This podcast episode delves into the profound topic of forgiveness, featuring an enlightening discussion with Dr. Ev Worthington, a clinical psychologist renowned for his extensive research in this field. The salient point of our dialogue revolves around the intricacies of forgiveness, particularly the distinction between decisional and emotional forgiveness. Dr. Worthington elucidates how decisional forgiveness entails a conscious choice to refrain from seeking revenge and to regard the offender as a valuable individual, while emotional forgiveness involves the transformation of negative sentiments into positive feelings. We further explore the REACH model, a structured approach designed to facilitate emotional forgiveness, and its applicability across diverse cultural contexts. This episode promises to offer listeners invaluable insights into the mechanisms of forgiveness and its significance in personal and interpersonal healing.

Takeaways:

• Back Channel with Foth/The importance of understanding one's role and expectations when serving on a board cannot be overstated, as clarity facilitates effective contributions.
• Decisional forgiveness involves making a conscious choice to treat individuals as valuable despite past grievances, promoting emotional healing.
• Emotional forgiveness is a process of replacing negative emotions with positive feelings, which can take time and effort to achieve.
• The R.E.A.C.H. model provides a structured approach to forgiveness, emphasizing recall, empathy, altruistic gift, commitment, and holding onto forgiveness as essential steps.
• Cross-cultural applicability of forgiveness interventions has been demonstrated, indicating their effectiveness across diverse populations and contexts.
• Self-forgiveness is crucial for mental well-being, and it involves addressing moral guilt, social consequences, and personal identity issues.

Foreign.

Podcast.

So excited to be here again today with our friend Dick Foe from another session of Back Channel with Foe.

And then we're going to jump into our interview with Ev Worthington on forgiveness and his lifelong work exploring that subject.

Dick, welcome back to the podcast.

My joy, other folks can't see you, but I can.

And it's always good to see that West Virginia almost heaven face.

It is.

Well, I appreciate that.

I appreciate that, that this face is.

Getting old, though, so get no sympathy from me.

So, Dick, got two questions for you here.

You've served on different boards and governing bodies.

What are some lessons you have learned in those spaces?

You know, this, this was, this was a challenging question for me, and this is, this is how I'll say it.

I think the most important thing when, when serving on a board is to know clearly what is expected.

You get invited to boards for a variety of reasons.

Two of the top reasons you get invited to board is we have your time and can we have your money.

And that's fine as long as you know that, right?

Yeah.

Not all of us are built for boards.

I, I don't think I'm built for boards.

I, I've done it, but it isn't like what I would consider a sweet spot.

And especially a lot of people aren't built for nonprofit boards.

If you have business leaders on nonprofit boards, which you do, they're populated by a lot of business leaders.

All of us bring our frame of reference to whatever it is we're talking about.

So the question about boards is why are the board members on that board?

Were they selected to be on the board?

Maybe they were elected to be on the board, or maybe they're what we call ex officio.

You're on the board because you have a particular role.

And the question is, do we need their advice, their ideas, their influence, or their money?

Maybe it's all that.

But what you tend to do get with larger boards is you get people who will give you a lot of ideas, but they either don't want to be or cannot be worker bees, if I can put it that way, as a person, as a college president, had 30 people on a board.

And one of the things that I found out was that there were probably three or four that were really in it.

Who.

And by that I mean by really in it, they could, they had the capacity and the time to spend the time, perhaps go with you places, so forth like that.

And.

But you don't need more than three or four or five who are like that to really make them the.

Really make the mission work.

And so the, the other thing that I would say about board activity, and I've shared this before on here, is how do you talk to each other on the board?

And somebody brought up in our college board, he said, you know, we do the 1, 2, 3 method where I'll make a statement.

I say that's a one, which means it's an idea.

Just thought of it, you can say.

Or if I say it's a two, I'm emotionally connected to it.

You need to be careful about how you just don't write it off.

And if it's three, God said it.

Everybody get under the table.

I don't know if we ever had any threes, but we had one guy give a very powerful, passionate speech one day.

And you know, I mean, he was just.

And afterwards, one of the other board members said, john, what number was that?

Was that like one?

Was that an idea or 1.3?

He said, oh, I think it was a 1.1.

And the other guy said it felt like a 2.7.

Anyway, it just, it allows you to have a common talking space.

