CCChat April 2025.pdf - Flipbook - Page 21
TheLETTING
Realm ofGO
Whelm
It is often said that forgiveness is needed for emotional healing, but
if you have been violated, does forgiveness really heal the trauma
and, more importantly, should you be expected to forgive?
Many victim/survivors struggle with issue of
forgiveness in the face of harm, violation or
betrayal yet will often face significant societal
pressure to forgive in order to be able to move
on yet, whilst there may be a wish to no longer
feel anger, bitterness and resentment, true
forgiveness remains unattainable, so is it
necessary to forgive in order to move on?
In her book Truth and Repair: How Trauma
Survivors Envision Justice, Judith Herman
argues that social pressure for forgiveness
compounds injustice for survivors. The classical
scholar David Konstan, believes that the modern
concept of forgiveness is of relatively recent
origin and not found in the Old or New
Testament and that only God has both the
authority to forgive, as illustrated in
