Self-Condemnation And Self-Forgiveness

By Everett L. Worthington Jr.

[This is the fourth 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 these four articles, I have argued that psychology is a tool—like linguistic studies, anthropology, or historical research—that can help us understand more of God’s revelation to humans about God’s nature and human nature as it bears the nature of God within it. It is also a tool that directly informs practical theology in strengthening the faithful to live a life of faith (2 Cor. 1:4; 1 Thess. 3:12-13; 2 Thess. 2:16-17; 1 Tim. 2:1-8) and in binding up the wounds of the brokenhearted (Isa. 61:1). Through psychological science, we can learn more about the imago dei (at least seen through a refracting prism), the human fallen nature, and the redeemed new self, complementing what Scripture shows.

Christians are called to live lives worthy of Christ, lives that hunger and thirst after righteousness, lives in which we seek virtue because we are adopted children of God and in celebration of Christ’s death and resurrection for us. But in the present article we look at the times when we fail to do the good that we want and we do the evil that we do not want (Rom. 7:15-20). We examine times when we simply fail to reach standards that we set for ourselves and yet we cannot get over the self-condemnation we heap upon ourselves, even when we can acknowledge that those standards may be irrational. Self-condemnation can be a barrier to virtue.

I will claim in this article that self-forgiveness is a way to handle self-condemnation. I will suggest that one can help a person forgive himself or herself through seven steps to self-forgiveness, as I illustrate with my own struggles with self-condemnation.

A Brief Word About Helping Others

Psychological science helps us understand the way people really are—at least from the psychological scientist’s particular theoretical point of view. Clinical science, however, is not so much about helping people discover who they really are as it is about helping them change who they are.[1] This is a crucial distinction.

Recall that in the first article in this series I argued that one thing positive psychology can add to the dialogue between psychology and theology is a respect for strong situations. Traditionally people underestimate the power of strong situations and as a result overattribute causality to internal causes like personality or will power. Strong situations are emotionally and motivationally engaging. They trigger processes that access mental structures in fast thinking, not rational reasoning, which tends to be slow thinking.

Helping methods like counseling and psychoeducation are strong situations. Their goal is to be such strong situations that they help all individuals wind their individual ways along a trail to the destination at which the clients are aiming. This is like hiking a developed trail in mountains. Each hiker follows that same trail but has an individual experience. A method like five steps to REACH Forgiveness (part 3 in this series) or seven steps to self-forgiveness is a trail that helps people safely, efficiently, and quickly experience beauty and self-discovery individually along a clearly prescribed route. In this article, I use my experiences in dealing with self-condemnation to develop seven steps to self-forgiving.

The Plunge Into Self-Condemnation

A Personal Odyssey Into Self-Condemnation

In Paris in July 2005 I was notified that hours earlier my brother Mike had committed suicide. Most shocking, he had left a suicide note not to his wife or son but to me.

Just a few months earlier I was in Knoxville for an invited talk. Mike and I went to dinner at a Chinese restaurant. We had the best adult conversation of our lives. He confided to me, “I have these spells. I get depressed. It’s like a darkness covering me. I can’t stand light. It’s painful. I picture Mama’s body at the end of the hallway, and those walls covered with blood splatters. I can’t do anything to help, to ease her pain or fear. It is so vivid that it feels like I’m there. Some Saturdays it is so bad that I’ll go to our bedroom, pull the shades, turn out the lights, and sit in the dark.”

I said, “Mike, this sounds like the symptoms of PTSD—post-traumatic stress disorder. You might want to get counseling.”

With lower lip trembling, “I’m not going to any shrink,” he said—to me, his brother, the shrink.

I tried again and was rebuffed. So, like a petulant adolescent, I said, “Well, whatever.” I did not bring it up again. But that next summer, in Paris, it was my childish “whatever” that left me with guilt. As a clinical psychologist, I knew how to deal with resistance, but I let childhood patterns rule. The price was guilt for failure throughout childhood, as an adult brother, and as a clinical psychologist.

Confused Self-Condemnation

After Mike’s suicide, I walked around Paris in a swirl of confused, self-condemning emotions. At six a.m. on the third day, I went for a run. I ended it by running the steps up Montmartre, the little mountain near the hotel where we were staying. At the top sat La Basilique du Sacre Coeur. From the balcony in front of the cathedral was one of my favorite views of Paris. A thick early morning fog blanketed the city. Here and there domes of Catholic churches poked heavenward through the blanket of fog. I thought, “This is the way I have felt since hearing of Mike’s death. I am in an emotional fog. Occasionally, a bit of clarity pokes through the fog toward heaven. But it is immediately sucked back down into the fog.”

