Saturday, March 04, 2006
To err is human; to forgive, divine...
What does it mean to forgive? In the literary sense, forgiveness is defined as 'the act of forgiving' with forgiving given as 'to cease to feel resentment against (an offender)' (source: Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary).
And within forgiveness, there are 2 kinds.
1. Divine Forgiveness: the kind afforded by God to Man; and
2. Human Forgiveness: the kind afforded between 2 individuals
The above 2 concepts are expounded in here.
But all this extends to forgiveness of sorts between 2 entities, and not forgiveness from within directed to oneself. How do you really forgive yourself?
From a Christian perspective, I would suppose that forgiveness within oneself is to first acknowledge that you do not have the ability to forgive. Only through Him can you truly be reprieved of all sins (the notion of sin taking on a general meaning here). And once you realize that it's through God that makes all things possible, forgiveness included, then you would strive to maintain a right relationship with Him. And to establish a right relationship would mean to constantly seek and know Christ and then to follow His commandments and mandates. Therefore, the first and foremost issue at hand is to have faith. The concept of faith is discussed here.
For the more secular sort of personal forgiveness, I guess that the most validating way is to discover the baseline issues that are at hand that made you feel this way in the first place, and then to allow yourself to learn from the mistakes made (this is based on the assumption that a mistake has occurred and therefore needs forgiving). And then from learning from that mistake, make sure that it shouldn't happen again.
It takes a big person to forgive another, but it takes an even bigger person to forgive oneself. We must try to master the art of forgiving - for others' sake, and for our own.
And as Alexander Pope puts it: 'To err is human; to forgive, divine.'
Take it easy, Keep it real...
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