Legendary leadership, sales, and success influencer Brian Tracey has this to say on the subject of forgiveness:
The law of forgiveness says that you are a healthy person to the degree to which you can freely forgive and forget offenses against you. To the degree to which you cannot, you move down the human totem pole and you become a less and less person. A person who can forgive nothing is totally destroyed psychologically and emotionally. So how do you deal with forgiveness? Number one: forgive your parents. You do not become an adult until you have forgiven your parents 100% for every mistake they ever made. Remember it’s never too late to have a happy childhood, so just go back and forgive your parents. If they’re no longer with you, forgive them and let them go.”
This is the typical message we hear from religions, life coaches, and personal development influencers on the subject of forgiveness. Their position is that we can’t embrace life change, happiness, and move on with our lives unless we forgive those who trespass against us as the Christian Bible tells us to.
When I hear people talking like this, it tells me that they really have not thought this matter through in any kind of depth.
One possibility is that they’re speaking from a dogmatic Christian perspective that eliminates the use of critical thinking.
The other possibility is that nothing bad has ever really happened to these people. Chances are they grew up in loving, supportive homes and they have never had to face any kind of trauma or been the victim of a serious crime.
I don’t talk about my past often because I don’t want my platform to be about that. Today I’m making an exception to explain why I don’t think this approach to forgiveness is a good idea. In fact, I think it’s a terrible idea.
I was born and raised in an abusive cult in Northern California. It was severely physically, sexually, financially, and emotionally abusive, both to the children and adult members, used extreme mind control, and ruined hundreds of lives.
I’m not going to go into the details of what exactly happened. I don’t want this to become a big Me-Too disaster where I make accusations and other people deny them.
I will only say that dozens of other adults who survived this cult as children are out there telling their stories. You can find as much information as you want on the internet if you look hard enough.
This cult ruined my life. I spent twenty-five years in recovery after I left home. It took me until my mid-forties before I started to be able to live a functional life.
I spent decades homeless, on drugs, emaciated from anorexia, unemployed, survived three abusive relationships including two failed marriages, and struggled for decades against suicidal depression and dissociative disorders.
That’s all I’m going to say about that. The reason I bring this up is because I view the subject of forgiveness from the point of view of the injured party.
I’ve worked very hard to build a life I’m happy with. I take responsibility for what happens to me. My life has never been better—and I have not forgiven the people who did this to me and to countless other children.
When we consider whether forgiveness is a good idea, we first need to examine what this word actually means.
The religionists, life coaches, and influencers would have us believe that the word, forgive, means to move on, let go of the past, and embrace the ability to be happy in spite of what happened to us or how we’ve been wronged.
This isn’t what forgiveness means at all.
To understand what forgiveness means, let’s look at another connotation of the word—the financial connotation.
In the finance world, “to forgive” means to let someone off with no consequences for their actions. If someone takes out a million-dollar loan and fails to pay it back, the lender might “forgive” the loan—which means the borrower doesn’t have to pay it back. They get to walk away as if they never borrowed the money in the first place.
The dictionary gives several definitions of the word:
1) To grant pardon for or remission of (an offense or debt), to absolve
2) To give up all claim on account of; remit
3) To grant pardon to (a person)
4) To cease to feel resentment against
5) To cancel an indebtedness or liability of
So we can see that the word, forgive, has both meanings—which makes it the wrong word to use in this case.
When a word has several meanings, it doesn’t work to use the word for one thing when you actually mean something completely different. You can’t use a word that means letting someone walk away with no consequence when you actually mean the opposite.
Let’s do a simple thought experiment. Imagine a hardened psychopathic pedophile. He stalks a little girl, kidnaps her, keeps her locked in his basement, rapes and tortures her for weeks, sets her on fire, burns her alive, and buries her body in a shallow grave to cover up the evidence.
This scenario isn’t outside the realm of human possibility. We all know these things happen.
No one in their right mind would suggest letting this person walk away with no consequence. We would all expect this person to be held accountable before the law.
Even twenty, thirty, forty, or fifty years after the events, we would expect the Police to arrest this person, put them on trial, and send the perpetrator to prison for his crimes.
We would also expect the victim who survived an ordeal like that to come forward and testify against him to make sure he got convicted. We would expect the victim to do whatever was necessary, no matter how difficult or painful, to make sure the perpetrator paid for what he did—and to make sure he doesn’t do it to someone else.
It would actually be morally reprehensible to let the perpetrator walk away with no consequence. It would be extremely wrong for any of us to just “forgive” him and move on as though the events never happened.
The victim would be just as responsible for doing this if the perpetrator was her father as if he was a stranger. We might even argue that the victim would be more responsible if the perpetrator was her father—not less so.
