Helping People REACH Forgiveness Of Others

By Everett L. Worthington Jr.

[This is the third article in a four-part series, “Virtue in Positive Psychology and Practical Theology,” delivered as the W. H. Griffith Thomas Lectureship, February 7-10, 2012, Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, Texas.

Everett L. Worthington Jr. is Professor of Psychology, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia.]

In my first two articles, I outlined a psychological model of virtue. Then I discussed four interrelated virtues—justice, mercy, forgiveness, and the glue that holds them together, humility. In the present article, I want to move to applied psychological science, which impinges directly on practical theology.

The World And The Church Need Forgiveness

Both church and world need methods of forgiving. I need not point out what we all know. Many marriages go moribund annually. Banks and businesses go bust and devour people’s life savings. Churches crumble from conflict. Pastors’ peccadilloes are paraded through the media. Countries disintegrate from domestic disputes and power politics; they leave unforgiven child soldiers, unforgiving war-ravaged refugees, irreconcilable tribal tensions, and unremitting hatreds. Yes, we need forgiveness at every level of life—from God, within ourselves, and within our marriages, families, businesses, communities, states, nations, and global community.

But how do we forgive the really hard things of life? Worse, how do we even forgive the little hurts, slights, and offenses that we know we ought to forgive instantly but cannot? We carry around bitterness until it takes root instead of being crushed in its seed. How can the seeds of faith seem to fall too often on hard ground and wither in the heat of the day while the seeds of conflict seem to find crevices full of rich loam and sprout so that the roots of unforgiveness threaten to break apart the rock of our faith? Why can we not forgive better, faster, more thoroughly than we do?

Scripture tells us clearly that God requires decisional forgiveness and God desires emotional forgiveness.[1] But it is skimpy on details about how to forgive decisionally or emotionally.

Christians Can Help Every Willing Heart, Home, And Homeland Reach Forgiveness

We have developed a method by which to promote decisional and emotional forgiveness. It helps people decide to forgive, and then it helps them replace unforgiving emotions like resentment, bitterness, hostility, hatred, anger, and fear (i.e., unforgiveness) with other-oriented positive emotions like empathy, sympathy, compassion, and love so that they experience emotional forgiveness. Finally, it helps them generalize to become a more forgiving person.[2] Twenty-two published studies have compared REACH Forgiveness groups with some control condition, eleven from our laboratory and eleven from various laboratories throughout the world,[3] and numerous other studies are currently in progress.

We often teach the REACH Forgiveness approach in psychoeducational groups, use it in counseling, teach it in dormitories, help people use it in friendship helping, or help parents and couples use it within their families. These groups can be used to transform communities—like entire Christian and secular college campuses and churches. They can be used to transform countries that have experienced internal conflict and even war. Bringing about peace involves what has been called Track 1 diplomacy, which consists of formal proclamations of cease fire and peace and establishment of societal processes of peace. But generally, forgiveness will not spontaneously appear if Track 1 diplomacy is the complete societal transformation program. Track 2 diplomacy is required.[4] Track 2 diplomacy brings together opinion leaders from conflicting sides into small groups. In those groups, the leaders can listen to each others’ stories and learn to empathize with the struggles on the other side. I have argued that even Track 2 diplomacy is insufficient to bring about peace.[5] The opinion leaders must transmit peace effectively to their in-groups. One way to do this effectively is in REACH Forgiveness small groups. In societies wracked by long-standing conflicts in which Christianity figures heavily, churches are ideal structures for such groups, as are Christian colleges, seminaries, and parachurch ministries. Other societal structures are also important, like schools, community organizations, libraries, clubs, and informal gatherings of friends.

Five Steps To Reach Forgiveness

Below I consider the way the REACH Forgiveness groups might be conducted.[6] I walk through the steps of the group, and in the process explain the five steps to forgiveness for which the five letters in REACH serve as cues for memory.

