The Power of Forgiveness: Based on a Film by Martin Doblmeier
by Kenneth Briggs
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Book Summary Information
Author: Kenneth BriggsEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-04-01
ISBN: 0800662253
Number of pages: 200
Publisher: Fortress Press
Book Reviews of The Power of Forgiveness: Based on a Film by Martin Doblmeier
Book Review: WOW Amazing and so enlightening
Summary: 5 Stars
A bit of a disclaimer, if that's the right word. I come from a Quaker, Mennonite view, so forgiveness is the only thing I know and practice.
What I appreciated about the film and the book is how we are shown that forgiving is a choice we can make. Like Diane Horning who lost her son Matthew on 9/11 and how she is angry with the way her son's remains were handled, since like all the material from the World Trade Center ended up in a land fill, and sadly in an area called 'live kill'. She has chosen not to forgive and this shows in a way that made me so sad.
It also tells me that ones ethnic, religious, racial background plays a huge part in whether one forgives easily. Like with Alexandra Asseily who lives both in London and Beirut and is Russian-born, English-raised, married a Lebanese businessman and raised her children in both the UK and Lebanon. She is overseeing, through the help of the construction company re-building war-torn Central Beirut, Solidere, a Garden of Forgiveness, which the three women from the 9/11 attack who had lost family members visit. Anyway, in the movie and book we are reminded of how past history does indeed play a role in how people grow up holding an unforgiving mindset.
Its why I highly recommend the book Amish Grace. And why I am reminded of the song from South Pacific about You Have To Be Carefully Taught as in 'You've got to be taught To hate and fear,You've got to be taught From year to year, It's got to be drummed In your dear little ear You've got to be carefully taught. You've got to be taught to be afraid Of people whose eyes are oddly made, And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade, You've got to be carefully taught'.
Elie Wiesel the Nobel Prize winner is an interesting piece, since he is Jewish and in his faith as is shown one is taught if a person offends someone else, only the offended person can forgive him. The offender must go and ask for forgiveness. If it is withheld, he should go again, later, and ask. If it is withheld again, he must go once more to ask for forgiveness. If it is refused him a third time, then the person withholding the forgiveness bears the blame. The we learn that in 2000, during a speech in the German Parliament commemorating the holocaust, Elie Wiesel said/asked the assembled German leaders, "You have been helpful to Israel after the war, with reparations and financial assistance. But you have never asked the Jewish people to forgive you for what the Nazis did." Two weeks later, the Bundes president, Johannes Rau, went to the Israeli Knesset and did just that. Amazing isn't it?
Also very interesting are the two researchers Kathleen Lawler Row and Everett Worthington , both psychologists, who have been doing major forgiveness research for years. Everett Worthingtons study on how some people actually 'chew the cud' when it comes to reviving past issues intrigued me.
And one of the psychologists in the film does extensive forgiveness research and noted said women are more interested in the idea of forgiveness than men, and the older we are the more forgiving we tend to be. This alone makes me want the movie and book in every male led church in America!
Summary of The Power of Forgiveness: Based on a Film by Martin Doblmeier
The work, by noted religion writer Kenneth Briggs, explores the dimensions and frontiers of a problem that can perplex, provoke and sometimes liberate anyone who has wronged another and/or has been wronged by another. Taking its theme and key resources from the Martin Doblmeier film of the same name, the book also points in a direction of its own: probing religious meanings of the process, including the pacifist option; testing the complexities and limits of forgiving; considering the difficulties of actually carrying it out; and examining scientific claims that forgiveness improves health. The book reflects the thinking and behavior that have grown up around the subject of forgiveness with the help of such noted contributors as James Forbes, Thich Nhat Hanh, Thomas Moore, Elie Wiesel and Robert Enright and allows those factors to speak for themselves in an open- ended discussion with no foregone conclusions.Theology Books
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