Article August 3, 1946 Issue

The Joy of Forgiving

LAURA E. LOVETT GUSTUS

"He who forgets a blow suffers nothing; he who remembers it strikes himself many times." So says a Chinese proverb. Indeed, by forgetting a wrong we not only suffer nothing, we regain our peace and our joy.

What joy it is to behold our brother man in his true light as the spiritual idea of God, loving, loved, and lovable! When we accept a false concept of man— when we believe the evidence of the material senses and think that our brother loves us not, that he has been unkind, unjust, or mean —we find that this false belief robs us of the fullness of our joy. Let us drop such robber illusions and find the joy of forgiving!

Has a relative or friend been unkind? Let us see him not as an unpleasant mortal, but as God knows him: as spiritual idea, reflecting and expressing God, divine Love. In truth, then, this one is tender and solicitous, unutterably kind and generous. These are spiritual facts which we need to accept and hold steadfastly in thought. In all the realm of the real, no one has ever been unkind, no one has ever been hurt. The refusal to accept the untrue picture of man and the determination to see him as God's own image wipe away all sense of hurt and constitute true forgiveness.

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