Introductions And Motivations To Forgive

Before the group convenes, potential participants select a transgression they intend to work on during the group. For some people this is a one-off occurrence, like a burglary. Others select the most representative hurt in a troubled relationship. This concept, that people learn to forgive one transgression at a time, is crucial. By the end of the intervention, when participants understand the method and can apply it, they are invited to apply it to multiple transgressions within a relationship so that they can forgive a person and multiple relationships so that they can become more forgiving people.

Motivations

The beginning of the group promotes increased motivation to forgive. We begin by group introductions in which people describe themselves and also briefly describe the hardest thing they ever successfully forgave. This sets a positive tone for the group and shows concretely that forgiveness is possible by the group members, even for horrendous hurts.

The group discusses how unforgiveness can damage physical health, mental health, relationships, and spiritual lives. Generally people can arrive at many of the problems that arise from not having forgiven and from holding grudges over a long period.

The leader leads the participants in considering pertinent Scriptures that involve decisional forgiveness (like Peter asking Jesus how many times one must forgive) and emotional forgiveness (like the parable of the two lost sons). This provides a biblical grounding and enhances Christian motives to forgive.

Definitions

The group then considers what forgiveness is not and what it is.[7] Forgiveness is not the same as condoning a wrong, getting justice that satisfies, turning a wrong over to God expecting Him to exercise divine justice, relinquishing a hurt to God, forbearing, or accepting hurts and moving on with life. All those are consistent with Scripture and are valid ways of dealing with wrongdoing. At a minimum, they reduce the injustice gap and make forgiveness easier, and some can eliminate negative responses to wrongdoing before unforgiveness even sets in.

We ask that the group agree on a working definition to be used throughout the group. In meta-analytic studies of forgiveness interventions, time spent on definitions is correlated over 0.5 with amount of forgiveness people experience in the whole group.[8] Using a common definition improves group experience because individuals often differ widely in their definition of forgiveness and many people hold misconceptions of what forgiveness is (e.g., some think forgiveness means that people must repair their relationships)—which can lead to people putting themselves in harm’s way and can result in conflict within the group and resistance to the group’s treatment modality.

We suggest that there are two types of forgiveness, decisional and emotional forgiveness.[9] Decisional forgiveness is making a behavioral intention statement to treat the offender as a valued person. Emotional forgiveness is replacing negative unforgiving emotions by empathy, sympathy, compassion, or love.

Invitation To Decide To Forgive

We invite people to experience a metaphor for decisional forgiveness. Participants stand and pretend to hold the grudge they want to forgive tight in their hands and extend it outward as far away from their bodies as possible. This, of course, places a strain on their muscles. The leader drones on about how burdensome and weighty it is to carry a grudge. The leader holds his or her own hands outward and can sense how tired the group members are feeling and how “weighty” the burden of grudge-holding feels. The leader talks about how Jesus told people to make a decision to forgive, and if we do, the weight is released, like a bird flying off into the heavens, and freedom is experienced. The leader then suggests that he or she will, in just a moment, direct the group members to let go of the grudge and drop their arms to feel the freedom from that weight. Group members can, at that moment of release, make a real decision to forgive, or if they are not yet ready to make a decision to forgive, they can at least get a sense of the freedom of letting go of the grudge. The group leader then says, “Now release the grudge and let your arms drop. Feel the freedom from carrying that burden of unforgiveness. Know that to the extent you have forgiven, you will treat the person differently, more humanly, more as a flawed and fallen person like we are, and less like an evil offender.”

The group members are told that if they made a real decision to forgive, that will help them forgive emotionally. However, if they were not yet able to make that decision, they could make it at any point. In fact, the group leader will offer another chance after taking the group through the five steps to REACH emotional forgiveness, which will be the focus of the remainder of the group.

It does not matter in which order people forgive. Either decisional or emotional can come first, or they can come at the same time. Importantly we hope participants experience both types of forgiveness by the end of the group.