Oh, that's good.

And, and, and knowing, you know, if somebody's emotionally tied, that's good for any conversation.

You know, I mean, I'll be honest.

If, you know, somebody's emotionally tied to it and they're willing to share that, boy, that allows you go easy, it goes easy and gives you wisdom and discernment as you respond to them.

No, that's, that's excellent.

So, Dick, how did you pick what.

Second question is, how did you pick what boards to serve on and which ones to maybe not serve on?

I don't know that I picked him, but I was on a church board, so I was pastor that board.

There were eight people, the college Board.

I was the president.

I wasn't chairman of the board, but I had to work closely with 30 people on that one.

I've been on four small to medium non profits and think.

These are my questions that I would ask.

Why am I needed or wanted on the board?

If I'm asked to serve on the board, I think I need to ask, why me?

And tell me the truth.

What is it that you need?

Which is a little related to what I've already said.

The second question is, what's the term?

Is it a three year term, five year term?

Because I can be on a board if I know it's a two or three year term and I can step away and there's no problem.

You know, I'M willing to give 36 months to something if I know there's an end game.

And then again, at what level am I expected to give or get dollars?

Most board members or non profit situations need to be willing to either give dollars or get dollars in some way.

And I think that just needs to be clear.

People aren't offended by people aren't offended to be asked to abort if they know what's really expected of.

So that that's how that's sort of a template that I use.

Good word.

Good word, Dick.

Always enjoy having you on the on the podcast for Back channel with folks, we're going to go ahead and jump into our interview with Ev Worthington, Dr. Ev Worthington, on forgiveness.

Well, there's no time better than now to get started.

So here we go.

Greetings and welcome back to the Clarity Podcast.

So excited to be here today with a new friend.

Ev, welcome to the podcast.

Yeah.

Good to be with you, Aaron.

Ev, will you go ahead and just share a little bit about yourself?

One of the joys of being a podcast host is I get to read about people, read their books, read their writing, listen to them on YouTube, all these things.

But some of the people listening in, they might have not have had that option or opportunity yet.

So would you share just a little bit about yourself before we jump into this conversation today on forgiveness?

Sure.

And so I think the Lord has actually moved me around into different experiences with different denominational, you know, points of view so that he made it so that I could talk with some kind of at least insider experience with a lot of different groups of people.

So professionally, I am a clinical psychologist.

I spent 40 years on the faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University, which is in Richmond, Virginia.

And and so have done research just until I fall unconscious doing research and, and to write books.

And I'm in the midst of trying to write one right now.

So yeah, it's, it's a lot of fun.

Yeah.

And I learned earlier in the podcast before we hit record, he's a tennis player and now a pickleballer.

So we had great conversation around that.

So, Ev, you've spent a lot of your life focused on and interested in forgiveness.

Can you kind of share the Genesis story of that and how did that become a life kind of, yeah.

Life focus and something that you're passionate about.

Yeah, the, I guess the beginning of that, of course, is just being a Christian and experiencing the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and having to practice it myself.

But professionally I got interested in it because my, I had a part time private practice doing couples therapy.

And you know, you almost can't successfully help a couple without in the end dealing with a lot of the old hurts that they've inflicted on each other.

And so forgiveness became something that was important in, in couple therapy.

And I, you know, I got interested in studying it by writing up a little intervention that I had developed.

And then a doctoral student came to do research with me and he was interested in studying forgiveness.

And so, you know, I spend an hour a week, you know, listening to him talk about some of the studies that he had traced down and I stroked my beard and looked wise and as questions that I couldn't know the answer to.

And anyway, after a year of that, another student came and he was interested in forgiveness.

And then another student came the next year and she was interested in forgiveness.

And after three trips a week to the library to keep up with these brilliant graduate students, I finally decided I probably have learned this myself.

And so been doing research and forgiveness ever since.

So I've been doing research in forgiveness since then.

Wow.

So what does, what does research in forgiveness look like?

Well, it's very varied.

It's always interesting.

So, you know, I have done a lot of health psych research.

We've wired people up to physiological, you know, measuring equipment and, and looked at their peripheral physiology.

We've, you know, which, which means like blood pressure and you know, things like that.

I've done salivary cortisol research.

So cortisol is a stress hormone.