Turning From Self-Condemnation To Find We Are Not Alone

I turned and walked to La Basilique du Sacre Coeur. The doorways were open for cleaning. I looked down the aisle to the large painting of Jesus, arms outstretched, heart pouring out blood and water, and I thought, “Jesus also experienced loss, grief, disappointment, pain, and suffering. He gave up his relationship with his father on our behalf. And Jesus goes with me through my experience.”

The emotional fog surrounding me was whooshed away and calm surrounded me. I felt at peace. I thought, “Jesus might not always pull us out of the fiery furnace, but when he doesn’t, at least he walks with us through the fire and the heat.” I knew in my heart, not in my mind, that in this struggle, I was not alone. With Jesus’ help, I would try to forgive myself. I’d tackle it, I thought, just as soon as we got settled at the University of Cambridge in a visiting research scholar position in September.

Early Steps Toward Self-Forgiveness

Trying To Understand Self-Forgiveness

I addressed self-forgiveness publicly for the first time in August 2005 at the Chautauqua Institution in New York on a quick trip to the States to speak there. I confessed experiencing the confusion and pain of self-condemnation. I said that I hoped to be able someday to understand self-forgiveness enough to bring comfort to others experiencing self-condemnation.

At Cambridge, I thought and gave talks about self-forgiveness. I found that the idea of self-forgiveness was completely absent from Scripture, though Scripture has a lot to say about self-blame. The scriptural key to dealing with self-condemnation is to realize that, when we sin against others, we also sin against God (Ps. 51:4). Even so, I realized how difficult it is to forgive oneself.

The Difficulties Of Self-Forgiveness

Let me name a few difficulties in forgiving ourselves.[2] First, when we try to forgive someone else for an offense, we are the forgiver. In self-forgiveness, we juggle both forgiver and wrongdoer viewpoints. Second, we have insider information about ourselves. We know that we are not a victim but a mess. Third, we know we have wronged others, not just ourselves. Those wrongs have social consequences that affect many people negatively, not just moral and spiritual consequences for ourselves. A murderer cannot simply pray for God’s forgiveness, self-forgive, and expect that all the social and societal ramifications of murder will disappear. Social harms must be repaired. Fourth, we often think that we should be able to forgive ourselves when we fail. We blame ourselves for not doing so. Fifth, we are self-focused, and deep down we do not really believe we deserve such suffering. Sixth, whereas we might not be able to see an offender suffering internally for his or her wrongdoing, we keenly feel our own suffering. Seventh, we feel that the burden of repairing a wrongdoing is on the wrongdoers, but we are the wrongdoers. Eighth, when we do wrong or fail to meet our expectations, those weaknesses are hard to accept into our self-concept. Forgiving ourselves is hard! Sometimes it is a wonder that we can do so at all.

Seven Steps To Emotional Self-Forgiveness

Over the months at Cambridge, I worked out a step-by-step method that could help people experience emotional self-forgiveness.[3] It required more than simply letting oneself off the hook. It required responsible self-forgiveness. The steps are these.

Step 1: Receive God’s Forgiveness

Step 2: Repent and Repair Relationships

Step 3: Recognize and Replace Unrealistic Expectations

Step 4: Reduce Rumination

Step 5: REACH Emotional Self-Forgiveness

Step 6: Realize Self-Acceptance as One Who Is Flawed but Precious

Step 7: Resolve to Live Virtuously with Room to Fail

At some point, too, within that scheme and certainly after repenting and receiving God’s forgiveness and seeking, as much as possible, to restore social consequences, people need to grant decisional forgiveness to themselves. Over the next few years I found myself going through these steps, even as I worked with graduate students to develop an intervention to help others forgive themselves.[4]

Walking Through My Own Seven Steps To Self-Forgiveness

Step 1: Receive God’s Forgiveness

Going to God. One of the great joys of being a Christian is that we expect ourselves to fail repeatedly. But we know that we have the awesome privilege of bringing our sins and failures to God. We know that those are paid for at the cross and believe that we can receive forgiveness and freedom from divine condemnation.