Before we begin to work through the five steps to REACH emotional forgiveness, we suggest that God is the real author of emotional forgiveness. We use this analogy. To build a concrete pillar, we would use wooden planks to construct a form. Into the form, we would pour the concrete. The form is not permanently important but is helpful in building the pillar. The five steps to REACH forgiveness are likened to five planks that make up the form. The concrete—the real substance of forgiveness—is God’s permanent change within. The planks of the form (i.e., the REACH steps) are important because they can be used to build other future pillars of forgiveness or to deal with other transgressions in one’s past.

R = Recall The Hurt—Differently

People must recall the hurt if they are to forgive it. But they must recall it differently from their usual recall. Usually people recall grudges by dwelling on how hurt they have been, how unfairly they have been treated, how they have been damaged. They might call the offender names and think of the person as the devil’s tool. In a word, people ruminate about the event and its consequences.

Rumination will promote negative health consequences if people do it frequently. Rumination will produce mental health consequences—anxiety, depression, anger, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), obsessive-compulsive problems, and psychosomatic disorders—and physical health disorders. Also rumination will not help relationships. And this is what the Scriptures call complaining, grumbling, or murmuring.[10] Basically, if you get the chance to ruminate, do not do it. If you are ruminating and get the opportunity to stop, then do so.

So we invite the person to recall the hurt more neutrally than usual. To a partner in the group or to the counselor the person tells what happened. Then we move the person toward thinking about the offender’s experience.

E = Emotionally Replace Negative Emotions With Positive, Other-Oriented Ones

We try to help people think about the hurt through the lens of the other person. Can they empathize? We try by speculating on what the other person might have been thinking or feeling when inflicting the hurt. One way to do this is to invite people to recall a time when they hurt someone else. Usually they meant well, but things got out of hand and their intent did not transmit properly. “Is it possible,” we ask, “that the person who hurt you did the same; he or she meant well, but executed poorly?”

We also invite group partners—people with whom each person is paired in the group—to suggest ways that the offender might have been thinking or feeling. We assign group members homework—to write a letter from the point of view of the offender, telling his or her experience.

Finally, we help people engage in an empty-chair dialogue with the imagined offender. Each person imagines the offender in the chair next to him or her, pours out his or her heart to the offender, and then gets in the offender’s chair and answers back. The dialogue continues until some understanding seems to be reached. Often empathy is generated. Sometimes, people simply conclude that understanding is possible, but not empathy. At that point we might suggest that sympathy might be appropriate. That is, if people cannot empathize with what was done, could they sympathize with a person who gets to the place where he or she would do such an act? Could they even go a step further and feel compassion for the person? Or perhaps even love?

A = Altruistic Gift Of Forgiveness

Once people can feel some positive, other-oriented feelings toward their offenders—empathy, sympathy, compassion, or love—the positive feelings begin to erode the unforgiveness.[11] The size of the injustice gap shrinks as the offender seems more human, more like us, and less a devil.[12] Recall that the injustice gap is the difference between the way we would like an injustice resolved and the perception of the present status. If we do not want to burn the offender at the stake because we can understand that he or she had decent motives (as we have had in the past) or that he or she just let things get out of hand (as we have done in the past), then we are more likely to extend mercy (as we hoped for in the past).

We ask people to think of a time in the past when they wronged someone and the person forgave them. With effort most can come up with several examples when they were spontaneously forgiven by a parent, teacher, friend, coworker, or boss. We ask that they reflect on how they felt when they were forgiven. Many people use words like “free,” “unburdened,” “the chains fell away,” or “a weight seemed to be lifted from my shoulders.”

We ask a crucial question: “You have seen that the person might not have had the horrid motives you first believed, might have simply let things get out of hand, might really appreciate being extended mercy, and might—like you have in the past—be touched by forgiveness. Wouldn’t you like to forgive that person right now? Wouldn’t you like to let go of your negative feelings and feel the burden lift of your own unforgiveness toward the person?”

We then ask each person in turn what percent of the negative feelings with which they started the REACH Forgiveness group they have given up. Have they given up 90 percent, 50 percent, all 100 percent? How much? They each give a number representing the extent of their forgiveness for the offender who does not deserve it, but to whom they are giving an altruistic gift of forgiveness.

