International Forgiveness Institute

10/18/2026

Because forgiving others is a moral virtue, we cannot reduce forgiveness to a psychological technique. For example, we cannot engage in “the empty chair technique” once and have a deeply hurt forgiver sit in the chair of the one who acted unjustly, then gain full insight into that person’s wounds and develop overflowing compassion toward this person. To clarify, there is nothing wrong with this technique, but we cannot think of it as complete. As an analogy, if you take out a gym membership to get into physical shape, your goal is not reached if you go on the treadmill one time or do 20 bicep curls only once. To become physically fit, you need long-term repetition. It is the same with becoming forgivingly fit.

10/17/2026

To those like Nietzsche who think that love and the equality of persons are weakened views of humanity, my response is this: How are you distorting the moral virtue of love? How are you misunderstanding it? To love is to help with the survival of all others, not to destroy for one’s own survival, dominance, and control. In seeking others’ betterment, one finds vitality and joy and gives others the freedom to do the same.

10/16/2026

We have quickened our world as we get to destinations faster by car, as we see what our friend in a distant land got at the birthday party today, as we are entertained with a 10-second video… but what problem is created? We risk becoming way too superficial, way too unfocused, way too unchallenged, and missing perseverance, missing growth in the moral virtue of forgiveness, and missing the golden opportunity of growing in our humanity and in assisting others in such growth.

10/14/2026

Dr. Robert Enright's latest post in Psychology Today. The article was elevated to Essential Reads in the topic of Forgiveness and Identity.

Erik Erikson observed that a healthy identity is necessary for further development. Living with emotional wounds can lead to a negative identity. Forgiveness can reverse this.

10/14/2026

Why do you say that I likely will forgive better if I see the “potentiality” for love in the one who hurt me? To be quite honest with you, all I see is narcissism in the one who abruptly walked out on our relationship.

Aristotle makes the important distinction between Actuality (what is occurring now) and Potentiality (what underlies the current situation, including the capacity for greater perfection, even if we never reach true perfection). The one who abandoned you had the potential within to grow as a person, to develop more goodness within that then can be behaviorally demonstrated outwardly to others, including you. The narcissism of the other is a current Actuality. The person is capable of much more with conscious, deliberate effort to bring out a fuller humanity, a deeper sense and expression of love.

10/13/2026

How would you define forgivable offenses? More specifically, can someone forgive another’s failure or deficiency in character (even if the person committed no wrongful act)? For instance, someone might be indifferent to me without meaning to hurt me, but I might still feel offended, even though I know he or she didn’t do anything wrong to me.

Deficiency of character shows up as behavior, either as a bad act (an act of commission) or as a failure to act when one should (an act of omission). When someone treats you with indifference, that is an act of omission because you are a person of worth, and others should not treat you as if you were invisible. This, of course, does not mean that we have to pour ourselves out for everyone we meet. Your example centers on actual interactions that make you feel ignored. We should not treat others as if they do not count or have no worth (an act of omission). When this occurs, those so ignored can, if they choose, forgive the other.

10/12/2026

As a person walks the path of forgiveness, there is a tendency to say, “I have not done enough; I have not reached perfect forgiveness.” This kind of thinking expects too much of the forgiveness process. As Lewis Smedes said in his book, Forgive and Forget, forgiveness is for imperfect people. We rarely reach a perfect state of forgiving. We must be careful not to disparage ourselves if we still have some work to do on the forgiveness process once we exert time and effort on it. Often in our research, when people are gravely hurt by others and are very low in forgiving, they tend to go to the middle part of our forgiveness scale, not to the higher end.

10/11/2026

When you are deeply hurt by others, when your heart is hurting, there is no such thing as the forgiveness pill. There is no such thing as the easy way. When others make you suffer from their unjust treatment, the way out is a different kind of suffering, which is growth in the heroic moral virtue of forgiveness. This new suffering is very different from the original suffering from unjust treatment because the forgiveness treatment leads to deep healing so that you can move on well with your life. The suffering from the effects of grave injustice, if you do not address these effects, may never end.

10/10/2026

A criticism of forgiveness that falls flat:

Encouraging forgiveness might short-circuit the anger process. In other words, people tend to need time to feel anger, which shows self-respect. So, don’t encourage. This, of course, is not a critique of forgiving itself. Instead, it is a criticism of those who might put pressure on others who need a time of self-reflection to work out the anger first. Our Process Model of forgiveness, since its creation over three decades ago, always has called for a period of anger and self-reflection as needed by the forgiver. Thus, forgiveness itself and even the encouragement of others to forgive are not the problems. In the case of encouragement, this depends on how the well-meaning person goes about trying to encourage another person to forgive. Is it with gentleness and understanding, or is it with at least a pinch of force (which should not happen)?

10/09/2026

Your practicing forgiveness now may pay unexpected dividends for you decades from now. As an example, a person visited me when her husband unexpectedly left her and her two children, whom she now is raising on her own. This is her view of the situation: “I have been practicing forgiveness now for many years under many different circumstances. Forgiveness has become my friend. I know how to forgive my husband. Had I not taken the time over the years to forgive different people, to nurture forgiveness in my heart, I could be in big trouble now, with a big bag of resentment that I could be carrying with me. This will not happen…..because forgiveness is my friend.” Each decision to forgive and each act of forgiveness now may pay great dividends for you and others 20 years from now.