Even before my misty morning run, I had taken things to God and knew in my mind that I was forgiven. But of course knowing and feeling are different. Seeing the magnificence of the Sacred Heart of Jesus triggered my emotional acceptance that God had indeed forgiven me. Forgiven by God, I still condemned myself. And worse, I kept at it—ruminating, holding expectations about what I should and should not have done, replaying failed expectations and accusations. Self-condemnation was heavy on my heart.

Is self-condemnation appropriate after receiving God’s divine forgiveness? In the mornings in the creaky-floored Margaret Beaufort Institute where we lived in Cambridge, bundled up against the increasing perma-cold of the old building, I worked my way through the Psalms. In October 2005, I read Psalm 51 and its inscription: “For the director of music. A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba.”

David saw Bathsheba bathing, had sex with her, and when the pregnancy was discovered, he had her husband killed. When the prophet Nathan confronted David, asking for his judgment on a hypothetical case in which a rich man killed a poor neighbor’s only sheep, David responded indignantly. Nathan said, “You are that man!” Nathan then told David of God’s judgment (2 Sam. 12:7-12). David’s next words were, “I have sinned against the Lord” (v. 13a). Nathan replied, “The Lord has taken away your sin” (v. 13b).

Then in Psalm 51:10-12 David pleaded with God, “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” (NIV). David was condemning himself even though Nathan had told him that God had forgiven him. Self-condemnation is not necessarily assuaged by God’s divine forgiveness. Like David, I had received God’s forgiveness. But I still had not forgiven myself.

Step 2: Repent And Repair Relationships

Frustrated at social repair. Even though God forgives, that does not right the social wrongs done. I had let my brother down in many ways. The most recent was the failure to keep trying to convince him to get help for his PTSD. But my failures went much deeper—back to our boyhoods. Because of my failures Mike had suffered needless pain and now in the wake of his suicide his widow and his son experienced more suffering. I felt frustrated because, in Cambridge, there was nothing I could do about it.

Deciding to forgive myself. Nevertheless, in Cambridge I realized that I needed to forgive myself, even though I could not repair the social consequences of my failures. That would just have to wait. In a little garden outside my office, I decided to forgive myself explicitly. I would stop being so hard on myself because I had not made amends. Like diving into the deep end, I said aloud, “I choose to forgive myself. No more self-blame. My emotions will rest in God’s hands. I can’t make myself feel peace.” Although I had declared my forgiveness, questions remained. “Could I continue with that decision? Would it affect the way I acted? Would I ever experience emotional forgiveness? Could I accept myself with my failures?” Those questions would mean more struggles.

We returned to the States before Christmas, and my wife and I went to see Mike’s widow. She mentioned that the suicide note was still at the Oak Ridge police department. When we retrieved it, I opened it in terror of reading Mike’s condemnation of me.

The note said, “Ev, I know that you will keep your head in this crisis. I left our finances in disarray. Will you straighten them out?”

I stared dumbfounded at that note. No rebuking. No wild rage at my betrayal. No blame. Just a plea for help. My first thought was relief. “Thank you, God,” I thought. “Mike has given me something to do.” Since the beginning, it had seemed that there was nothing I could do to repair any of the social consequences of my harms and passive neglect of Mike. Now finally in a voice from the grave, Mike had provided a way to do something.

A couple of years later at a conference I told of that note. Later, as I stood in line at a sandwich shop, a woman who had been at the talk approached me. “That note,” she said, “wasn’t just a way for you to make up for not helping him; his letter, in effect, said, ‘I trust you. Our relationship has not been so damaged that I don’t trust you.’ You said that reconciliation is the ‘restoration of trust after trust has been violated.’ His letter signified that he felt—no matter how dark his end time was—that you and he had been reconciled.” Hot tears leapt from my eyes. Standing in front of the potato salad and chips, I wept like a child.

Step 3: Recognize And Replace Unrealistic Expectations

Of course I still had lots of work to do. I had many unrealistic expectations of myself. I knew I could not have prevented Mike’s suicide if he were determined to carry it out, but I also knew that I had not tried hard enough to stop him. I had let myself be triggered by old family dynamics. I admitted my deceitfulness of heart (Jer. 17:9) and accepted God’s forgiveness, and I began to employ methods of dealing with unrealistic expectations of myself—questioning, disputing, and distracting myself. Gradually the unrealistic expectations became less insistent.

