Individualism Damages True Forgiveness

Western culture is permeated by individualism. On the positive side, individualism emphasizes that every human being has dignity and self-worth—as opposed to being a collection of insignificant atoms in the mass of humanity—and encourages responsibility. The flip side is that individualism promotes, as its central value, an individual’s self-interest. Individuals act on their own behalf, and the needs of the individual are regarded as more important than the needs of the community.

Authentic forgiveness is never just about a single individual’s need or self-healing; it is a social transaction, restoring and reconciling a broken relationship between the offender and the offended. Due to the emphasis on self-care, forgiveness in an individualistic culture has ceased to be an interpersonal bridge and become an intrapersonal process of self-healing that is unrelated to the community. Unfortunately, in Western cultures, unilateral forgiveness has become the norm due to psychological and sociological reasons such as self-love and the understanding of forgiveness as a private act of intrapsychic release.

Today, individualism influences many churches around the globe, the understanding and practice of forgiveness among Christians is distorted. The kind of forgiveness taught at these churches places less emphasis on the restoration of impaired relationships and lays more stress on intrapsychic release. Gregory Jones, in his book Embodying Forgiveness, explains that the unilateral act from an individual paradigm trivializes forgiveness. It makes it therapeutically easy, but the result is damaging to the Christian community because there is no sense of restoration of communion and reconciliation of broken relationships. The unilateral act of forgiveness causes the offender to ignore the need for repentance and reconciliation, which are crucial aspects of authentic forgiveness, both theologically and biblically.

Christianity is not solitary. The Christian community should not be directed by individualism. McClendon believes that the communal life of Christians was formed through the covenant meal hosted by Christ at the Lord’s Table. Since then, disciples have been connected to one another as community. To maintain community, both Christ’s costly forgiveness of human beings and human beings’ costly forgiveness of one another are essential. Forgiveness, writes Augsburger, “is not a private act of intrapsychic release but instead a truly social transaction of interpersonal reconciliation. The conflict belongs to the community as well as to the disputants … and the understanding of forgiveness is focused on regaining the others as brothers and sisters.”

- John C. W. Tran, Authentic Forgiveness: A Biblical Approach, 2020.