No sure if this is the correct forum for this. Hypothetical question. If it is not possible to apologize to others who you have emotionally injured in decades past, and provided a person honestly feels true remorse, does that person have any right to forgive him/her self ? I began to think deeply about this because of a book I had been reading. The person in question was emotionally immature due to a childhood of abuse. As the person aged in years, he was still stuck in an emotional immature state. Yes, i agree that it is completely possible for a person to be age 30 (for example) but still be emotionally aged 4. We all understand that a very young child is incapable of considering the needs of others. So, if such a person, was emotionally only age 4, but he had lived a life which caused others emotional pain, but did not even begin to realize that he needed psychological therapy until half way through life, does he have any right to forgive him/her self ? (assuming that psychological therapy did, in fact, cause him/her to realize how he had injured others and now his/her conscious is bothering him/her)
I believe a person always has the right to forgive him/herself. I also believe that forgiving yourself is sometimes the hardest to do. Many of us drag around the baggage of regret for one thing or another, blaming ourselves for things that happened long ago. It would be nice to be able to forgive ourselves and move on.
A simple question that I have pondered much upon and still, the truthful answer has eluded me. It is very hard to say that I forgive myself for altering other lives through whatever actions I imposed upon them but I definitely can say that I’ll never do them again. But then, there’s the accountability issue for which if not for my own remorse, there would be none realized. I can also say that I am a totally different person since those transgressions but that doesn’t make the past results any less damaging. It is true that the past is the past and there’s nothing I can change with the exception of changing myself but the thoughts of past actions with the results of hurting others will always be a reminder of whom I used to be and can be if I allowed it. In my case, seeking forgiveness with a truthfully humble and contrite spirit is a key element. In some cases it is impossible to forgive myself but to seek and receive forgiveness does lighten the load I have to carry on my journey based on faith. And as a note, if not for my faith and the forgiveness that it entails, I cannot be sure that my life would have moved on this far.
I believe that if you have the capacity to be contrite, then you are "deserving" of forgiveness. Your question is often a significant obstacle to people growing and moving forward in their lives...all that guilt & shame [regret] that must be looked at prevents people from taking that first step, or from knowing how. I drank a lot and did other stuff (including hurting other people) because of having a similar background, and got clean in 1990 (and have stayed that way) through various 12 Step programs. I've listed the Steps from AA because those are the ones I'm most familiar with, but all programs have something nearly identical. The highlighted ones may be germane to what you're asking, and might be of help. 1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable. 2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. 3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. 4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. 5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. 6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. 7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. 8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. 9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. 10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. 11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. 12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs. It sounds like you are working Steps 4 through 10 in your life & circumstances. Everyone finds these to be horribly difficult because it requires that we confront what we have done, with "Do I deserve to be free of my guilt?" being present in our minds. Most--if not all--of us return over time and repeat these steps with the perspective we have at each point in our lives. I linked those steps back to just one of many websites that give a brief explanation & discussion of each. I think they might help give you clarity and walk you through this however you choose. There are resources out there for every step, but especially for Steps 8, 9 and 10 because of all the baggage implicit in them. You are treading ground that millions have trod...including myself...regardless of how you got here. You ain't the first, and you certainly are not alone. And we all deserve peace.
I talked to a dying man I had know vaguely for many years. He had done many socially unacceptable things his whole life. and now he was afraid. I told him it did not matter what he had done, if he was sorry, because Jesus had suffered greatly and died for him, to take on his burden and wipe his sins away. This man (I remembered his youth) was raised by a slightly Catholic family. I told his sister I thought her brother was terrified and might need a counselor. I watched the movie The Passion. I had to stop it the first time but eventually I got through it. It made me think.
It isn’t that i do not live comfortably in my own skin because I do. And, it isn’t that I sit around and dwell on the past because that would be mental suicide just as it would be for most of the civilized world. Now, I can’t speak for anyone else because I’m the only one who knows how I am wired hence the way I wrote my post. For me to say that I totally forgive myself for past transgressions would be a lie and to be truthful, I feel that if I had that ability then I wouldn’t need a savior. As the Master instructed: Forgive us our sins as we forgive others. And with that the Lord said He will not only forgive us but forget it but that said, He didn’t instruct US to forget what we have done. Do note that the Apostle Paul lamented heavily about his persecution of those who followed Jesus. He didn’t say anything about forgiving himself but was grateful for God’s grace. To me, they’re learning tools and without remembering and learning from those errors, how then can we move on and grow? It is as I alluded to earlier. The only thing that I am concerned with is being forgiven by others and ultimately by God.
As I was rereading a few passages in that book, I thought more and more about the past childhood abuse. If the parents were responsible for fouling up a child, and that abuse affected the persons behavior until much later in life, perhaps the PARENTS are the ones responsible for the behavior of the child/adult ?
. We are all the products of our upbringing, good or bad; but our parents are not responsible for how we turn out in our life. Some people have parents that abuse the children, and some children grow up to be abusers, and some grow up to hate abuse. We can have really wonderful parents, and still not follow any of those precepts we learned as a child, it is all up to each person to make the decisions in life, and to accept responsibility for those decisions. As far as forgiving ourself, I think that we do need to do this as well as we can, even though it is a hard thing. Once we have accepted responsibility, and decided that we regret the decision we made, and are not going to do it again, then just going on with life and making amends the best way we can is about all we can do.
Makes you wonder what their upbringing was like, huh? I've wondered that. Perhaps there are things we are better off not knowing.
Bobby, I love this post. To believe your mistakes are forgiven and forgotten by God, but not forgotten by you. You should remember them as touchstones to help you make better choices in your future evolution.
You have reminded me of where I was in college, thinking over the possibilities of afterlife. As you went over your life, you had to see/experience the wrongs you had done to others and then forgive YOURSELF to progress. That could be how one goes to hell. Imagine how long it would take a person like Hitler to move on.
I remain convinced that abusive parents create fouled up children. It is well known that a very large percentage of prison convicts are/were victims of child abuse. That can not be a coincidence. It may not be the best analogy, but if a dog is beaten as a puppy, one of two things are likely to happen. 1.) It will grow up to become a dangerous dog. 2.) It will become a whimpering, cringing adult.
I think of this often. It sets your expectations for how safe you are (or are not) in the world, and for how trustworthy other people are (or are not.)