So people, you know, who are in, say a conflicted marriage have higher, you know, levels of salivary cortisol or blood cortisol.

So, you know, so that was an interest I, I developed, you know, I, I did a lot of social and personality psychology work and some developmental psych.

So studying the basics of, you know, of how the, the processes of forgiveness take place.

And then as a clinical psychologist, I, I also developed some interventions to help people forgive.

One is called Reach Forgiveness and it is done as a, as a psycho educational group.

That takes about six hours that pretty much anybody can lead because more about having people in the group discuss things than it is having an all wise leader.

And the other is a Do it yourself workbook to help people forgive.

And we just finished a giant worldwide trial in five different countries, six different sites.

These are high conflict countries.

Like China, Indonesia, the Ukraine, two sites in the Ukraine, Colombia, 60 years of civil war, South Africa.

And we had like 4,600 people fill out this three and a third hour workbook to try to forgive something that was bothering them.

And it turned out to be very effective and very efficient.

Wow.

Wow.

Insightful.

I'm going to ask you a little bit about reach, but before I get to that, you share about two types of forgiveness.

I found this fascinating and you know, I consider myself semi educated and read, but it's the first time I'd heard it delineated this way.

So could you share about these two types of forgiveness?

Yeah, I mean, in one way there are four types of forgiveness.

Okay.

You know, so one is divine forgiveness.

So this is our experience and all this is from a human standpoint, but our experience of, you know, receiving forgiveness from God.

So that's divine forgiveness and that's experience, of course, as somebody who is a, has done wrong and needs, you know, forgiveness.

Another type of forgiveness is self forgiveness.

And self forgiveness is where I wrestle with self condemnation, usually because I've either done somebody wrong or I've, you know, kind of disappointed myself and failed to live up to my standards.

Then the other two types of forgiveness are experienced as a, as someone who has been harmed, been offended or betrayed.

And one of those is, is called forgiving others or person to person forgiveness.

And the other is intergroup forgiveness.

So intergroup forgiveness is when, you know, we hold unforgiveness towards someone who is not in our in group.

Maybe they haven't heard us, but maybe someone in their group has hurt someone in my in group.

And so I've generalized that.

Now the two types of forgiveness you were asking about though are two types of, you know, forgiving others so somebody hurts me.

And one of those is called decisional forgiveness.

And this is to make a decision to not seek to pay the person back for this or get revenge on them or.

And the other part of this is to treat them as a valued and valuable person.

A person basically created in God's image and therefore having inherent worth.

So you know, that decisional forgiveness really engages the entire brain in that.

The, the, when I tamp down the desire to get back at this person, that's, that's a frontal cortex type of inhibition.

The, you know, that, that's the part of our brain that gets activated anytime we try to do the right thing, but we have this urge to do maybe the wrong thing.

And then the other part of this, treating the person as a valued and Valuable person is it really comes out of what's called a behavioral activating system.

So this is a part of the brain that, that activates us to do positive things.

So decisional forgiveness, that decision to forgive is one of those two types of person to person forgiveness.

The other is, is emotional forgiveness.

So I could actually make a decision to forgive someone and carry it out for the rest of my life and treat that person as a wonderful, you know, as a valued person and still get emotionally upset every time I, I think about it and feel maybe resentment and bitterness and anger and hurt.

And, and that suggests if, if that can be the case, that suggests there is a second type of forgiveness that we call emotional forgiveness.

And, and that's replacing negative unforgiving emotions like resentment, bitterness, hostility, hate, anger, fear, replacing those with positive other oriented emotions.

And that's kind of like a chemical titration, if you will, where I've got this bitterness acid in me and, and I start adding the positive and it starts neutralizing some of that negativity.

So I don't feel the positive right away.

You know, I just feel less negative, less negative, less negative.

And then maybe it gets to a neutral point and I don't feel anything toward the person.

And for a lot of people this is complete forgiveness.

If this is a stranger or someone I don't care to interact with again, who has hurt me, I'm pretty much satisfied that I've completely emotionally forgiven them if I get to neutrality.

But if this is my wife, you know, and she's now Kirby would never hurt my feelings, but if, if she did, you know, and I said, well, you know, I've got to where I feel nothing toward you.

I, I don't predict good things happening from that actually.

So at any rate, so I want to go on at that point and add until I have a net positive feeling.

