Miracle of forgiveness is central to many faiths

The garden is serene. Its colors are defused in soft light filtered through its trees. Green. Brown. Gray. Gray-green. No Crayola colors here. The leaves seem to rustle, but they make no sound.

A monk appears. His shoes are soundless on a pebbled path. He stops, reaches down. He picks up a turtle stranded on its back and turns it back onto its feet.

The monk walks on. He comes to a stream. On its bank, a fish out of water flounders and flops. He scoops it up, returns it to the stream.

The monk continues along the pebbled path, but soon he stops again. He stoops, a stiff sheet of paper in one hand. Gently, he slides the paper along the ground, under a tiny spider. With the paper, he lifts the spider from the path and sets it on a tree limb.

The monk pauses. He takes a tissue and blows his nose. A disembodied voice says, “Kleenex antiviral tissue kills 99.9 percent of cold and flu viruses.” The monk looks at the tissue. Now the voice booms, “That’s right. It kills!”

The monk looks mortified. He looks heavenward. Softened, the ethereal voice says, “Thank goodness for forgiveness.”

The commercial’s punch line is a play on the long-standing Kleenex tagline: “Thank goodness for Kleenex.”

In real life, I doubt this monk -- given his robes and the Zen-like garden he walks in -- would look toward heaven for his forgiveness. Though Buddha taught that the greatest gift in life is acceptance and forgiveness, Buddhism does not embrace a personal, omnipresent or omniscient God to whom he’d look for forgiveness.

I was reminded more of the Buddhist practice of acceptance and forgiveness when a woman I know named Jan Risher told this story within a story, a story she says changed her life.

Fifteen years ago, before she was married and the mother of two young children, a red-haired comedian on a television show caught her attention as she walked through the one-bedroom apartment where she lived in Reno.

The stand-up comic was recounting a story about a guy in San Francisco who walked out one day to where he had parked his Jeep Cherokee at a curb on one of the city’s hills. On his windshield he discovered a parking ticket.

Yanking the ticket from under the wiper that pinned it to his car, he started to curse a blue streak. While he seethed, a skateboarder on his way down the hill offered him a split-second of advice: “Acknowledge, man, and move on.”

Until then, Risher remembers, “I thought my anger or frustration or whatever negative emotion I was embracing would somehow empower me.”

She realized that day what nearly all religions teach. Forgiveness, not anger or dogged resentment, is restorative.

In Hinduism, resentment and retaliation as well as injury and injustice are thought to create unhealthy spiritual energy or prana, which binds the wronged to the wrongdoer. Only forgiveness breaks this bond, transferring the unhealthy energy from the wronged back to the wrongdoer.

In Judaism, Christianity and Islam, which embrace a personal, all-powerful and all-knowing God, forgiveness has more aspects. In these faiths, wrongs done to others are also wrongs against God.

So not only do Jews, Christians and Muslims endeavor to forgive one another, they also seek forgiveness from God.

During the year, observant Jews, Christians and Muslims spend long periods in self-examination and contrition. Jews at Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, Christians at Lent and Advent and Muslims at Ramadan take stock of their wrongdoings. With the intent of not repeating them, they ask God, family members, friends and fellow believers to forgive them.

In Psalm 86, Israel’s King David describes God as “good, ready to forgive, and abundant in mercy to all those who call upon You.” Judaism, Christianity and Islam teach that believers are to be likewise.

The Prophet Muhammad wrote that Allah commanded him to “forgive those who do wrong to me.”

When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, part of that prayer was, “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

And he went on to say, “If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” Some consider this one of Jesus’ “hard sayings.”

It has long been said, “To err is human; to forgive is divine.” Forgiveness doesn’t come instinctively to human nature.

In recent years, though, a great deal of research has suggested that forgiveness, as difficult as it might be, may be worth the effort.

In January 2001, Christianity Today published a 16-page article titled, “The Forgiveness Factor.” Social scientists, it said, “are discovering the healing power of a Christian virtue.”

The story focused on the interpersonal forgiveness research of Robert Enright -- professor of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and president of the International Forgiveness Institute -- and his colleagues, and the writings of Fuller Seminary professor, Christian theologian and ethicist Lewis Smede, particularly his book “Forgive and Forget.”

Smede, who died in 2002, is quoted in “The Forgiveness Factor” as saying, “untold pain is brought about in the world by people’s unwillingness to forgive and the corresponding passion to get even.”

What research discovered was that people often, even if willing, don’t know how to forgive. But social scientists have found that when led through the process, forgiving can lead to emotional and even physical healing.

It seems there is indeed reason to “thank goodness for forgiveness.” And I’ll tell you more about that next week.

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She can be reached at [email protected].

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