We all have a moral obligation NOT to forgive, to hold the perpetrator to account, and to punish him for his crimes.
Unfortunately, our criminal justice system doesn’t even have the ability to settle accounts with someone like this. Settling the account would mean putting him through the same ordeal he inflicted on his victims. We can’t do that because we’re better than he is.
The best we can do is to hold this man up in front of the world, announce to everyone what he did, and send him to prison. That is an extremely lenient consequence for these crimes if you ask me.
To me, there are four conditions that must be met for forgiveness to happen.
1) The perpetrator must admit what they did.
2) They must show genuine remorse for what they did. This remorse must be voluntary and not just a result of them getting caught.
3) They must make a genuine attempt to pay restitution for what they did, either directly to the victim or by facing justice before the law. To me, this means actively seeking out these consequences, either by offering to make restitution to the victim or making a voluntary confession to the Police. Getting caught and denying their crimes in court doesn’t count.
4) They must make a genuine commitment not to commit the same crime again.
Most hardened pedophiles who target little children don’t do any of these things. My perpetrators aren’t doing any of these things. They never have and they never will.
They don’t admit what they did. They don’t show any remorse for the damage they’ve done. They’ve never even tried to make restitution or accept the consequences of their actions.
Worst of all, some of these predators are out there right now planning how they’re going to do it to someone else.
No one who is doing this should be allowed to walk away with no consequence. That would be ridiculous.
It doesn’t mean I can’t move on. It doesn’t mean I can’t be happy. I don’t spend my day thinking about my past or stewing about how I can get revenge. I have a great life. I’m very happy. I did that for myself. I spent decades of blood, sweat, and tears to make it happen.
I want to give another example that I think illustrates the subtle nuances of this subject.
When I lived in Sacramento, there was a family living nearby—a mother, father, and two little girls. The mother was eight months pregnant with her first son. One evening, she was standing in her front yard talking to another woman.
A young man came driving around the corner. He was out of his mind drunk, hopped the curb, mowed down both women, and killed them both instantly. He was charged with three counts of vehicular homicide because this woman’s unborn son would have been viable if she’d been able to give birth at that time.
The young man got arrested. The last we heard, he was on suicide watch in Sacramento County jail after he found out what he did.
We can all pity this man and the hard road ahead of him. It’s going to be extremely hard for him to get over something like this—almost as hard as the struggle the dead woman’s husband and children had to go through to cope with her death.
We can pity this young man. We can have compassion for him. We can pray for him. If we cross paths with him in life, we can offer him our help and support to deal with all the emotions and struggles he’ll face.
That doesn’t mean we let him walk away with no consequence. We don’t just let him out of jail to go free. He has to pay restitution. He can’t bring the dead women and the baby boy back to life.
The only way he can pay restitution is by doing time in jail and facing trial. If he’s smart, he’ll plead guilty, sincerely apologize, and make a commitment not to drink again. He’ll pull his life together so he doesn’t do the same thing to someone else.
If he doesn’t, then he doesn’t deserve our compassion, or sympathy, or our support.
This doesn’t even mean the woman’s husband and children necessarily have to feel resentment toward the perpetrator. There’s nothing wrong with it if they do. It’s not any more virtuous if they don’t. Their emotional reaction has nothing to do with their virtue, their happiness, or their ability to rebuild their lives.
As you can see, the word, “forgive” has no place in any of these discussions. It will only muddy the waters because we don’t actually know for certain what it means.
Does it mean moving on with our lives and embracing our own happiness despite our pasts? Does it mean letting the perpetrator walk away with no consequence?
It would be better if we all say what we mean instead of using a word that actually means the opposite.
If you’re in a position to encourage someone to take ownership of their life and embrace the future instead of dwelling on past wrongs, then say that. Say what you really mean.
Don’t ever tell someone or even encourage them to forgive the wrongs of the past. That could be the worst thing they could do. You would be doing them a massive disservice by encouraging them to do so.
The Christians would tell us that God forgives wrongdoers.
I can promise you that God doesn’t forgive anyone who doesn’t feel remorse. God definitely does not forgive those who are planning to do it again—or through their actions or negligence might cause it to happen again.
This reminds me of a wonderful quote from the Denzel Washington movie, Man on Fire. The main character goes on a revenge killing spree to avenge the death of a little girl he was hired to protect.
An elderly Mexican couple tells him, “The Church teaches us to forgive.” The main character replies, “Forgiveness is between them and God. It’s my job to arrange the meeting.”
Years ago, an episode came out on the Dr. Phil Show which detailed the story of a convenience store robbery gone wrong. The young woman who committed the robbery was on drugs. The robbery ended with her shooting the female clerk in the face.