Step 4: Reduce Rumination

Methods to reduce rumination. Despite making a decision to forgive myself, I was still ruminating. Psychology tells us clearly that we cannot force ourselves not to ruminate. Rather, one way to control rumination is by directing our attention to the positive rather than trying to suppress the negative. Though it might not work for anyone else, I found distraction in reading psychological research, studying about PTSD, resilience, and self-forgiveness. We each must find positive activities to distract ourselves.

Taking a tough test. Remember, virtues must be tested. My test happened in March 2008. Our doctoral program in counseling psychology was rocked to its core when a student committed suicide. Any suicide is difficult for a community of people who love the lost person. But as counseling psychologists we devote our lives to helping people deal with emotional problems without having to resort to suicide. We were facing the same struggles as a department that I had when Mike committed suicide. We felt not only personal pain of loss but also a deep sense of professional failure.

I felt added personal failure. The week before she killed herself, the student had come to my office on a routine matter. She was struggling with depression. I tried to help but ended up only offering to be a listening ear. That was not enough. A week later, she was dead. Her depression had defeated her.

I was personally devastated. For a day or two, it seemed like a slow-motion replay of Mike’s suicide. It was a test. That week, in prayer, I wrote some comforting remarks that I spoke at her memorial service. I had, through God’s mercy, passed the test. I avoided getting drawn back down into the whirlpool of emotions about how I could not prevent the suicide, and, I hope, as I had said at the Chautauqua Institution shortly after Mike’s suicide, that I helped others deal with their grief and perhaps self-condemnation too.

Step 5: REACH Emotional Self-Forgiveness

Working through the five steps to REACH self-forgiveness. That summer I was alone in Florida writing. I decided to try to forgive myself emotionally. The REACH Forgiveness method worked well for many people who tried to forgive others.[5] Could I systematically work through the five steps to REACH emotional forgiveness of myself? I put it to the test, spending an hour each day thinking through the five steps.

R = Recall My Hurtful Acts. The first step, R, involved recalling the hurt. I recalled times I had hurt Mike. I tried to recall what it was like hearing about Mike’s death and the period afterwards. I thought through my months in Cambridge. I also recalled the day I made the decision to forgive myself.

E = Empathize with the One Who Hurt Me (Myself). I spent the second morning trying to empathize with myself. First, I empathized with Mike. What must he have felt that was so painful that it drove him to kill himself? The more I empathized with him, the less central I felt to his experience. I realized that my own failures did not drive Mike to suicide. Empathy brought with it a cooling mercy toward my guilt.

Then I empathized with myself. I pictured myself back at the Chinese restaurant with Mike, having our conversation that ended in my reaction of “Whatever!” Years of being a counselor had taught me how easily old family patterns bubble up and overwhelm rational thought. I could give my clients the benefit of the doubt, affirm their worth when they were overwhelmed by old patterns, and affirm that they were not perfect and didn’t have to be. Could I give that same mercy to myself? I understood that God does not expect me to be perfect. Rather, God expects me to come to the divine throne with my imperfections and receive the covering that is afforded by Jesus’ love. I let go of the stranglehold I had around my own neck. I began to trust God to change me.

A = Altruistic Gift of Self-Forgiveness. The third day I tried to give myself an altruistic gift of forgiveness. This was not just decisional forgiveness; that decision had been made long ago. It was not just about helping me feel better. It was a gift of grace. It was a gift born from gratitude because I had been forgiven by God and by other people for my wrongdoing. Therefore I should try to give myself the same grace as I would someone else. I tried to extend to myself the same gift of mercy in self-forgiveness that I would give to one who wronged me. Remarkably, I felt the burdens finally lift.

C = Commit to the Emotional Self-Forgiveness that I Experienced. The fourth part of the model to REACH emotional forgiveness is to commit to the forgiveness that I had experienced. Often this is best done in a way that involves some kind of ceremony or ritual. So, in the early morning of the fourth day, I headed to Jupiter Beach, which I saw as a place to try to discover how I could make my self-forgiveness memorable.

