Revenge, Avoidance, or Forgiveness

When others wrong us, we have options

March 9, 2021: I stepped up to the lectern in the middle of the courtroom. It was the sentencing hearing for the driver of the vehicle that had fatally struck my 7-year-old son four months earlier. My wife had just delivered a statement about how his death had affected us. Now, it was my turn to speak.

What does one say in such a moment? Human language fails in circumstances like these. There was nothing I could say that would fully capture the complexity of what had happened, its aftermath, or what it all meant. Justice in this case was an elusive concept, something that simply didn’t really exist, something that couldn’t really exist. Nothing could bring back my son.

In preparing for this moment, one thing I did know for sure was that I had choices. I knew that I could choose my words, my tone, and my message. I could focus on our loss. I could dwell on the details of the tragic accident. I could get angry. And no matter what I said, I knew no one would really blame me for what I said or how I said it—I suppose that’s one sliver of grace that our culture bestows upon the tragically bereaved for a while.

I also knew that what I said might be reported upon in the local newspaper and that my other children might one day either find that or ask about it. Far more importantly, I knew that I would think about it afterward, and that I didn’t want to say anything that I regretted, anything contrary to my values or misaligned with how I thought a virtuous person should act in such a situation. I knew this was a consequential moment both for my family and for the driver of the car.

I chose to tell the court about my son, Vincent. I described how he was born while I was serving with the military in Afghanistan, how even when he was very small his big personality shone through the screen of my iPad from the other side of the planet. I described his joy, his unusual empathy, and his fierce passion for life. I talked about what happened on the day he died from my perspective, and how his loss affected me. I then described what my wife and I thought regarding a sentence, which in our assessment best focused on community service in honor of Saint Vincent de Paul, our son’s namesake and the Catholic patron saint of the poor.

Directly addressing the person responsible for my son’s death, I then said:

Vincent’s death deeply and permanently affected the lives of so many people. I can imagine that Vincent’s death has deeply and permanently affected your life, too.

Whenever any of us face tragedy or adversity, we have a choice. We can allow tragedy to consume us permanently, or we can choose a better path forward. You can learn to live with your grief and regret while—at the same time—rededicating your life to a greater sense of meaning and purpose. 

Regardless of what this court decides, I—as the father of this amazing little boy who inspired so many people—ask that you dedicate the rest of your life to helping those in need. Doing so will, in the tradition of Saint Vincent de Paul, honor my son’s legacy of bringing light and life to others.

Right now for me, forgiveness is an intellectual, conscious decision that I have to make every day. With time and God’s grace, forgiveness will become more natural. We continue to hold you and your family in our thoughts and our prayers.

When others wrong us, we have options.

What might our world look like if when others wronged us, we only responded with our most primal instincts of revenge or avoidance? It might look like something out of a dystopian movie, with roving bands of violent factions vying for power. It might quickly devolve into a world unfit for human collaboration beyond tribes tightly bound together by fear, a society riddled with distrust and isolation.

But we do have a third option, one that not only preserves and promotes social harmony but also—and perhaps most importantly—releases us from the emotional and cognitive freight that goes with revenge or avoidance, delivering us from the corrosive power of anger. It has the potential to prevent or break the cycle of vengeance.

That option is forgiveness, a way of dealing with interpersonal transgressions in a prosocial way, something that has been a longstanding part of numerous religious traditions but has attracted the interest of social scientists in recent decades. As noted by Michael McCullough and Charlotte vanOyen Witvliet,

forgiveness is different from pardoning (which is, strictly speaking, a legal concept); condoning (which involves justifying the offense); excusing (which implies that a transgression was committed because of extenuating circumstances); forgetting (which implies that the memory of a transgression has decayed or slipped out of conscious awareness); and denial (which implies an unwillingness or inability to perceive the harmful injuries that one has incurred).

In terms of forgiveness as a response, McCullough and Witvliet further define forgiveness as “prosocial change in a victim’s thoughts, emotions, and/or behaviors toward a blameworthy transgressor.”

Spiritual benefits aside, a number of studies suggest potential positive links between forgiveness and mental health and well-being. Additionally, some preliminary evidence suggests similar links between forgiveness and physical well-being.

I should note that I’m focusing here on our interpersonal relationships and our encounters with other individual people. This all gets much more complicated and even complex at the level of groups, societies, and nations. Addressing forgiveness in those contexts is perhaps a goal for another day or for another person.

Forgiveness is a lifelong endeavor.

None of this is easy, neither in the case of my personal family tragedy nor in myriad other situations—some of which are undoubtedly worse and excruciatingly more difficult than what I experienced. But it seems like there are benefits to incorporating forgiveness as a personal quality or trait into how we develop ourselves and into how we encourage the development of others. And if we recognize the value of forgiveness before we’re wronged greatly, we might be better suited to use it than if we try to do so while in the throes of having been wronged.

As I’m writing this, it has been almost three years to the day since that moment in the courtroom. And in reflecting back upon what happened, I can indeed say that I really do forgive the driver of that car. It’s not just an intellectual decision now, something that I have to remind myself to do over and over again. It’s part of how I see the world and how I make sense of what has happened to me and my family within the continually unfolding story of our lives.

And truly changing how I think, feel, and behave is a release from the corrosive power of anger and resentment.

It’s freedom—or something very close.

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References and for further reading

McCullough, M. E., & Witvliet, C. V. (2002). The psychology of forgiveness. Handbook of Positive Psychology, 2, 446-455. 

Enright, R. D., & Fitzgibbons, R. P. (2000). Helping clients forgive: An empirical guide for resolving anger and restoring hope. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Keren, P. (March 9, 2021). “Judge tells driver '...think of little Vinny every hour' while in jail for fatal crash.” Akron Beacon Journal. https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/news/2021/03/09/mentor-woman-sentenced-crash-killed-hudson-boy/6834990002/

On the Science of Forgiveness and Why it Matters: Episode of The Indigo Podcast (with Ben Baran and Chris Everett):