Article March 16, 1992 Issue

Finding the power to forgive

Forgiving others isn't always easy, but it's never impossible.

William Welsh Holland

We may recognize the futility of compounding some wrong done to us by dwelling on that wrong and resenting the perpetrator. But where can we find the love that alone will wipe out feelings of bitterness and restore our buoyancy and zest for living?

So often one of the main stumbling blocks is the tendency to rehearse perceived injustices, to ingrain the sense of hurt by replaying a set of mental tapes of what so-and-so said or did and reexperiencing all the original responses. Through human effort we may try to avoid these playbacks, but all too often this seems about as achievable as forcing oneself not to think of a white elephant. Or we may try to focus on the good points of those who've wronged us, only to find that the bad points keep popping to the surface like inflated balls pushed underwater.

The Science of Christianity shows that the human mind is indeed incompetent to expunge resentment. It cannot pull itself up by its own bootstraps. Why? Because the worldly conviction that each of us has a personal, finite mind of his own is itself the problem.

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