The Importance of Forgiveness

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Forgiveness includes motivation as well as positive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors toward an offender.

It is often easier to work toward forgiveness by changing one's thinking first.

The feelings of forgiveness usually emerge one at a time and slowly.

As a moral virtue, forgiveness encompasses motivations to do good, thoughts that do not condemn the offending person, softer emotions, and, as far as possible, cooperative behaviors toward that person. See, for example, Song et al. (2025), in which the wholeness of forgiveness is described.

In this essay, we examine one part of the overall moral virtue of forgiveness: the emotions. Fostering these feelings can help soften your heart toward the one (or ones) who were unjust to you. This heart-softening can have significant benefits for the forgiver because it tends to lower the resentment that can lead to fatigue, sadness, and, eventually, anxiety and even depression if the resentment lingers and is intense for a long time.

Consider five points about the emotions of forgiveness.

1. For most people, the emotions of forgiveness emerge after the cognitive work has commenced and progressed.

We find that, in the process of forgiveness, it is easier for people to do the cognitive work than the emotional work because we are more in control of what we think than of what we feel. So, a first step in developing the emotions of forgiveness is to begin to see the offending person with a wider-angle lens than just defining the person by the unjust actions. As people try to see the other’s history, there is a tendency to see injustices against this person, struggles with life, and inner pain that the person may have been carrying for a long time.

2. Seeing the other person’s wounds can engender sympathy for this person.

Sympathy is a feeling of concern or........

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