Forgiveness Is Impossible When Anger Is Your Protection

When people talk about forgiveness, they fall in one of two camps.

It’s either they reject it completely because they think that to forgive someone is weakness and that you’re absolving them of accountability (which you’re not), or you see it as something that benefits you because you understand that holding onto resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.

So when we talk about forgiveness being impossible when anger is your protection, some people have a notion that if I don’t forgive you, then you’ll feel bad. In some respects, they have a point because some people don’t want others to have a bad opinion of them.

But these are mostly codependent people. So if you don’t forgive them, they will carry the guilt and shame, and the person who doesn’t forgive ensures that the other person suffers. But try that with a narcissist or an interdependent person. It’ll never work.

So let’s look at an example of not forgiving because you’d rather use anger as protection and see what happened.

After World War I, the victorious Allied powers met in 1919 at the Paris Peace Conference to determine the future of Europe, and especially the fate of Germany. Austria made demands of Serbia given the heir to the throne, Franz Ferdinand, was killed by Serbians.

Why were the Germans involved? They were in allegiance with Austria-Hungary who struggled throughout the war, but at least Germany enjoyed a decent spell of success against the allied powers of France and Britain.

But they played dirty. They invaded neutral Belgium, they used chlorine gas, and they torpedoed a British vessel carrying civilians. But they had lost the war especially once the US joined Britain and France.

As a result, the Treaty of Versailles made Germany (and Austria) admit guilt, Germany had their army shrunk and they had to pay reparations.

So what was the result of the Allies’ harsh treatment of Germany? There definitely had to be sanctions but the end of a war ideally is to bring about a time of peace. Note that I said “ideally” as some wars are so violent they ultimately become genocidal.

The reparations made sense. If you break it, you fix it. Germany was full of hubris in fully backing Austria-Hungary and it didn’t pay off. However, to blame the war solely on them was humiliating because it wasn’t true.

Because of this, German nationalism spiked, which then led to the Third Reich, which then led to World War II, which was even more disastrous.

Again, it’s not that Germany shouldn’t have been sanctioned. They should’ve. But by pouring salt into the wound and not truly letting go of the conflict and instead choosing to embarrass Germany, the war never truly ended because the peace never truly began.

This is the challenge one has when they believe forgiveness is weakness.

What is forgiveness? Letting go of resentment.

By failing to do so, what you’re actually showing the world is that you don’t believe that the person who hurt you is safe, so you will use your anger and resentment to keep them away.

But the irony is, wouldn’t it be enough to just not trust them? You don’t need animosity to not trust them. If I sit on a chair and it gives way under my weight, the next time I see it I won’t sit on it.

If someone I once trusted betrays me, it is natural to feel hurt. This is a crucial point. It is completely natural to feel hurt when someone betrays you because they took advantage of your trust, and trust isn’t cheap. You earned my trust and then spent it for your own gain?

France knew that Germany was the new kid on the block, they were getting money, and they had taken some land from them years earlier. They were scared of Germany. That’s why they forced them to shrink their army, fix everything and tell the whole world the war was their fault.

That’s why France said, honestly, fuck you.

But what happens when you stay in this mode of fuck you, fuck off, I hope you die? You begin to live through anger and resentment in an attempt to stay safe. And when it fails, you will either think twice about living in this way or you double-down and become a backstabber yourself in order to protect yourself.

So let’s look at another example, but this time one that involved forgiveness.

After apartheid, Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to uncover the truth about human rights violations that happened under apartheid in South Africa.

When the white men and women confessed to the abuse they committed to the Afrikaans and Xhosa people, they may have been given some degree of amnesty, depending on their offence.

Critics were brutal. Some said the commission was a waste of time because the abusers could’ve minimised what they did, not tell the whole truth and then get let off the hook, which meant many black South Africans never truly saw justice.

And yet, similar Truth and Reconciliation Commissions were done in Canada, Ecuador, Ghana, Guatemala, Kenya, Liberia, Morocco, Philippines and Rwanda. Why? Because there was a genuine need for reconciliation and to put the hate and resentment behind them.

If anyone could’ve been tempted to hold onto resentment, it would be the guy who was imprisoned for 27 years because he dared to fight for respect for black people.

One of the greatest things Mandela ever said was, “As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.”

When Mandela still kept some white South Africans in the government and in his personal security team, it showed the black and especially the white people that the time of war was done.

Let me be clear again. If you do something wrong, I believe there should be sanctions. But shaming others for the hurt they did only maintains a warring spirit, which ensures more conflict to come.

It is easy to take the hurt we feel and push it back on someone else because it helps us to communicate how they’re making us feel. But if they push back, now you have a choice. Are you committed to war or to peace?

I would agree with Solomon. There’s a time for both, but once you start a war it is hard to stop because you are fueled with hatred. It’s hard to stop because you start to believe that peace won’t protect you. You forget that hatred may offer temporary safety but ultimately, it’s destructive.

It’s very hard to convince people to forgive. They would rather hold onto the anger. They would rather drink the poison because at least they can spit it on those who hurt them. But with a mouthful of poison, how do you eat good food or drink water or kiss your children?

So when we think about an impending World War III, it is natural to be enraged. It shows that you stand for something, namely, defending the human rights of innocent people.

Or when we think about those who have hurt us personally, again, it makes sense that you’d be upset because you care about yourself.

The solution is if you want to get over your anger because you don’t want to become like the people you despise, the trick is to consciously allow yourself to be angry. You don’t have to take action while angry, but just give yourself the grace to feel what you feel.

When you do that, you actually calm yourself down and you still remember to hold the guilty parties accountable. That way, you can forgive, you won’t forget, but you aren’t holding it over people’s heads like the Allies did to Germany.

Instead you can leave the prison of resentment like Mandela wisely did because you understand that anger won’t protect you anyway. It just leads to more of the things you want protection from. It would just lead to more conflict.

So if you want more conflict, obviously you know what to do. Just be mindful that you can’t hurt people unless you have pain within yourself. You can have the poison to spit at others but you will hurt yourself and those you love. It can’t be prevented.

Want to watch the video version? It’s here.