The Limits of Forgiveness: When Not to Forgive
The cultural pressure to forgive can become its own form of harm. Several traditions have been clear that there are situations in which the wronged party should hold the claim, at least for now, and is not wrong to do so.
The contemporary conversation about forgiveness, particularly in the more therapeutic vein, has tilted heavily in one direction: forgiveness is portrayed as almost universally healing, and the question of whether to forgive is treated as a question of when, not whether. This tilt has its own costs, and the careful tradition has always made room for the cases where forgiveness should not yet be offered.
The first kind of case is the one in which the harm is still occurring. A wronged party who is being actively harmed by the same person, day after day, is not in a position to forgive. They are in a position to protect themselves. The work of forgiveness, in this case, would require a stillness that the situation does not afford. The cultural pressure on the wronged party to forgive while the harm continues is one of the most damaging patterns in informal religious counseling, and the careful tradition has named it as such. The right response to ongoing harm is the ending of the harm, not the release of the claim against the harmer.
The second kind of case is the one in which the wrongdoer has done no work. The wronged party who extends forgiveness to someone who has not acknowledged the harm, has not changed the conditions that produced the harm, and is in fact actively minimizing or denying the harm is engaging in something that looks like forgiveness but is structurally something else. The Jewish tradition would call it the failure to wait for tshuvah. The Catholic tradition would call it the absence of the preconditions for absolution. The Buddhist tradition would name it as a kind of false equanimity. Across frameworks, there is recognition that the wronged party who releases the claim too soon may be facilitating the wrongdoer's ongoing harm, not ending it.
The third kind of case is the one in which the wronged party has not yet done their own interior work. The premature claim of forgiveness, when the wronged party has not actually moved through the process of recognizing what was done to them, can become a way of avoiding the work. The wronged party performs the forgiveness publicly, hopes the performance will produce the felt sense of release, and then discovers months or years later that the wound is still in their body. The premature forgiveness was a way of skipping the work, and the work was always waiting.
The fourth kind of case is the one in which forgiveness would require the wronged party to betray something they should not betray. The harms done to others — particularly to those who cannot speak for themselves — are not the individual wronged party's to release. A wronged party who was a witness to harm done to others, and who carries the witness, is not obligated to forgive on behalf of the directly harmed. They are obligated to the truth-telling. The forgiveness, if there is to be any, belongs to those who were directly harmed.
The fifth kind of case is the one in which the wronged party is being asked to forgive in order to spare the wrongdoer the consequences they should face. This happens at every scale, from the interpersonal to the institutional. A wrongdoer who is about to face consequences appeals to the wronged party for forgiveness, presented as an alternative to the consequences. The wronged party is then placed in the position of either extending forgiveness, and thereby shielding the wrongdoer from accountability, or refusing forgiveness, and thereby being cast as the vindictive one. This is a manipulation, and the wronged party is not wrong to refuse it.
What is the wronged party in any of these cases obliged to do? They are obliged to themselves, in the long term, not to remain permanently consumed by the wound. The interior work of carrying the unrelieved claim is real, and it is appropriate to invest in eventually lessening its weight. But the public release of the claim, on a timeline that benefits the wrongdoer or the surrounding community more than the wronged party, is not what the careful tradition asks. The wronged party is allowed to hold the claim while they do their own slow interior work, while the wrongdoer either does or fails to do their own work, while the conditions that produced the harm either are or are not changed.
The grammar of this is important. Refusing to forgive prematurely is not the same as refusing to forgive forever. The careful position is: not yet. Not yet, because the conditions have not been met. Not yet, because the work has not been done. Not yet, because the wronged party is still in motion through their own interior. The not-yet is honest. It leaves the door open. It also refuses to walk through the door on a schedule that someone else has imposed.