it also affects our immune system.”
On the streets of Boston, people agree that holding on to anger has consequences.
Some young women we spoke with compared it to “poison” and even said they believe it endangers heart health.
Rev. Barry says there are no magic steps to forgiving, but he does say we can find forgiveness by understanding our desire to forgive, our humility, our spirituality and admitting when we are angry.
“Knowing forgiveness,” says Barry “is at least teaching people some coping skills when we know we eventually are going to find wounds and bumps and grinds along the way.”
He says once you forgive, you release the burden of hatred and only then can your healing begin.
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This article was originally written concerning 9/11 and can we forgive.
However, the heart of the article explains about forgiveness and when it is RIGHT to forgive.
I am sure everyone here has had someone they respected in the workplace; a relative; or a friend who betrays a trust…right?
The bottom line on forgiveness is that to forgive — the one who “deliberately” caused you pain and suffering has to “ask for forgiveness.” It is only common sense that we can’t truly forgive if we know they (who ever they “is”) will just do it again!):
THE PRICE FOR FORGIVENESS
G-d’s great gift to us is a heavenly pardon. But His present is predicated on a condition. What He asks us to do before He grants us forgiveness is to acknowledge that we were wrong and that we renounce our sinful behavior.
“Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our G-d, and He will abundantly pardon.” (Isaiah 55:7)
Forgiveness is willing to overlook the sins of the past for the sake of an altered future. It is ready to pardon the most terrible wrongs for the price of remorse, regret and the desire for a new beginning. But the one thing G-d’s forgiveness is unwilling to do is to condone vicious crimes by simply accepting them. An unrepentant sinner mistakes G-d’s mercy for permission to continue in his ways. To forgive such a person isn’t kindness; its cruelty to all those who’ll be hurt by the evil that wasn’t stopped before it could do more harm.
February 24, 2012 at 8:16 pm | | Report comment