It was 6:30 a.m. The tide was coming in. I found a big piece of coral on the beach—literally stubbing my toe on it. I piled a mound of sand around and on top of the coral, and I topped the sand with shells. The coral represented my heart. I thought of the shells atop the coral as a tangible metaphor for God’s love piercing to my heart. The sand represented the mound of self-blame and shame that kept the shells from touching my heart. I hoped that sand would be washed away by the waves of the Holy Spirit. As the waves came in, they crept close to my sculpture. Finally they broke on the sand. I could see the sand being leveled out. The tide did not come in with every wave reaching farther up the shore than the next. The waves were in sets, and that reminded me of how my self-forgiveness experience had been—in starts and stops. After thirty minutes there was just a pile of spread-out shells, with one resting atop the coral and the others all around it. All of the emotional self-blame had been swept away. And the shells, God’s love, were actually scattered from my heart to where they could be distributed widely.

H = Hold onto the Self-Forgiveness When I Doubt That It Was Real. The fifth day I took the final step to REACH emotional self-forgiveness–H, holding onto the self-forgiveness when I doubt that I have forgiven myself. I had a powerful image in seeing the sand leveled out and the shells drop down to touch my heart. I knew I could use that memory to visually remind myself that I had been forgiven by God and myself. But I still felt that I did not have a good handle on self-acceptance.

Step 6: Realize Self-Acceptance As One Who Is Flawed But Precious

The real struggle in meaningful victory over self-blame is often not merely getting to the place where we can forgive ourselves. As difficult as self-forgiveness is, the hardest struggle is accepting ourselves as flawed in a horrid way and yet knowing we are precious in the sight of the Lord. Self-acceptance depends on two related processes: accepting our failure and accepting our value.

Accepting our failure. Accepting my failure means seeing that I will fail often and in ways I thought I was strong enough to master. I must recognize and accept that I am not as good a person as I see myself as being. I must believe the witness of Scripture and the truth of my own life. I will continually mess up. I want to draw on the imago dei within and also feed my new nature; yet I must also accept that the ever-present flesh is always there, always a threat. As the prophet Jeremiah said, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9, NIV).

Accepting our value. After grasping my failure, my need, and my dependence on a trustworthy God, only then can I turn to the second half of self-acceptance: accepting my value. Many helpers can support me as I learn: the church, pastors, family, friends, and even psychotherapists. Long-ago Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple said, “Humility does not mean thinking less of yourself than of other people, nor does it mean having a low opinion of your gifts. It means freedom from having to think about yourself at all.” Self-forgiveness frees us for humbly living for others. It is only through the divine touch that we can live. Self-acceptance (Step 6) prepares us for the last of the Seven Steps to Self-Forgiveness.

Step 7: Resolve To Live Virtuously With Room To Fail

By the 2008-2009 academic year, I had one final step to complete freedom—resolving to live virtuously but reserving the room to fail. I asked God to enable me to live as virtuously as possible. I did not want to fall back into perfectionism. So I knew that it also was important not just to practice the virtues to achieve some kind of ideal but to practice cooperating with the Holy Spirit as a way of showing gratitude for all the blessings that I have received. I also had to give myself mercy if I failed.

Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr said that true freedom comes by recognizing that, while we stand within history, God and the ultimate perfection of humanity stand outside of history.[6] Ultimate perfection is a goal that can be pursued only in humility by reliance on God. Humility is a persistent theme of the Christian Scriptures. We have seen in this series that humility is the glue that holds virtue together, so that it does not fragment into separate virtues and so that it does not disintegrate into self-interest, self-focus, and other manifestations of fallenness. True freedom, then, can be experienced only if we stay close and connected with God. This requires prayer for self-control, a supportive network that helps with self-control, and also our own efforts at self-control.

The Mission

Rodrigo Mendoza was a slave trader in South America. He frequently raided the high country, carrying off Guarani natives who were sold into slavery. His true story was told in the movie The Mission.[7] While Mendoza was on a raid, his lover fell in love with Mendoza’s brother. Upon Mendoza’s return, they fought, and Mendoza killed his brother. Remorseful and depressed, Mendoza was consumed by guilt and shame. Jesuit priest Father Gabriel eventually challenged Mendoza to return to the Guarani natives to help build a mission and thus work his way out of shame.

In one of the most poignant ten-minute scenes ever filmed, Mendoza trailed the Jesuits up the mountain, dragging his guilt and shame behind in the form of a heavy bag of armor. They slogged through rushing streams, through almost-impassable jungle, over boulders, up steep inclines and sheer cliffs. Mendoza was trying to do a penance that would close a wide injustice gap that he had created through slaving and through killing his brother.

