Is There a Difference Between Forgiveness and Letting Go?

Can we overcome past resentments without forgiving?

Photo by Meghan Schiereck on Unsplash

Remember that time in high school when you were treated unfairly?

Or perhaps you have recently experienced an offense that got under your skin.

When you recall the experience, does it still sting?

All of us have been mistreated at some point in our lives. Most of us carry some emotional pain from these experiences that we just can’t seem to shake. Numerous studies indicate that these hurts have a negative effect on our overall health and feelings of well-being.[1] Psychologists tell us we would be best served by letting them go.

Does letting go mean we need to forgive the people who treated us unfairly?

Defining forgiveness

Robert Enright, founder of the International Forgiveness Institute and a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has created a widely accepted definition of forgiveness. For Enright, forgiveness has two elements:

1. Overcoming resentment

2. Trying to offer the wrongdoer compassion, benevolence, and love (even if they don’t deserve it).

For Enright, these two elements are linked. The way we “overcome resentment” is “by trying to offer the wrongdoer compassion, benevolence, and love.”

Is it possible to overcome resentment without offering compassion to the wrongdoer?In other words, is it possible to let go without forgiving?

Letting go of resentment

I resent it when someone bumps into me as I’m walking on the sidewalk. But that resentment disappears quickly and not because I’ve given any thought to the other person. I can let the resentment go but according to Enright, I haven’t forgiven.

For small slights, it’s possible to overcome resentment without offering compassion to the wrongdoer. Does this also hold for deeply seated resentments? In my experience, it does. 

I went straight from high school to college. Friends of mine chose to participate in a gap year program together. When they returned the next year, they were tightly bonded and weren’t interested in bringing me back into the fold. I was hurt.

I never re-established those friendships. I made new friends and life moved on.

I didn’t wish harm to those who had hurt me. But I didn’t spend time thinking about them either.

When I was in my forties, I had the chance to speak with one of these former friends about that time. I told him I had been hurt by his behavior. “I was a kid,” he said.

He was right.

He didn’t exactly apologize. And I didn’t exactly forgive; at least not in the way that Enright defines forgiveness. I no longer carried the hurt of my nineteen-year-old self. Nor was I angry at the nineteen-year-old who years ago had hurt me. In one sense, those nineteen-year-olds no longer existed.

Just because the person I was in the past experienced an injustice doesn’t mean the person I am in the present needs to hold onto it.

“Trying to offer the wrongdoer compassion, benevolence, and love,” as Enright suggests, is one way to overcome resentment. But I had managed to let go of resentment while offering my former friends something closer to apathy.

An ancient insight into forgiveness

According to the Hebrew Bible, if you caused someone harm, you needed to make it right. Often this involved financial compensation. Offering wrongdoers compassion, benevolence, and love, wasn’t necessary. Nor was it expected.

But it sometimes happened.

In the book of Genesis, Joseph’s brothers sell him into slavery. After the death of their father, the brothers are afraid that Joseph might seek revenge. They ask Joseph to “please lift the sin of your brothers.” But instead of responding “I forgive you,” Joseph says:

Don’t be afraid. Am I a substitute for God?... Besides, although you intended me harm, God intended it for good…I will sustain you and your children. And he comforted them and spoke directly to their hearts. (Genesis 50:19-21)

Joseph implies that he can’t “lift their sin”—that type of forgiveness is up to God. Nevertheless, he lets go of old resentments and treats his brothers with compassion.

Did Joseph forgive? According to Enright, it appears he did. But according to Joseph, “lifting sin” is something he can’t do. For Joseph, forgiveness wasn’t the right way to approach coming to terms with past harmful behaviors.

Atheist readers may choose to understand Joseph’s words without any reference to a deity. Joseph is telling his brothers that lifting the burdens of their bad behavior isn’t his job. Those burdens are their responsibility, not his. But that doesn’t stop Joseph from treating his brothers compassionately.

Letting go

Forgiveness is often beneficial. But if it’s not practiced wisely, it may be harmful. For example, if the attempt to practice forgiveness short-circuits the ability to express anger at having been wronged, or if it encourages a wrongdoer to continue their inappropriate behavior, the practice needs to be revised.

Maybe I have forgiven my former high school friends even though I haven’t offered them compassion, benevolence, and love. Yet according to Enright’s widely accepted definition, I haven’t forgiven them.

And Enright would say that the biblical Joseph forgave his brothers. However, according to Joseph, forgiveness wasn’t his to give. 

Forgiveness is complicated. The word “forgiveness” has behavioral, moral, philosophical, and even theological implications. We don’t all understand forgiveness the same way. I, for one, am not even sure what I mean by forgiveness.

Letting go is a simpler concept. When past resentments no longer have the power to upset us, we can say that we have successfully let them go.

On a practical level, it may be better to focus on “overcoming resentment” rather than focusing on “forgiveness.” Once that old wound is no longer capable of causing us pain, we’ll be in a better place to consider the meaning of forgiveness.

When resentment, anger, and ongoing emotional pain are no longer active within us, the heart knows what to do. And it doesn’t really matter what we call it.

---

[1] Here are three examples. There are many more.

Witvliet, C. V. O., DeYoung, N., Hofelich, A. J., & DeYoung, P. (2011). Compassionate reappraisal and emotion suppression as alternatives to offense-focused rumination: Implications for forgiveness and psychophysiological well-being. Journal of Positive Psychology, 6(4), 286-299.

Witvliet, C. V. O., Phipps, K. A., Feldman, M. E., & Beckham, J. C. (2004). Posttraumatic mental and physical health correlates of forgiveness and religious coping in military veterans. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 17, 269-273.

Larkin, K. T., Goulet, C., & Cavanaugh, C. (2015). Forgiveness and physiological concomitants and outcomes. In Lydia Woodyatt, Everett L. Worthington, Jr., Michael Wenzel, & Brandon J. Griffin (Eds.), Forgiveness and health: Scientific evidence and theories relating forgiveness to better health (pp. 61- 76). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer Science + Business Media.