Forgiveness
The movie Amish Grace is a movie that is about forgiveness and the role that religion played. Amish Grace is based on a true story of the Amish schoolhouse shooting that took place in Nickel Mines Pennsylvania in October of 2006. It shows how the grieving Amish families had a spirit of forgiveness. This movie is a perfect example on forgiveness. In the movie a father says to his daughter that survived the shooting,
Hate is a very big, very hungry thing with lots of sharp teeth and it will eat up your whole heart and leave no room left for love; God understands this. He is the one that will hand out the punishment so that we don’t have to carry this terrible hate around inside of us if we don’t want to, if we are willing to forgive
Religion would have to play an important role in the life of the person doing the forgiving. Deborah E. Lipstadt supports the religion perspective when she says “It is more than repentance but it is designed to make our relationship with both God and those around us whole again.” She then states, “God more than accepts the repentant person, God desires people to return.”(Wiesenthal 193). Without the belief in God people would not have anything to look up to. There are people who have a fear that God will not agree with their decisions. To forgive someone it would take a lot of strength. But if a person has a lot of faith and a strong belief in God, it would open their perspectives on forgiveness.
Forgiveness is a word that many people look at differently. People may view things differently as to some may think that people should be forgiven while others think that they shouldn’t be forgiven. Forgiveness is about doing the right thing, for example is hurting someone worth it in the end. Forgiveness can also be very controversial because people can say that they forgive someone and not actually mean it. To me, the person that is being forgiven should come face to face with the person that they affected and apologize and acknowledge that they were in the wrong. I think that the book The Sunflower adds to the perspective on forgiveness and its limits. But the question that remains and one that is probably the most troubling, what are the limits of forgiveness? According to Harry James Cargas, Forgiveness is a virtue that cannot be denied. And it is necessary to spiritual wholeness (Wiesenthal 124).
After reading the book The sunflower, I have learned that there is no right and wrong way to look at forgiveness. There are endless amounts of ways to go about forgiveness. When it comes to the dying soldier, Simon was faced with the question, to forgive or not to forgive; I can understand why Simon did what he did. I don’t think that someone who has committed a murder can be forgiven for what they have done. I feel that they can go and try to apologize to someone that they have deeply affected but they still can’t be forgiven. Since the soldier waited until he was about to reach death, his apology was not that sincere. Simon did not forgive the dying soldier and he was right in doing so. The soldier was only trying to help himself feel better; he was not concerned with helping anyone else. While reading The Sunflower, Joseph Telushkin had an interesting thought on the soldier’s apology. He says, “Had a doctor entered the room with a miracle drug that would have restored this young man to full vigor, would he have remained weighed down with guilt? And had the German Army then offered him whatever was the Nazi equivalent to a Purple Heart for bravery in battle would he have scorned the award?”(Wiesenthal 262). I think that the soldier thought that if he apologized even though he was about to die it would make him have a peaceful death. It also leads me to believe that if he wasn’t dying then he might not have been so eager to apologize to a Jew, a person that was affected by his actions. The soldiers act for forgiveness is in a way selfish, but then it might have put Simon a little bit at ease to what had happened.
When it comes to me, personally I have a hard time forgiving people. I have always heard the saying “forgive and forget” but I like to look at it more as, “forgive and never forget”. It just depends on what the action was. I think that if the action was something small, then yes. But something as big as murder, then no. It is really hard for me to forgive people because I have been screwed over so many times in my life. But forgiveness is something that I have been working on. At the lowest point in my life, someone that I thought I could trust turned on me. They told the whole school all of my secrets. After backstabbing me, she came to me and asked for forgiveness and said she was sorry for everything that she had done to me. To this day, I still have not forgiven her. I feel that she took things way out of hand, and if she had a problem with me she could have come and talked to me about it instead of telling the whole school. I am learning that forgiveness is a step in your life that is life changing. It is a way to put an end to the pain, hatred and bitterness that every human being has. Hopefully one day I can look past what she did and forgive her.
In the end, forgiveness is a complicated topic and it can differ from each individual. Whether it be through a religious perspective or by the way that they generalize forgiveness. For some religion is a way to gain hope for the future of the hurt soul. But for others forgiveness is just not an option. Forgiveness is not something that should be given or taken lightly, it is real and some people have to live with that for the rest of their lives.