Now what the research shows on those two types of forgiveness is that you might think that they're related, but they're not very related to each other.

Interesting.

They are only correlated like 0.4, which means that jointly they, they only account for 16% of the predictability there.

So, so you actually people mostly have one of those types without having the other.

Now you know, you can have them in either order.

It doesn't make any difference.

You don't have to make a decision.

And then some, you know, feel, you know, emotional change, you know, I could have hurt your feelings, you know, and you have this emotional unforgiveness toward me and, and you look out the window and Wham, I get hit by a truck and it breaks every bone in my body.

And compassion rises up in you and, and, you know, and it just takes away all that negative little grudge because I hurt your feelings and, and you've emotional forgiveness, but you never made a decision to change how you wanted to act toward me.

So you can have either order.

And in fact, you know, we mentioned the reach forgiveness model, and what we do in that model is we actually help people make a decision to treat the other person better by working through the five little steps to reach emotional forgiveness.

So emotional forgiveness comes first there.

So it doesn't matter what order, you know, it actually doesn't matter that you have both.

You know, now my theological belief is that, that Jesus, you know, wants us and really commands us to have decisional forgiveness, but does not command us to have emotional forgiveness because we, we just can't control our emotions like that.

You know, if a person hurts me 70 times, 7 times, 490 times, I guarantee you I will never get my emotions to go to zero.

You know, I can just say, you know, no, nobody can take that level of repeated hurt and get to zero emotionally.

But I can decide 490 times or infinitely every time I can decide I'm going to treat this person as a valued and valuable person.

I am not going to get even with them.

You know, I'm going to make a decision to forgive that person.

So, you know, I mean, I'm just thinking currently, you know, we know that Charlie Kirk, you know, got assassinated, and Erica comes out and she says she forgives the man who did this.

I'm pretty sure that what she's talking about is decisional forgiveness, that she doesn't want to hold a grudge against this person, she doesn't want to pay the person back, you know, and she sees that person as a very flawed, like we all are, but created in the image of God.

But I would bet big bucks she is not over her emotional hurt over that.

And that will take a while to, to get over, if ever really.

So, so you practically.

This makes a lot of sense because a lot of people feel like, well, I have to feel nothing or just, you know, feel very rosy toward this person.

If I don't, then I haven't forgiven them.

Well, yes, you have, and you've forgiven them.

Like Jesus says to forgive, you know, but the emotions, you know, hopefully will come.

Yeah, but sometimes they just don't because the person is just bound and determined that they're going to injur us and, and Maybe it's a boss and I can't get away from them.

So, you know, I'm not gonna be able to get that emotional forgiveness.

Yeah.

So the way that I summarize this.

I'm sorry to go on and on like.

No, it's the way it's fascinating is to say that God requires of us decisional forgiveness.

God desires that we have emotional forgiveness and peace, but sometimes that just isn't possible.

Yeah.

And is that where is when people feel.

Maybe they say, oh, they feel triggered by a situation or something triggers in them.

Is that where the emotional forgiveness part is not there?

Or is that something different?

Yeah, feeling triggered is.

Is really something different.

It's.

You know, there's this part of our brain that's called the neo associational complex.

So, you know, I've got all these associations, and I might be able to, you know, to exert that frontal control over several of those, but they're just things that will come up that I haven't really thought about before.

I haven't sought to exert that.

That frontal control over this.

That executive system control.

So.

So that's.

That's getting triggered.

It's a.

It's a physiological response.

It doesn't mean you haven't forgiven it.

You know, in fact, you know, if we've been hurt, the.

The response of our body to being hurt is two things.

One is pain, you know, I mean, it's pain.

Yeah.

But one is anger, you know, as well as pain.

And I know, you know, I cook.

Cook for, you know, Kirby and me.

And.

And so here I am laboring over a hot pan, you know, and we have this.

This demon cabinet up above my head that can sense when I'm not looking at it and, you know, it pops open in the.

You know, and then I'll raise up and the corner will whack me on the head.

And.

And of course, being a fine, emotionally controlled young man of 79 years old, you know, I slam it shut out of anger because that is a natural response to being hurt is anger.

And so sometimes I can forgive something terrible that's done to me, but still I have this conditioned response that I'm going to respond in anger when I see that cue.

Yeah.

Wow.

Wow.

Insightful.