C = Commit To The Forgiveness Experienced

When people say aloud, “I have forgiven 90 percent of all unforgiveness I held,” they are making a public statement of their forgiveness. That external statement shapes their internal reality. They know from that moment onward that they have forgiven the offender. But circumstances have a way of making people forget such experiences. So we aid their memory by encouraging them to do several rituals that can cement their own knowledge that they have experienced emotional forgiveness. They might complete a forgiveness certificate that they keep. The certificate states the date and says that they forgave (they write the name) on x date for y offense. They sign it.

Another ritual we use is to pin a note with a description of the offense to a cross. Another is to burn the note as a symbol of prayers for the person going up to God. Perhaps my favorite is to ask people to write on their hand in pen a short word representing the offense they have forgiven. We then invite people to go to the bathroom and wash it off. Many succeed, but when some in the group inevitably have washed it only partially clean, we use that to make the point, “If only 90 percent came off with a single washing, how are you going to get the rest clean?” The obvious answer is that one can wash it again. One can go through the REACH Forgiveness steps again. Another answer is that time might rub it clean.

H = Hold Onto The Forgiveness When Doubt Occurs

People go through these rituals, committing to the forgiveness they experienced, so that they are more likely to hold onto the forgiveness when they almost inevitably doubt whether their forgiveness was real. When people have forgiven an offender, and later they see the person, their body inevitably reacts with feelings of fear and anger. Those feelings are not caused by unforgiveness. They are God’s provision for keeping people safe. The feelings were associated with the original pain and later serve as a warning that conveys, “You got hurt previously, and if you are not careful, you can be hurt again.” We use an analogy to reinforce the concept. We suggest that, having burned one’s hand on a stove, getting near the stove again will trigger emotions of fear and sometimes anger. The person holds no unforgiveness toward the stove; yet the emotional arousal can be keen.

When people who have experienced emotional (and also usually decisional) forgiveness feel those bodily warnings, it is good to have already engaged in the rituals within the C step, “Commit to the Forgiveness Experienced.” They can accept the emotional arousal without wrongly attributing it to a failure of forgiveness.

Revisiting Decisional Forgiveness

When people have been through the REACH Forgiveness steps, they usually have experienced substantial emotional forgiveness. It is time to revisit decisional forgiveness. They feel differently than they did when they held out their arms with the grudge clutched tightly within and opened their fingers to let go of the offense. Now, though, they might be willing to do the exercise with real meaning. So we invite them to stand and once again imagine holding the grudge, and as a symbol of their decision to forgive and treat the offender differently—without a hint of vengeance and as a valued person—they can give wing to unforgiveness.

Becoming A More Forgiving Person

The building of virtue. The intervention is not over. The remainder of the group is aimed at moving beyond forgiving a particular event to becoming a generally more forgiving person. This is the discipline of building the character trait of the virtue of forgiveness. Recall, according to my theorizing in the first article in this series, forgiveness is a virtue built under the guidance and empowerment of the Holy Spirit because it is scripturally commanded and reflects the character of Jesus who lives within. Virtues are aspired to, practiced until they become habits and second nature, used as second nature under challenge, and productive of fruit (i.e., in this case, forgiveness and flourishing). Virtues are not built through human strength, but they do involve participation by and cooperation of humans in God’s work. (Recall our earlier analogy of building the concrete pillar using the REACH forms to shape the God-supplied concrete of permanent forgiveness.) There are countless ways humans can participate and cooperate. This psychological method supplies one of those ways.

Christian theological and psychological rationales. Psychologically Christians have a fallen nature, and we possess God’s imago dei and a transformed, redeemed new nature within. Thus because of that fallen nature we have a natural propensity to sin by holding a grudge. But we also have a natural propensity to forgive because of that imago dei and Jesus’ redemptive transformation. But our propensities—to hold grudges or to forgive—might not necessarily be actualized in an instance. Building Christian character, Christian virtue, within is about adopting clear aims under the leading of the Spirit, practicing forgiveness with discipline in the power of the Spirit, and responding to the character shaped within under the direction of the Spirit.

