Religious Manipulation #3: You Have to Forgive Me
One bitterly cold day we looked outside to find a neighbor and her two small children chipping ice off our driveway. The mom had a shovel and the children had what looked like spoons. My husband stepped outside to ask her to stop and take her children home but she responded that they were doing a “service” for us so that we would forgive them.
I hid in the closet until they finally left because it gave me such a creepy feeling. You see, she had already been asked by leaders in her church to stay away from our family and this is how she responded to our request and her church leader’s request.
“You have to forgive me!”
Forgiveness is often talked about in religious settings. The invitation to forgive is found in the Bible. Forgiveness is a personal journey and one that may be on your journey of healing. However, it is also used as a manipulation tool, especially among religious people. So how do you tell if it is being used to manipulate you?
Now, I want to point out that the reasons people use manipulation can be varied. Some are doing it on purpose to get out of holding themselves accountable but some people are doing it because that is a habit they picked up along their life’s journey and they aren’t even aware they are doing it.
To understand how it can be used to manipulate you, you need to look at forgiveness closer. Forgiveness is tied to religion and so carries the added weight of “this is what God wants you to do.” The guilt associated with that and how people respond to guilt is especially useful in this type of manipulation because a person who is being asked to forgive obviously has a reason to not feel good about something. They may be angry about the situation. Unresolved emotions in the victim make them vulnerable to “forgive me” manipulation. Understanding forgiveness can help a victim be more at peace along their journey of healing and be able to side step the manipulation.
If I could go back and tell my younger self some advice, I would tell her to ask herself these questions:
*Do I feel like this person is trying to guilt me into forgiving? If you do feel like you are being guilted into forgiving then you need to realize this person is not someone you should be listening to right now.
*Are they insisting that I HAVE to forgive? If so, why? Are they getting anything out of me forgiving? For example, is the forgiveness asked for actually code for “I don’t want to accept responsibility, accountability, or consequences so I want you to quit talking about it, drawing boundaries for it, or thinking about it so I can go on doing it.
If someone you know is using the “Forgive Me, I have Repented” phrase, familiarizing yourself with what their religion actually teaches about repentance may be helpful. This is not to make yourself a ruler over whether someone has repented or not, repentance is a personal journey also, however, by spotting the red flags in someone’s behavior, you will be able to avoid manipulation and be better able to be confident in drawing your own boundaries.
Religious Repentance
1. Remorse—Feeling sorry for something is the first step in repentance. They have to feel sorry for what they have done. This is a common first and last step for people. “I’m sorry” can become an easy habit for some people to get into. But first it is up to you to decide whether you feel like the apology is genuine. Do you feel like it was insincere or they were excusing their behavior by putting the blame somewhere else? Only they know for sure if they are actually remorseful, but it is up to you to read the signs so that you can better make decisions in your relationship with them. The next steps help you figure out if the remorse was sincere.
2. Confession—Often confession is used in conjunction with confessing to God or to church leaders, however, acknowledging that they have an understanding of what they did wrong is a confession also. If they do not understand where the problem in their behavior was, there is less of a chance they are actual going to be able to stop doing it. You have to ask yourself if you feel that they have a clear understanding of what the problem was.
3. Abandon the Bad Behavior-Abandoning the bad behavior takes time to prove. Repentance isn’t a quick fix. Do they have concrete examples of how they will be stopping the bad behavior in the future? Sometimes people stop the bad behavior for a time only to start it up again and it becomes a repeating cycle. You need to understand that this is now a habit, not a mistake, and their example of what they are going to change in their lives must now address the “pattern of behavior” not just the last incident.
4. Make Restitution-Have they made an attempt to repair the damage they have done? Is their attempt to repair the damage just telling you to forgive them? If they are honestly trying to repair a relationship with you then listening to your boundaries and then respecting them is a good indication on whether they are doing this step.
5. Live a Good Life-Are they showing they are living in such a way as you think they are committed to this change they said they are making?
I knew a man who was telling me about a news article called Redemption that told of a young religious missionary who had broken the law before his mission and then been arrested while on his mission. The story went on to say, according to this man, that church members rallied around this former missionary and “forgave him” and helped him out. This man told me, quite emphatically, that I should read this story. It was an odd conversation because I didn’t understand why this story was so important to this man. I also thought, from the version of the story I was told, that the church members who forgave seemed to be lacking some boundary setting and could be putting themselves in harms way. But I wasn’t in full possession of all the facts and so I do not know what situation they found themselves in.
But my view is this, when someone is to the point of breaking laws, putting people’s lives in danger, and lying to their fellow church members, and even to their God about it, there is so many red flags in there that my “forgiveness” is the least thing this person should be thinking of. Add to that, having to be caught by others to force the “repentance” speaks volumes.
Common sense would dictate that I should be fact checking ANYTHING that has to do with this person if I chose to continue a relationship with them. I mean really, I don’t think fact checking would bother an honest person.
It was not 6 months later I found out the man telling me I should read this news story was caught-lying to his family, lying to me, lying to banks and other organizations, lying to his church, and to his God. He was breaking laws and putting people’s lives in danger. Interesting. I can now see his idea of forgiveness was “over look my bad behavior if I get caught.”
Forgiveness does NOT mean that I can release someone from the consequences of their behavior. Sometimes we think we have that power. We have the power to continue not putting up boundaries and letting them hurt us. But we have done them no favor when we do this. Their consequences will still catch up to them in the end and we will be hurt in the meantime.
The tricky part of forgiveness is that no one likes to feel rejected. And sometimes we confuse “forgive me” when we actually mean “don’t reject me, love me.” We can all understand that need. Rejection hurts. We all would like to be loved. We can love people and set boundaries. Not forgiving someone shouldn’t be used as a weapon either.
If you are on a journey of self-healing. forgiveness may be in your future. Learning more about forgiveness and what that means and doesn’t mean can go a long way in helping with any confusion.
Forgiveness is not:
acceptance of that bad behavior you experienced
an invitation for that person to resume a relationship with you
a signal that you are going to go back to the person you were before the incident
a reason to drop boundaries you have drawn
a reason to not fact-check or watch for red flags from this person in the future
a decision that keeps you from ever feeling hurt or angry about this incident again. In fact, you may feel hurt and angry periodically again and again the rest of your life.
The book “Devil in Pew Number Seven” by Rebecca N Alonzo tells her forgiveness journey and this story is what reassured me that forgiveness doesn’t mean the damage is gone, that you never think of it again, or that you are immediately freed from all bad feelings. Forgiveness is more of a path. A personal self-discovery journey and one that God wants to help you with, not condemn you with.
After her family was terrorized by a member of their congregation that ended in her father, the pastor’s, death, she experienced reminders of her traumatic childhood on holidays, watching movies, anytime she heard loud noises, etc. Her path to peace inside herself was to forgive that man that did this to their family, but her feelings about it had to be dealt with each time she was reminded of the terror she endured and the loss she experienced.
I believe forgiveness is an invitation from a God who cares about us and wants us to focus on our life’s journey without being held back by the difficulties we’ve endured. Forgiveness is my tool for healing, not someone’s weapon to use against us.
Next time someone says “you have to forgive,” I will take the misguided message they are trying to burden me with and hand it back to them, even if it’s done silently in my mind,
“I’m sorry, YOU will have to forgive ME.”