So you've talked about several times about the steps, the.

The model of reach.

Could you share what those steps are in Re A C H. Yeah.

So this is like the core of this model.

So there's more to it than the core, but the core of the model is to walk People through five steps to help them emotionally forgive the person and then invite them to make a decision to treat the person as a more valued and valuable person.

So reach is just a memory cue.

So.

So R is recall the hurt.

So we've got to face what, you know, what the hurt is, or we can't really deal with it.

So recall the heart.

E. Empathize with the person who has hurt you.

And people don't have to empathize.

Sometimes we just can't put ourselves in the position of this person.

Say, how can the person do that?

I can't understand.

But we could sympathize with the person or feel compassion that we.

We'd like to help them, or we can, you know, love the person.

A lot of couples, love is the.

Is the emotion that replaces the negative, unforgiving emotion.

So, you know, we just cue it by, you know, empathy or emotional replacement because that's the process that's going on.

So r recall to hurt.

E. Empathize with the person to hurt you.

A given altruistic gift of forgiveness.

An altruistic gift, One that is not deserved.

This person hurt me.

They don't deserve to be forgiven.

I am going to give them this altruistic gift and then see.

Commit to that forgiveness so that I, you know, when I doubt that I forgiven, I can hold on to that forgiveness.

So hold on.

When you doubt, recall the hurt.

Empathize, Altruistic gift.

Commit so that you hold on.

Now, like I say, there's a.

That's the core.

Yeah, but there are things that happen before that, such as defining emotional and decisional forgiveness so that they know the difference.

Looking at the benefits to the forgiver, they're, you know, of course we benefit the person when we forgive them, but.

But also we receive benefits.

We receive emotional benefits, mental health benefits.

We receive relational benefits, spiritual benefits, and even physical benefits.

And then after going through the reach steps and the.

The decision to forgive, we take people through a process where they identify maybe 10 different times where they feel like they've been hurt but they haven't fully dealt with it.

And we get them to apply that model to those so that they generalize and become a more forgiving person or more forgiving Christian than just one.

It's that neo associationist model, you know, where we try to help them take care of those things that might trigger them in the future that they just sneak up on when.

Sneak up on them when they weren't looking.

Yeah, for sure.

EV Is.

Is.

Is reconciliation and forgiveness?

Are those the same Thing.

And what.

What are.

What would you see as similarities and maybe differences between those two?

Yeah.

Well, so forgiveness happens inside our skin.

Okay, so.

So it.

It's something that I have a certain amount of control over.

It is a decision about how I intend to behave toward this person.

And I might say I don't really have to actually behave differently.

It's.

It's an intention.

So I could.

I can make this decision to treat this person as a valued and valuable person.

And the person gets hit by a car tonight, and I never get to carry it out.

I've still forgiven them.

So it's not a behavior, it's a behavioral intention.

So it's a decision or it's an emotional change, but that happens.

Both of those happen inside my body.

But reconciliation is an interpersonal process.

You know, I can't reconcile with a person who doesn't want to reconcile.

You know, if they.

If they just intend to hurt me time after time, we are not going to reconcile.

And.

And so reconciliation is the.

The restoration of trust in a relationship where trust has been violated.

And in order to reconcile, we have to have both people at least trying to be trustworthy.

And if one person is just refusing to be trustworthy, reconciliation is not going to happen.

So reconciliation.

You know, we can have forgiveness without reconciliation.

You know, we can forgive a person, but the person has died.

We can forgive the person, but the person has moved to California and, you know, I live in Virginia, and they don't want to have anything to do with me.

We can.

We can forgive the person, but they are so toxic that I just feel like I can't deal with them, you see?

So I can forgive and not reconcile, but also we can reconcile without forgiving.

So, you know, in fact, I worked at VCU in psychology for 40 years.

I don't think I ever heard somebody talk about, I forgive you, bro.

You know, that just doesn't.

That's not workplace lingo usually.

But we get to the place where we.

We.

They may have hurt us badly, but we work with them and we work with them and they act trustworthy and truck, you know, and we're both trying to be trustworthy and we reconcile even though neither person may have forgiven or maybe one person has and the other person hasn't.

Insightful, insightful, insightful.

A few more questions I have for you.

When it comes to forgiveness, is it equal?