When they reached the Guarani tribe, Mendoza struggled up the last incline with downcast eyes and drooping head, his reserves spent. He knew that his penance had not been enough. He tumbled to his knees with the bag of heavy armor anchoring him to earth. Worse, the Guarani natives suddenly realized that this bedraggled shell of a man was the evil slave trader. A native grabbed a knife and ran at Mendoza. Mendoza awaited with fatalistic surety the last of his penance—his impending death.

The native roughly grabbed Mendoza by the hair, jerked his neck back, and raised the knife. Mendoza accepted his deserved death without hope. The chief nodded to the knife wielder. Savagely, the native cut the cord holding the dreadful weight that anchored, burdened, and choked Mendoza. His burden tumbled into the water, where it was washed away.

Mendoza wept. Loud wracking, rasping sobs signified his freedom—at last—from the burdens of his shame and guilt. His penance could not set him free. Even the threat of the loss of his life could not set him free. But grace and mercy freed him and changed him. From that point on, he worked diligently to help build the Guarani mission, and later, when the mission was attacked, he defended it with his life.

My Life Mission

Complete freedom from self-blame and shame meant, to me, to do what I felt was God’s mission for me—to do all I can to promote forgiveness in every willing heart, home, and homeland—in as much humility as possible. The Scriptures clearly tell us that life is not all about our own peace, well-being, or flourishing. God called us to a noble purpose, created us for great acts. So that we may accomplish those acts of love, altruism, and blessing for others, God says, when we are weighed down with guilt and shame, “Rise. Be healed. Go. Surely I am with you always.” Self-condemnation is finally swept away, blown by the breath of God. We inhale freedom. We exhale virtue and its siblings, gratitude and love. And that virtue leads us to pass the blessing on to others individually and through the church community.

Conclusion

So I bring to a close this journey of a Christian psychologist through the seven steps to self-forgiveness. This also ends my psychological scientist’s look at Christian virtue, which has been the subject of these four articles. If I had to put a theological label on what I am recommending, I would call it psychological theology.

Whereas psychological science is a discipline in itself, like other disciplines, it can be used in the service of theology—just as theology can be used in the service of psychological science’s study of people. While I have not said so explicitly, I have tried to point out that neither discipline is queen over, nor subject to, the other.[8] Furthermore, I have also argued (implicitly) that the road to truth does not rest in the integration of psychology and theology into some hybrid. Instead of “integration,” I have treated theologies and psychological sciences, including both basic and clinical sciences, as dialogue partners in a dynamic and ever-changing relationship with each other. Each has the capability to surprise and enrich the others, can have stimulating dialogues that reveal the character of each, and can be useful for the church and for individuals within the church and those who reject the church. But to have dialogue they must engage each other, not withdraw into separate fortresses. Like all human disciplines, they are tools in the hand of God to promote God’s work—now and in the future—and to populate His kingdom with disciples of Jesus Christ.

I am glad to have lived out my career in a time when such conversations have sprung up. I hope that God continues that dialogue and builds a great and virtuous community from it.

Notes

1. Everett L. Worthington Jr., Coming to Peace with Psychology: What Christians Can Learn from Psychological Science (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2010).
2. Everett L. Worthington Jr., Forgiveness and Reconciliation: Theory and Application (New York: Brunner-Routledge, 2006).
3. I describe my experiences in detail in Everett L. Worthington Jr., Moving Forward: Six Steps to Forgiving Yourself and Breaking Free from the Past (Colorado Springs: WaterBrook Press), 2013. Since the W. H. Griffith Thomas Lectureship, I have combined two of the steps in the current article. See also www.forgiveself.com.
4. Michael Scherer, Everett L. Worthington Jr., and Joshua N. Hook, “Forgiveness and the Bottle: Promoting Self-Forgiveness in People Who Misuse Alcohol,” Journal of Substance Abuse Therapy (forthcoming).
5. Worthington, Forgiveness and Reconciliation, and idem, Forgiving and Reconciling: Bridges to Wholeness and Hope (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2003).
6. Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1932; reprint, Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002).
7. Robert Bolt, The Mission, producers, Fernando Ghia and David Puttnam; director, Roland Joffé (Warner Brothers, 1986).
8. Worthington, Coming to Peace with Psychology.