The final portion of the intervention is taking steps toward building the virtue of forgivingness—a character of being forgiving, not just an act. People develop unforgiveness because of their failure to forgive an event. But sometimes people hurt or offend us numerous times. At some point, people generalize their unforgiveness from the act to the person. We say, “It’s not that I don’t forgive this fourth or tenth or one hundredth betrayal; it’s that I can’t forgive you.” Most people are generally forgiving toward others, but they might have one person who is a thorn in their flesh. Perhaps it is a spouse or ex-spouse who repeatedly and viciously betrayed their love. Perhaps it is a boss. Perhaps it is a wayward and disappointing child. The remainder of their relationships are characterized by forgiveness, but it is too difficult for them to forgive the one person. For other people, relationship after relationship falls into that unforgiven category. Those people have developed an unforgiving character. They need to replace that unforgiving character with a forgiving character. But how?

The exercises within the final portion of the REACH Forgiveness intervention. First, it is necessary to seek God throughout. But we invite people to reverse the flow of becoming unforgiving by nature. We have begun with the event they just forgave.

We seek to generalize by asking people to think of ten events in which they might hold some residual unforgiveness. One might think that Christians typically cannot think of ten such events. Or that they shouldn’t be able to think of ten such events with residual unforgiveness. But if we are honest with ourselves, we can identify a number of incidents in our relationships with parents, teachers, former romantic partners, friends, co-workers, and family members whom we have not forgiven.

Once people have identified ten past events, they reconsider those events in several writing exercises. People carry out twelve tasks. They pray for a person. They work through the REACH Forgiveness steps in writing. They imagine Jesus entering a room populated with the person and his or her offender and speculate on what Jesus might do. They identify forgiveness heroes, plan a campaign for becoming a more forgiving person, and meditate on Scriptures. And of course, we keep coming back to the five steps to REACH forgiveness, and we have people apply them with several different events and people. This is the practice that builds habits and eventually yields that character trait of a forgiving character.

Personal Application

I have tried to be practical about how we might apply the REACH Forgiveness steps within a psychoeducational group. However, I also would like to apply it to something a bit closer to where I live.

On New Year’s Eve in 1995, a young man invaded my seventy-eight-year-old mother’s home, probably thinking the residents were away at a New Year’s party. My mother did not drive and had gone to bed early; so the house looked deserted. When she came out of her bedroom, probably confronting the young man as he rifled through her belongings in the hall, he bludgeoned her to death with a crowbar.

I was consumed with anger. I recall being in my brother’s back room talking to him and my sister. In fury, pointing to a baseball bat leaning against the wall, I said, “I wish the murderer were here. I’d beat his brains out with that baseball bat.” Later I worked through forgiveness by considering how a teen might feel crouched in front of a darkened house contemplating a burglary. “This will be a perfect crime,” he probably thought. “These people aren’t home.” It was a good conclusion based on a house with the lights out and no car in the driveway. Tragically, it was wrong. My mother had gone to bed early.

He broke in, and when she awakened, came out of her bedroom, and confronted him, he must have looked at her in shock. He must have angrily thought, “She’s spoiling my perfect crime.” Then he must have realized that she was looking at his face. “I’m going to go to jail,” he must have concluded. He reached out and struck her with the crowbar. Three times. As she lay on the floor, her life blood flowing from her head, his fury rose up, and he violated her with a wine bottle. Now blood was flowing from both head and hips. Finally, as he looked on in horror, he must have realized what he had done. He ran through the house breaking every mirror. He could not look at his horribly flawed image.

In the bedroom where I sat imagining the crime, I suddenly flashed back to myself saying that I would beat the murderer in the head with a baseball bat until his lifeblood splattered out. I was convicted. I thought, “Whose guilt is worse? The youth, a teen who had impulse control problems. Or the college professor, a Christian, forty-eight at the time, who counseled people on humility, mercy, forgiveness, and justice—who was willing to hit a young man in the head until his life left his body.” Clearly, my sin was worse. Yet, even as I asked and answered my own question, I knew that I could be forgiven if I but asked. And I thought, “If I can be forgiven my great sin, then who am I to hold unforgiveness against that young man?” I forgave him, and it has stuck.

