Christian counseling will cause you to forgive others?

“Counseling…fosters the practice of forgiving; it facilitates the search for being forgiven.” So says Malony and Augsburger at the start of chapter six of Christian Counseling. But lest we confuse forgiveness with absolution, the authors remind us that while sometimes forgiveness is given immediately after an apology, we may need to ask, “What about the bike?” (from a story from South Africa where a person stole a bike and later asked for forgiveness but refused to address the missing bike or acknowlege the owner’s loss).

“The counselor who views situations of alienation or injury through a Christian frame has a biase toward healing, toward release of anger and return to open relationship.” (52). The authors are quick, however, to avoid the problem of superficial, premature, or forced reconciliation. Further, some problems cannot be bridged in this world. Both judgment and and grace are necessary factors for proper forgiveness and, “Neither can be sacrificed for easy flight into the other.” Yet, “forgiveness upholds the conviction that grace has, does, and will triumph over judgment…”

At this point in the chapter, the authors recognize that the word forgiveness stands for many different ideas in psychological literature. For the rest of the chapter they review the various meanings of the word: (1) forgiveness as civility (or they call it memory fatigue), (2) forgiveness as self-liberation (pardon the other for one’s own sake), (3) forgiveness as acceptance (excusing/overlooking for the sake of relationship), (4) forgiveness as cohumanity (recognizing and valuing the offender’s worth as a human), (5) forgiveness as pardon (unilateral release from injury), (6) forgiveness as process (reciprocal, interactional change on both parties), (7) forgiveness as contact (recognition that repentance is genuine so then grant the offender release), (8) forgiveness as restitution (justice is served and then relationship repaired), and finally (9) forgiveness as practice (a habit to be nurtured–not just an action, udgment or utterance).

On page 58, the authors construct a chart summarizing the views on forgiveness (above) into the spectrum of constructive responses to injury. They are (1) civility, (2) acceptance, (3) cohumanity, (4) pardon, (5) process, (6) contact, and (7) restitution. The first two are acts of neighbor love, #3-4 are enemy love, only #5-6 are forgiveness proper. While the authors recognize that it is not always possible, they find that too frequently counselors only encourage #1-4 and ignore the possibility of the depths of forgiveness. However, for counselees to get to forgiveness and restitution, there must be both mercy and truth.

Finally, the authors make the point that certain questions must be asked if the offended/offender are to reach a good place: Is the offender responsible? Does the offender seek resolution (or just release)? Does the offender wish to renew the relationship (or just live at peace)? Does the offender wish to recreate the relationship (or just resume the old one)? Because views on forgiveness are indeed dispirit, they end with these propositional statements (with my edits):

1. Accepting, tolerating, forgetting, and excusing are all different from forgiving.
2. Forgiving persupposes an attitude of mercy towards the offender.
3. Forgiveness is not arbitrary or unilateral.
4. Forgiveness requires a clear commitment to seek, speak, and be the truth.
5. It is not a moral victory for the offended that judges, controls or obligates the other
6. True reconcilation occurs when violence is renounced, justice sought, victims heard, innocense honored, guilt and responsibility admitted, repentance expressed, rapproachment risked, and relationship opened.
7. Religion is on the side of reconciliation, healing, and peace.  

COMMENTARY: This is their longest chapter yet as they set the foundations of Christian counseling. It is true that for counseling to be Christian, it must seek the greater good, where possible, of reconciliation, forgiveness, restoration: first to God and then to each other. I do think they got caught up in defining forgiveness that they forgot to tie it well enough to the purpose of this book. However, I do like the fact that they surface the fact that some of the supeficial forms of forgiveness are not in fact forgiveness after all. Obviously, these authors recognize that restoration is not always possible in this broken world. And yet, we must work for it just the same.