The clerk went through years of agony to recover from her injuries. Even after multiple reconstructive and cosmetic surgeries, the incident left her disfigured and her life in pieces.
On this episode, Dr. Phil brought the victim and perpetrator together on stage where they faced each other for the first time. You can watch the episode here.
The perpetrator states, “I’ve asked God to forgive me….and I’ve moved on with my life….”
You can see from the victim’s reaction that this kind of forgiveness is totally hollow. I personally don’t believe God offers this kind of empty forgiveness. This woman is simply deluding herself about the true scale of her crime and the damage she did to another human being.
I’m not saying this convenience store shooter didn’t turn her life around. The episode makes it sound like she did and she does express remorse—which is also pretty shallow compared to what she put the victim through.
She states, “I’m sorry that happened to you,” instead of saying, “I’m so sorry I did that to you.” It’s a subtle but telling difference that speaks volumes about how much this woman takes responsibility for her actions.
Compare the Christian concept of forgiveness seen here to the concept of Teshuva. This is the Jewish concept of hitting rock bottom, turning back to God, and making a genuine commitment to changing your life.
This is a very different animal than letting the perpetrator off scot free.
The injured party is the one who tells the world whether someone changed their life and became a new, better person.
It doesn’t work for the perpetrator to walk around out in the world telling everyone they’ve changed and they’re a different person now. Plenty of hardened pedophiles are out there telling people that while in fact these predators are actually secretly planning their next assault.
No one has really changed their life and become a better person until the injured party says they’ve changed their life and become a better person.
I’m reminded of Ed Mylett’s story about his father’s death. I only repeat this story because Ed has spoken about this publicly. You can watch him tell the story here.
Ed Mylett is possibly one of the wealthiest, most influential media personalities on the internet, but he grew up with an alcoholic father. Ed grew up constantly scrambling to keep his father in a good mood so his father wouldn’t go after Ed’s mother and sisters.
Years later, Ed Mylett Sr. got sober, turned his life around, and now his son can’t speak highly enough of his father.
Ed tells the story of how his father spent the rest of his life sponsoring, supporting, helping, and saving hundreds of other alcoholics.
After his death, hundreds of people showed up to Ed Sr.’s memorial to talk about how he saved their lives, how he was there for them when they wanted to kill themselves, and how Ed Sr. spent his last minutes alive and literally his dying breath coaching another alcoholic through a rough spot.
This is what true Teshuva looks like. This is what causes the injured victims of someone else’s crimes to say in front of the whole world, “They changed their life. They became one of the best men I’ve ever known.”
There is another story along the same lines from podcaster Chris Williamson’s interview with David Goggins. Chris talks about how his childhood bully contacted him years later to apologize and try to make amends.
In the comments of this video, another man writes that he met his childhood bully at a conference. The former bully approached his former victim and apologized for the way he treated the poster as a child. The former bully now coaches at-risk youth on how to avoid a life of violence and turn their lives around.
At the end of the post, the former victim writes, “He’s a good man.”
This is the redemption that criminal perpetrators should be seeking—not forgiveness. If you’re out there telling people that God forgives you, that means absolutely nothing.
You haven’t truly changed your life until the injured party admires you for the way you’ve turned it around. Ed Mylett Jr. can look back on his father’s life and honestly say that his father did more good than harm. The years of good that he did overbalanced the harm he did while he was drunk.
Let’s look back at the story of the young drunk driver who killed two women and an unborn baby by running them over with his car.
Imagine him falling on his knees and tearfully begging the woman’s husband and young daughters to forgive him. Why should they? He hasn’t done anything to earn their forgiveness.
This is the same as a cheating spouse who asks their wronged partner to forgive them. This actually means, “Let me off with no consequences. Let’s move on as though this never happened.”
Ask for forgiveness with your actions. Show the world how remorseful you are by actually doing something to clean up the mess you made. Try to make a few lives better instead of worse. Try to add more entries to the good side of the ledger than you’ve already entered on the bad side.
Then we’ll talk about whether you’re a good person. Then we’ll decide whether you’ve redeemed yourself in the sight of God and humanity.
If you want to help someone improve their life, don’t offer forgiveness. Offer Teshuva instead. Offer them a genuine opportunity to tip the scales back to the good side. Offer them the chance to do something that will actually correct the mistakes they made in the past. Forgiveness can’t do that.
If you want to help the victim of a crime get over the past and move on, you can offer them the same process. You can offer them the opportunity to take ownership of their life and seize the happiness we all deserve.
Our perpetrators have already taken too much. We can’t allow them to take even one more day. We can embrace life and be happy no matter what they do. That’s our birthright and no one can stop us from doing it.
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