We have the awesome privilege of admitting our own wrongdoing and then being cleansed of all unrighteousness. But we have the awesome responsibility of turning people who have sinned against us and those we love over to the living God—that God might deal with them in perfect restorative justice, in mercy, with forgiveness. And Jesus will someday look them in the eye and perhaps forgive and restore them, just as He will look me in the eye as I mutter, “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me” (Ps. 51:10-12). And Jesus will say, “You are forgiven.”

Conclusion

Forgiveness is a great blessing we have from God, and it is a gift we can pass along to others. Forgiveness is not an isolated virtue, but a virtue that is intimately intertwined with other virtues into a single cloth. William Blake wrote,

I give you the end of a golden string;
Only wind it into a ball,
It will lead you in at Heaven’s gate,
Built in Jerusalem’s wall....[13]

That golden string will lead us home, but we will definitely have to deal with our own moral failures, our own disappointments in ourselves, and our own failures to live up to our standards—much less God’s standards.

Notes

1. Everett L. Worthington Jr., Forgiving and Reconciling: Bridges to Wholeness and Hope (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2003), chap. 3.
2. For a self-help Christian book see ibid. For a professional book with treatment plans, theory, and transcripts of counseling and other applications, see Everett L. Worthington Jr., Forgiveness and Reconciliation: Theory and Application (New York: Brunner-Routledge, 2006). For free, downloadable Word document versions of leader and participant manuals for conducting psychoeducational groups, which can be modified for local use (permission is granted on the website), see www.people.vcu.edu/~eworth. For a free 2-hour DVD for training group leaders in the Christian version of this group psychoeducational treatment, send a $4 check made out to “VCU Department of Psychology” for postage and handling to Worthington at Box 842018, Richmond, VA 23284-2018.
3. For some of those see Wei-min G. Blocher and Nathaniel G. Wade, “Sustained Effectiveness of Two Brief Group Interventions: Comparing an Explicit Forgiveness-promoting Treatment with a Process-oriented Treatment,” Journal of Mental Health Counseling 32 (2010): 58-74; Glenice A. Burchard et al., “A Study of Two Marital Enrichment Programs and Couples’ Quality of Life,” Journal of Psychology and Theology 31 (2003): 240-52; Rebecca P. Kiefer et al., “Training Parents in Forgiveness and Reconciliation,” American Journal of Family Therapy 38 (2010): 32-49; Carey Lampton et al., “Helping Christian College Students Become More Forgiving: An Intervention Study to Promote Forgiveness as Part of a Program to Shape Christian Character,” Journal of Psychology and Theology 33 (2005): 278-90; Michael E. McCullough and Everett L. Worthington Jr., “Promoting Forgiveness: A Comparison of Two Psychoeducational Group Interventions with a Waiting-list Control,” Counseling and Values 40 (2005): 55-68; Michael E. McCullough, Everett L. Worthington Jr., and Kenneth A. Rachal, “Interpersonal Forgiveness in Close Relationships,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 75 (1997): 321-26; Jennifer S. Ripley and Everett L. Worthington Jr., “Hope-focused and Forgiveness Group Interventions to Promote Marital Enrichment,” Journal of Counseling and Development 80 (2002): 452-63; Mark S. Rye and Kenneth I. Pargament, “Evaluation of a Secular and Religiously Integrated Forgiveness Group Therapy Program for College Students Who Have Been Wronged by a Romantic Partner,” Journal of Clinical Psychology 58 (2002): 419-41; Mark S. Rye et al., “Can Group Interventions Facilitate Forgiveness of an Ex-spouse? A Randomized Clinical Trial,” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 73 (2005): 880-92; Steven J. Sandage and Everett L. Worthington