Is easy to forgive all people on that decisional and emotional, or is it sometimes easier to forgive certain people, easier it is other people?

Is that a fair question?

That's a.

It's a real fair question.

Yeah.

You know, so, you know, the stress and coping theory of forgiveness, which I kind of wrote about 20 years ago, is, you know, part of that is an injustice gap.

So it's like when we get hurt, we kind of establish in our mind a difference between the way I see things right now and the way I would like to see things.

And that gap can be huge, which means it's going to be hard to get to deal with, or it's going to be small.

You know, somebody bumps me in the street, it's such a small, you know, gap.

I've forgotten it before I get down the street.

So.

So, you know, there are.

We keep a kind of a running tab on how big is that injustice gap.

And so the person can do things.

The other person can do things to affect the size of the gap.

Like if they.

If they deny that they hurt me, in fact, they blame me.

They say I didn't do anything wrong.

You're the.

You're the culprit.

Well, my injustice gap gets much bigger when I.

When that happens.

But if they accept responsibility, if they apologize, if they, you know, say, I'll never do this again, you know, if they make amends, how, you know, can I give you a million dollars?

Would that take some of the sting out of it?

Oh, I guess I don't know.

At any rate.

So you can see that, you know, just in, you know, personality aside, just in how people act toward us afterwards, some people are going to be really hard to forgive because they just keep that injustice gap very large, or maybe they hurt us again and again and again, and it just keeps growing and growing.

And other people work hard to try to bring justice in there and, you know, accept responsibility.

And then there are just personality differences that are going to figure into this, too, you know, so some people are just.

Just, you know, Mr. Cranky Pants and, you know, they're gonna aggravate us, and they're gonna be hard to forgive.

And some people are gonna be very agreeable and easy to get along with.

And, you know, and we're like, okay, yeah, I can forgive that person.

So.

So you.

You have, you know, both personality causes, and literally there are also genetic factors that are at work.

In fact, genetics explains really, actually a lot more than we would like to believe in terms of, you know, I might be kind of Mr. Cranky Pants and, you know, and just see the negative in everybody.

And so I have a hard time or somebody triggers me because they remind me of something else in the past or where they just rub me the wrong way.

And so anyway, it's, you know, you ask an academician something like this and you get, you know, everything I can think of, it's excellent.

And you're changing my view of, you know, I've, I'm 300 plus episodes into this and normally when I have the opportunity to sit down with somebody who you as a counselor, therapist or something, I have to have it come up with like 50 questions because they're used to other people talking, not necessarily them talking.

So listen, you're helping shift, you're helping shift that, that, that, that, that paradigm.

I do want to ask one question on the injustice gap.

So what are some things you mentioned?

You know, saying apology, how you treat, are there certain things each person can do to, to narrow that injustice gap?

Could you just share just a little bit more about that?

There's a really well known psychologist these days.

His name is Jonathan Haidt.

Okay, H A I D T and John used to be at uva University of Virginia.

And you know, I took my research lab up to meet with his lab once and he introduced himself, he said, you know, I used to study revenge.

People call me Jonathan Haight.

H A I D T says now I study elevation and all.

And now they call me Jonathan Haidt.

You know, he said that's, that's actually what my mother calls me because that's the way we say our name.

But yeah, so John, you know, is now kind of really had a well known book on the anxious generation that was at the top of the New York Times bestseller for months.

So he has what he calls moral foundation.

So, so these moral foundations are like five different moral capabilities that people have.

And you know, so one is, is care and one is fairness and one is loyalty and one is authority and one is sanctity.

Now it turns out, you know, people have certain values in each of those five areas.

Now, you know, amazingly, you know, John has shown that the Democrats, you know, value the care and the fairness much higher than authority, loyalty and sanctity.

And Republicans are pretty equal across those.

But those moral foundations, you know, if people do things that you value, you, you know, like they, they make you care for them because of, you know, maybe they're vulnerable or maybe they're just likable and I care for them, that can influence then, you know, my injustice, my sense of injustice.

It can, it can change what I thought of by subsequent behavior as I see them.

The same with fairness.

You can see that if the person says Wow, I was really unfair.

I need to make this up to the person.

I can see that they genuinely are trying to make up for what they did, you know, or if, you know, if this is someone, let's say in my church, and I hear them talking about loyalty to, you know, our church, or I hear them talking about God and the sanctity of life.

