The Book On Forgiveness

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize winner, Chair of The Elders, and Chair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, along with his daughter, the Reverend Mpho Tutu, offer a manual on the art of forgiveness—helping us to realize that we are all capable of healing and transformation. Tutu's role as the Chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission taught him much about forgiveness. If you asked anyone what they thought was going to happen to South Africa after apartheid, almost universally it was predicted that the country would be devastated by a comprehensive bloodbath. Yet, instead of revenge and retribution, this new nation chose to tread the difficult path of confession, forgiveness, and reconciliation. Each of us has a deep need to forgive and to be forgiven. After much reflection on the process of forgiveness, Tutu has seen that there are four important steps to healing: Admitting the wrong and acknowledging the harm; Telling one's story and witnessing the anguish; Asking for forgiveness and granting forgiveness; and renewing or releasing the relationship. Forgiveness is hard work. Sometimes it even feels like an impossible task. But it is only through walking this fourfold path that Tutu says we can free ourselves of the endless and unyielding cycle of pain and retribution. The Book of Forgiving is both a touchstone and a tool, offering Tutu's wise advice and showing the way to experience forgiveness. Ultimately, forgiving is the only means we have to heal ourselves and our aching world.

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER When the Second World War broke out, Ralph MacLean chose to escape his troubled life on the Magdalen Islands in eastern Canada and volunteer to serve his country overseas. Meanwhile, in Vancouver, Mitsue Sakamoto saw her family and her stable community torn apart after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Like many young Canadian soldiers, Ralph was captured by the Japanese army. He would spend the war in prison camps, enduring pestilence, beatings and starvation, as well as a journey by hell ship to Japan to perform slave labour, while around him his friends and countrymen perished. Back in Canada, Mitsue and her family were expelled from their home by the government and forced to spend years eking out an existence in rural Alberta, working other people's land for a dollar a day. By the end of the war, Ralph emerged broken but a survivor. Mitsue, worn down by years of back-breaking labour, had to start all over again in Medicine Hat, Alberta. A generation later, at a high school dance, Ralph's daughter and Mitsue's son fell in love. Although the war toyed with Ralph's and Mitsue's lives and threatened to erase their humanity, these two brave individuals somehow surmounted enormous transgressions and learned to forgive. Without this forgiveness, their grandson Mark Sakamoto would never have come to be.

In Practicing Forgiveness, the author reviews the contextual and cultural aspects of forgiveness with stories, humor, clinical examples, research, and empirical findings while examining the influence of environment and religion. The content is presented in such a way so as to serve as a resource to both professional mental health providers (who can benefit from the theoretical and empirical underpinnings of working with clients through the forgivenessprocess) and lay readers (who can benefit from the processing and self-help components of the book).

Whether giving or receiving, forgiveness is the key toward true healing and blessing. God says there are no limits to forgiveness toward others or ourselves. And when Matthew West set out on a journey asking people to share their true life stories, Renée shared about how she chose to forgive the drunk driver who hit and killed her daughter. This remarkable story and others like it bring peace and healing to the one needing and the ones giving forgiveness. Fifty powerful stories share forgiveness through divorce, betrayal, addiction, abandonment, death, and more. Each story ties into the promises of God’s faithfulness and healing, and ends with the story of God’s ultimate forgiveness through the message of salvation.

What if we told you forgiveness was possible? What if the deepest betrayals could be dealt with here, today-right now? What if you could finally be free from torment? Too often we think of forgiveness as some long process we need to go through before we can have peace. Nothing could be further from the truth. Actually, forgiveness is transactional. When someone wounds us, a debt is incurred. The payment required to make us whole again is staggering. And who pays? No amount of apologies or other forms of restitution from the offending party could ever cover the cost of their sin that wounded us. But there is good news! God has given us a strategy in His Word to help us live out Gospel-centric forgiveness. To truly forgive someone, we must look to the Cross where the blood of Jesus covers all sin, including the ones that wound us. IF YOU CUT THE GOSPEL ANYWHERE, IT BLEEDS FORGIVENESS!

The Forgiving Life offers scientifically supported guidance to help people forgive those in their lives who have acted unfairly and have inflicted emotional hurt. It does not minimize the devastation of that hurt. It does not require reconciliation with the one who inflicted the hurt. Rather, it describes a process, followed with success by people around the world, to confront the pain, rise above it to forgive, and in so doing, to loosen the grip of depression, anger, and resentment that has soured life. In this book, noted forgiveness expert Robert D. Enright invites readers to learn the benefits of forgiveness and to embark on a path of forgiveness, leaving behind a legacy of love. Guided by thought-provoking questions, journaling exercises, and Enright’s kind encouragement, readers can chart their own journey through a new life of forgiveness.

For young children, learning to forgive—when they’ve been let down or had their feelings are hurt—can take time. Help children develop their forgiveness skills and learn how to accept an apology and move on without holding grudges. At the same time, encourage children to let go of disappointment and to accept when things don’t go the way they hope. Back matter includes advice for teaching forgiveness at home, at school, and in childcare. Being the Best Me!® Series From the author of the popular Learning to Get Along® books comes a one-of-a-kind character-development series. Each of the first six books in the Being the Best Me! series helps children learn, understand, and develop attitudes and positive character traits that strengthen self-confidence and a sense of purpose. Each book focuses on a specific attitude or character trait—optimism, self-esteem, assertiveness, resilience, integrity, and forgiveness. Also included are discussion questions, games, activities, and additional information for adults. Filled with diversity, these social story books will be welcome in school, home, and childcare settings.

By demonstrating how forgiveness, approached in the correct manner, benefits the forgiver far more than the forgiven this self-help book benefits people who have been deeply hurt by another and caught in a vortex of anger, depression, and resentment.