What We Get Wrong About Forgiveness

1A

NPR

News

4.3 • 4.5K Ratings

🗓️ 20 September 2023

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In June 2015, nine people died at Charleston's Emanuel A.M.E. Church, victims of a racist shooter's rampage.

Some of the victims' relatives publicly forgave the murderer, including Chris Singleton, whose mother, Sharonda Coleman Singleton, was killed.

Philosopher Myisha Cherry was struck by the story and its response. Some, she says, paid more attention to the inspirational story of forgiveness than the racial hatred behind the shooting.

In her new book, Professor Cherry seeks to understand what forgiveness means and why we venerate it. Sometimes, she argues, forgiveness can do more harm than good, especially if it lets the perpetrator of wrongdoing off the hook – whether that be a person, system or anything else.

We discuss forgiveness – what it means and its effect.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This message comes from an PR sponsor Mass Mutual.
0:03.5	Don't let the day-to-day of running your business keep you from planning for tomorrow.
0:07.8	Start preparing for the future.
0:09.5	Talk to a Mass Mutual Financial Professional today.
0:12.5	Feel comfortable about tomorrow.
0:22.5	To air is human.
0:24.5	To forgive, divine.
0:26.5	That quote is from a poem published by enlightenment era writer
0:29.5	Alexander Pope in 1711.
0:32.0	More than 300 years later,
0:34.0	forgiveness is still seen as an act of inspiration and admiration.
0:38.5	The family of a Colorado teenager shot and killed by a classmate at school
0:42.5	is asking people to forgive the killer.
0:45.5	A powerful moment of forgiveness in an Ionia County courtroom today
0:48.5	as a Hudsonville woman faces the driver who caused the crash that killed her husband.
0:53.5	Before the judge sent him away, the family of the victim had an important message.
0:57.5	They forgave him.
0:59.0	Those are all moments from TV news broadcasts.
1:02.0	But in February, Zanetta Everhardt had a different message.
1:05.5	Her son was among the victims of the 2022 shooting at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York.
1:11.0	The world says you have to forgive in order to move on.
1:14.5	But I stand before you today to say that will never happen.
	...

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