From the category archives:

Forgiveness

Friends Don’t Need to Forgive Each Other, Do They?

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We only need forgiveness if we break a relational law. As in knowing how we ought to treat others, and then not doing it. Now, what about relationships not governed by laws? Like friendships. Are they excluded from all the business of forgiveness?
To approach an answer to this question, let us look at the kind [...]

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Does Forgiveness Work If You Don’t Know What You Forgive?

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Do you have instinctive suspicions about something in your past? I am talking about the sense that someone hurt you. Except you cannot quite identify what that person did, or even if it happened in the first place. If you have such suspicions, how should you deal with them?
Here is what sounds like an [...]

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Why Does Forgiveness Have Power over You?

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There are people in my life that I would like to show more love than I do. Only, something prevents me and I am not always sure what.  Then suddenly this feeling creeps up on me that I want forgiveness to break down the wall between us. Do you know what I am talking about?
I [...]

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When Should You Ask for Forgiveness?

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Last week Brezzylee shared how she asks for forgiveness as a precaution, or a safety net. She asks for forgiveness before she knows that she did something wrong. Just in case she will, later, regret what she did. Because then she is covered. Smart move, that is. Or maybe not. I see three unfortunate consequences [...]

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What Is Your Way of Forgiving Others?

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We all have problem persons in our lives. We give them more thought than others, because they hurt us. They either hurt us in the past or they are hurting us now. It is not always easy to figure out how we best extend forgiveness to them. Here are some options:
1: We say “I forgive [...]

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What Does Your Forgiveness Even Matter?

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In my last question, I wondered if forgiveness involves making excuses for those who hurt us. Today I am thinking about al-Megrahi who was recently set free from a lifetime sentence in a Scottish prison. He is responsible for the death of 270 innocent people at the Lockerbie bombing in 1988.
Now, eight years later, al-Megrahi [...]

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What Is There to Forgive?

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Desmond Tutu’s book, No Future without Forgiveness, has been sitting unread on my shelf for a few years. Finally, I opened it and realized the man says radical things about forgiveness. Some of what he says I do not like. Which, of course, does not mean he is wrong.
Either way, most of us have been [...]

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