A woman recently came to me with a request: Please tell me if I am right. I composed a prayer and I believe that this prayer will help my soul and those whom I teach to pray in the same way.
She began to read her prayer: Lord, I forgive everyone who has offended me. I forgive my father and accept him as he is. I forgive my fate and accept it as it is.
«And you think this will help you?» I smile.
Smiling back, she retorts: But you always say that forgiveness heals.
«It heals», I nod, «if you know why you are forgiving. So let me ask you: what is forgiveness and why do you forgive?»
She pondered and then asked confusedly: Indeed, what is forgiveness?
«Alright», I said, «I'll explain». We forgive in order to preserve love. Therefore, forgiveness is primarily about preserving love in the soul. Secondly: forgiveness is the acknowledgment of Divine will in everything that has happened. Any regret, resentment, and hatred directed against the person who offended us is addressed to God. Therefore, not forgiving another person and regretting the past is blasphemy.
Forgiveness is accepting what has happened and recognizing in it a higher will and a higher good. That is, recognizing that any event that happened to us pushes us towards love and God. Thirdly: forgiveness is recognizing that we ourselves, through our deep state, provoked another person. Inner stinginess and greed attract theft, condemnation attracts betrayal. Contempt attracts assault, jealousy attracts infidelity. Sensitiveness attracts humiliation.
The loss of love in the soul causes an explosion of inner aggression, which attracts misfortunes and troubles: an unknown person may hit and insult, or a car accident may happen. Thus, forgiveness is the recognition of our imperfection, the lack of love in the soul, and therefore, the readiness to change ourselves, our character, and to educate our soul.
Fourthly: forgiveness also means helping the person who committed the wrongdoing. We love our children, we do not judge or despise them, but this does not mean that they cannot be punished. Education implies love, and love always combines two opposites, that is, positive and negative emotions. Submission, abstinence, self-restraint, sacrifice — all this often causes negative emotions. But without them, positive emotions cannot exist.
Therefore, forgiving another person implies the exclusion of hatred, condemnation, and resentment, preserving love for him, and helping him in development, that is, in acquiring a sense of love and purifying the soul. For example, for a criminal persisting in hatred and destruction of his soul, forgiveness and help may come in the form of capital punishment. If a person kills love in the soul and persists in this, the only way to help him is with love and strict actions.
But we must understand that help and salvation should be directed primarily not at the body and consciousness of a person, but at the love in his soul. God loves all of us, He gives us life, health, various pleasures, but He also gives us diseases, misfortunes, death, and all this educates love in us.
S. N. Lazarev, «Man of the Future. Parental Education 1»
Log In to post comments