And you can see that in a way, those five moral foundations that John Haidt studied really kind of give us a way of categorizing ways that people can, you know, you know, give me a sense that I'm reducing my injustice gap.

Interesting.

Now I have a lot of things that I can do to reduce the injustice gap.

Like, you know, I don't have to forgive, you know, because I could, I could seek justice.

I could see justice done.

I could turn this over to God for God's divine justice.

I could turn this over to God by just relinquishing it to God.

I could forbear, you know, and just not respond negatively to the person for the good of the relationship or the good of the church or the good of the group.

There are things that on both sides, people can do to reduce the size of that injustice gap and make forgiveness easier.

Wow, wow, wow, wow.

All right, got a few more questions for you here.

You talked about one of the things was the types of forgiveness.

One of them was forgiving yourself.

What in your research and many years you've been focusing on forgiveness, what are some important reasons to think about forgiving yourself?

And you do highlight some steps on how we can go about that.

So you share about the importance of forgiving ourselves and some of the steps people can take towards forgiving themselves.

Yeah, well, what we usually struggle with is self condemnation.

So, you know, we feel like, I've done wrong, you know, I shouldn't have done this.

We may feel guilty when, you know, the guilt may be out of proportion to what we did.

You know, we may feel ashamed of ourselves for doing this.

And all of those negative emotions are of course eroding our, our sense of self and well being and can actually interfere with our spiritual life.

You know, it can, we can get angry at God and, you know, because God allowed something to happen.

They're just so many, you know, ways that, you know, that self condemnation can, you know, hurt people.

And so just from the point of view of, you know, their own well being, you know, they might want to forgive themselves.

Now we do have this six steps to forgiving yourself.

And, and where this came from was I had made up an intervention to help people forgive themselves.

And we had actually done a couple of studies on it.

And then my brother ended up committing suicide.

And in talking with him, like three months before, I didn't behave in a way that I thought I ought to behave.

You know, he had mentioned that he was struggling, and I told him that it sounded like that he needed to, you know, get some counseling.

Well, he was very poisoned against counseling because my dad was poisoned against counseling, you know, and so he told me he wasn't going to any shrink.

This is what he tells his shrink brother, you know, which triggers off, you know, our 18, you know, our teenage interaction patterns.

And so in the end, I didn't feel like that I had behaved in ways that I knew I could behave to try to help him, you know, see that he, he needed to get some help.

And then he.

He ended up in three months, killing himself.

And so I felt, you know, like I had a lot of self condemnation for that.

Well, as I kind of wrestled with my own self condemnation.

And I thought, well, look at these interventions that I've created.

And I looked at them, I was like, you gotta be kidding.

Nobody's gonna forgive themselves if they do this.

And, you know, but.

And so I, you know, I redid those and I realized that we needed to have about three steps ahead of even addressing forgiving ourselves.

And the first one of those is take things to God, you know, get the moral problem dealt with by God, who can, you know, forgive and deal with the moral problem.

But even if God totally takes away our moral guilt, which he does when God forgives us, we still have a lot of social consequences for things that we did.

Yeah, and we have a lot of psychological consequences.

And God's, you know, divine forgiveness of us takes away our moral guilt, but doesn't take away the social consequences or the psychological consequences.

So the second after we take things to God, the second is deal with the social consequences, make amends as well as I can for the wrongdoing that I've done and the hurt that I've caused other people, and then deal with the psychological consequences.

And, and then after we've kind of made a good faith effort at that, okay, now I can try to apply that reach forgiveness, you know, for emotional forgiveness of the emotional forgiveness of myself, and I can make a decision to forgive myself, you know, so even though if I've done all of that successfully, often with self condemnation, there's still big trouble in River City, and, and, and that is, you know, we may be able to forgive ourselves for the act that we did or acts that we've done.

But we struggle with our self.

You know, I, I, I don't think that I, I wish I weren't the type of person who would have done that.

And I can condemn myself for being the type of person who would get triggered by his brother.

Hey, I am a, you know, I'm a psychotherapist with 40 years of experience and I know how to deal with resistance.

Did I do that?

No, I did not.

And you know, so I should have been a different type of person.

It wasn't just that I did an act that was wrong.

It was, you know, myself, you know, kind of the way that I see myself.