The movie Amish Grace is a movie that is about forgiveness and the role that religion played. Amish Grace is based on a true story of the Amish schoolhouse shooting that took place in Nickel Mines Pennsylvania in October of 2006. It shows how the grieving Amish families had a spirit of forgiveness. This movie is a perfect example on forgiveness. In the movie a father says to his daughter that survived the shooting,
Hate is a very big, very hungry thing with lots of sharp teeth and it will eat up your whole heart and leave no room left for love; God understands this. He is the one that will hand out the punishment so that we don’t have to carry this terrible hate around inside of us if we don’t want to, if we are willing to forgive
Religion would have to play an important role in the life of the person doing the forgiving. Deborah E. Lipstadt supports the religion perspective when she says “It is more than repentance but it is designed to make our relationship with both God and those around us whole again.” She then states, “God more than accepts the repentant person, God desires people to return.”(Wiesenthal 193). Without the belief in God people would not have anything to look up to. There are people who have a fear that God will not agree with their decisions. To forgive someone it would take a lot of strength. But if a person has a lot of faith and a strong belief in God, it would open their perspectives on forgiveness.
Forgiveness is a word that many people look at differently. People may view things differently as to some may think that people should be forgiven while others think that they shouldn’t be forgiven. Forgiveness is about doing the right thing, for example is hurting someone worth it in the end. Forgiveness can also be very controversial because people can say that they forgive someone and not actually mean it. To me, the person that is being forgiven should come face to face with the person that they affected and apologize and acknowledge that they were in the wrong. I think that the book The Sunflower adds to the perspective on forgiveness and its limits. But the question that remains and one that is probably the most troubling, what are the limits of forgiveness? According to Harry James Cargas, Forgiveness is a virtue that cannot be denied. And it is necessary to spiritual wholeness (Wiesenthal 124).
After reading the book The sunflower, I have learned that there is no right and wrong way to look at forgiveness. There are endless amounts of ways to go about forgiveness. When it comes to the dying soldier, Simon was faced with the question, to forgive or not to forgive; I can understand why Simon did what he did. I don’t think that someone who has committed a murder can be forgiven for what they have done. I feel that they can go and try to apologize to someone that they have deeply affected but they still can’t be forgiven. Since the soldier waited until he was about to reach death, his apology was not that sincere. Simon did not forgive the dying soldier and he was right in doing so. The soldier was only trying to help himself feel better; he was not concerned with helping anyone else. While reading The Sunflower, Joseph Telushkin had an interesting thought on the soldier’s apology. He says, “Had a doctor entered the room with a miracle drug that would have restored this young man to full vigor, would he have remained weighed down with guilt? And had the German Army then offered him whatever was the Nazi equivalent to a Purple Heart for bravery in battle would he have scorned the award?”(Wiesenthal 262). I think that the soldier thought that if he apologized even though he was about to die it would make him have a peaceful death. It also leads me to believe that if he wasn’t dying then he might not have been so eager to apologize to a Jew, a person that was affected by his actions. The soldiers act for forgiveness is in a way selfish, but then it might have put Simon a little bit at ease to what had happened.
When it comes to me, personally I have a hard time forgiving people. I have always heard the saying “forgive and forget” but I like to look at it more as, “forgive and never forget”. It just depends on what the action was. I think that if the action was something small, then yes. But something as big as murder, then no. It is really hard for me to forgive people because I have been screwed over so many times in my life. But forgiveness is something that I have been working on. At the lowest point in my life, someone that I thought I could trust turned on me. They told the whole school all of my secrets. After backstabbing me, she came to me and asked for forgiveness and said she was sorry for everything that she had done to me. To this day, I still have not forgiven her. I feel that she took things way out of hand, and if she had a problem with me she could have come and talked to me about it instead of telling the whole school. I am learning that forgiveness is a step in your life that is life changing. It is a way to put an end to the pain, hatred and bitterness that every human being has. Hopefully one day I can look past what she did and forgive her.
In the end, forgiveness is a complicated topic and it can differ from each individual. Whether it be through a religious perspective or by the way that they generalize forgiveness. For some religion is a way to gain hope for the future of the hurt soul. But for others forgiveness is just not an option. Forgiveness is not something that should be given or taken lightly, it is real and some people have to live with that for the rest of their lives.