Jr., “Comparison of Two Group Interventions to Promote Forgiveness: Empathy as a Mediator of Change,” Journal of Mental Health Counseling 32 (2010): 35-57; Z. Shechtman, Nathaniel G. Wade, and A. Khoury, “Effectiveness of a Forgiveness Program for Arab Israeli Adolescents in Israel: An Empirical Trial,” Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology 15 (2009): 415-38; Stephen P. Stratton et al., “Forgiveness Interventions as Spiritual Development Strategies: Workshop Training, Expressive Writing about Forgiveness, and Retested Controls,” Journal of Psychology and Christianity 27 (2008): 347-57; Nathaniel G. Wade and Julia E. Meyer, “Comparison of Brief Group Interventions to Promote Forgiveness: A Pilot Outcome Study,” International Journal of Group Psychotherapy 59 (2009): 199-220; Nathaniel G. Wade, et al., “Predicting Forgiveness for an Interpersonal Offense before and after Treatment: The Role of Religious Commitment, Religious Affiliation, and Trait Forgivingness,” Journal of Psychology and Christianity 27 (2008): 358-67; Nathaniel G. Wade, Everett L. Worthington Jr., and S. Haake, “Promoting Forgiveness: Comparison of Explicit Forgiveness Interventions with an Alternative Treatment,” Journal of Counseling and Development 87 (2009): 143-51; Everett L. Worthington Jr. et al., “Relative Efficacy of Interventions to Promote Forgiveness-Reconciliation and Communication-Conflict-Resolution versus Retested Controls in Early Married Couples” (unpublished manuscript under editorial review, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA); Everett L. Worthington Jr. et al., “A Psychoeducational Intervention to Promote Forgiveness in Christians in the Philippines,” Journal of Mental Health Counseling 32 (2010): 75-93; Everett L. Worthington Jr. et al., “Forgiving Usually Takes Time: A Lesson Learned by Studying Interventions to Promote Forgiveness,” Journal of Psychology and Theology 28 (2000): 3-20.
4. Olga Botcharova, “Implementation of Track Two Diplomacy,” in Forgiveness and Reconciliation: Religion, Public Policy, and Conflict Transformation, ed. Raymond G. Helmick and Rodney L. Petersen (Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation, 2001), 269-94; Joseph V. Montville, “Religion and Peacemaking,” in Forgiveness and Reconciliation, 97-116.
5. Everett L. Worthington Jr. and Jamie D. Aten, “Forgiveness and Reconciliation,” in Post-conflict Rehabilitation: Creating a Trauma Membrane for Individuals and Communities and Restructuring Lives after Trauma, ed. Erin Martz (New York: Springer, 2009), 55-72.
6. C. Lampton et al., “Helping Christian College Students Become More Forgiving: An Intervention Study to Promote Forgiveness as Part of a Program to Shape Christian Character,” Journal of Psychology and Theology 33 (2005), 278-90; and Worthington, Forgiveness and Reconciliation.
7. Worthington, Forgiving and Reconciling.
8. Nathaniel G. Wade, Everett L. Worthington Jr., and Julia E. Meyer, “But Do They Work? A Meta-analysis of Group Interventions to Promote Forgiveness,” in Handbook of Forgiveness, ed. Everett L. Worthington Jr. (New York: Brunner-Routledge, 2005), 407-22.
9. Julie J. Exline et al., “Forgiveness and Justice: A Research Agenda for Social and Personality Psychology,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 7 (2003): 337-48; and Worthington, Forgiving and Reconciling.
10. Numbers 14:27; Job 7:11; Philippians 2:14.
11. I call this the emotional replacement hypothesis. In a chapter of Forgiveness and Reconciliation, I adduce many lines of evidential support of this hypothesis.
12. In Forgiveness and Reconciliation I examine in detail the relationships among justice (including the injustice gap), forgiveness, and humility.
13. “63. From ‘Jerusalem,’ ” in The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse, ed. D. H. S. Nicholson and A. H. E. Lee (Oxford: Clarendon, 1917; Bartleby.com, 2000), www.bartleby.com/236/ (March 22, 2013).