And so I need to deal with that as well.

And then the sixth step is then to kind of commit to not doing something like this again to the extent that I can control that.

Wow, Ev, I appreciate you sharing your personal story and that I think is as you apply that, that makes it hit home, you know, just applying it to your personal story and relationship with your brother.

It just as I had the opportunity just to learn about your research that self forgiveness, it can be a challenge.

I think specifically missionaries serving around the world, you recognize that you don't as you shared, sometimes we have opportun, sometimes you react in a certain way and you're there to share the love of Christ and you don't necessarily respond or react in a way that would represent that.

And then sometimes the enemy can come and condemn us and you know, hey, you're at least for me, you know, hey, you're supposed to be here telling these people about Jesus.

And did you see how you reacted in this situation?

Did you see how you treated this person?

And you know some of those nights can get really long.

At least they, they got long for me of just trying to wrestle with that.

And so anyway, when I was going through your research that was something that really jumped out to me and, and once again thank you for sharing your personal story.

It just, it resonated with me because I've had some long nights on wishing that I would have reacted or responded in different ways and is trying, trying to wrestle, wrestle with that.

So got one last question for you and then I'm going to ask you if you'll pray for us.

The breach model you talked about using doing some research in other countries this podcast has listened in to, you know, 100 plus some countries around world do the models, do you see them working cross culturally both in the self forgiveness and in the reach model?

Are they, something they can work in different cultures.

I can say pretty definitively that the Reach Forgiveness model, in terms of groups and in terms of these do it yourself workbooks work broadly across countries, a little bit better in some countries than others.

But it would surprise you the ones they work in and the ones that they don't do quite as well in.

Like for example, we studied it, studied this in Indonesia and in South Africa.

Well, it, it turned out it worked better in Indonesia than it did in South Africa.

And yet South Africa is much more, you know, Christian centered and Indonesia is much more Muslim centered and you know, so but it works.

And in the models in every country we've tried it in, and we've tried it in quite a number of Asian countries, we've tried it in the Indian subcontinent a couple of times, we've tried it in the Middle east, we've tried it in South America, you know, all over the world.

And it works.

So, and I think it's because really touches on things that, I mean, I, I developed this to be consistent with Christianity but not to be overtly Christian, although we did, you know, kind of adapt it into an overtly Christian model that if people wish to use it that way.

But, but, but I think I'm, we drew on scriptural principles, you know, of care and concern and love, you know, for your enemy, this person who's made themselves your enemy by doing something terrible to you and, you know, and, and being altruistic and being humble.

And so, you know, I think we, we have tried to use the principles that the scripture tells us are human virtues that God has built into us as part of this image of God.

And even though we fail at that repeatedly, you know, still that's part of our, of our nature.

So I do believe that these, that this is cross culturally effective.

I think research has shown that.

And we have taken that little workbook that is three and a third hours and put it on a website, free in English, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, Ukrainian, Indonesian, in order to reach probably two thirds of the world in their first language with a free workbook about forgiveness that not only helps people forgive but has been shown to reduce their depression symptoms, reduce their anxiety symptoms, create a sense of well being, a sense of flourishing, and strongly increase their sense of hope.

Wow.

So, you know, I, I think it's a, it's a tool absolutely free, you know, and I can give you the, the web address that you could put up in case anybody is interested in chasing that down.

Yeah, for sure.

We'll put that in the show notes.

Ev, it's been an honor and a joy to spend some time with you today and thank you for your life's work.

Thank you for your life's work and and forgiveness.

Academic rigor that you've put into it and the intentionality and the lives will impact.

We'll definitely put it in the show notes.

Will you pray for us today?

Sure.

Well, Lord, I just thank you for this opportunity to bring some ideas before people and I pray that you will use the ideas that are helpful that might be be just at the right time for the right person to be able to apply that you will sweep away all the things that I I may have said that is incorrect and not in accord with your word.

And, and Lord, we thank you that you walk with us, that you are the.

The helper that will help us to forgive, that we don't have to do this all on our own, that this is something that you really care about, that this is a core of your heart and that you are are more than willing and able to bring about forgiveness in people's hearts.

And so I thank you Lord for this opportunity and I pray that people will be able to use this as as you see fit to use it in their lives.

And we pray these things in your name, Lord.

Amen.