We have all done something we know was wrong. We’re human. We have all been wronged by someone else. They’re human too.
We all wish we could go back and do something differently: be kinder to someone, or think twice before firing off that reply online. But there are no do-overs. All we can do is move forward and make things better, today and tomorrow.
Christianity in particular has always understood this. Forgiveness and redemption sit at its heart: confession, grace, the prodigal son welcomed home with a feast. If everyone is a sinner, then everyone needs redemption, and everyone can earn it, for a price. That price might be confessing, praying, or giving to the church, but the mechanism is firm and useful: the sinner is sorry, God shows mercy, and the preacher declares the sinner “redeemed.” This is something religion gets right.
That Forgiveness Mechanism is also one of the most powerful tools a church has for keeping its congregation. As more people leave religion behind, many lose the mechanism along with it.
But there are paths to forgiveness and redemption that require neither the supernatural nor a religious authority. They work through humanization and the common good, building mutual understanding and holding groups together. A healthy society needs its members to be able to repent and be forgiven. The alternative is endless splintering: more anger, more resentment, more hate, and in the end shorter, less happy lives.
Forgiveness is a virtue because it is good for you, for the person forgiven, and for society. It replaces negativity with positivity and echo chambers with diversity, and it shows everyone watching, especially the young, what forgiveness looks like.
Mercy is a virtue because it fuels forgiveness and redemption.
Mercy and forgiveness are prerequisites for redemption, the way people come back to the community after they have made mistakes.
Forgiveness
Forgiveness usually happens between a hurt person and the person who did the hurting. On the surface, one asks and the other grants it, sometimes grudgingly. Here’s the secret: forgiveness helps the forgiver at least as much as the forgiven. Research links forgiving to lower stress, less anxiety and depression, and better health for the person who forgives, and a relationship where forgiveness flows is better for both people in it.
Seeking Forgiveness
It seems obvious that you should seek forgiveness from the people you’ve harmed. It’s much easier said than done. Sometimes we lack the self-awareness to see the harm we did. Sometimes we fear rejection. Sometimes it’s ego. Nobody enjoys admitting they were wrong.
Online, it’s even harder. Picture the person you hurt taking a screenshot of your apology and posting it for the world: “Hah! He did it and he admits it!” Now picture the replies. Algorithmic feeds reward a pile-on, and echo chambers are always eager to join one, so a single screenshot can bring a flood of attacks. Nobody wants that. So we hesitate, or skip the apology altogether, deciding that being quietly outgrouped beats stirring up another firestorm.
That’s bad for everyone. The person you hurt is probably struggling to let go of their anger because they don’t think you own what you did. Yes, it’s possible to forgive someone who never asks, but a true-hearted apology helps. How you handle your failure also shapes your path to redemption and back into the group. The risk of refusal and the bruise to your ego are small compared to the benefits. Do the right thing, even if it’s hard. Especially if it’s hard.
When you apologize, be clear. Own what you did, how it affected the person you hurt, and why you did it. Don’t make excuses, but walk the fine line between an excuse and an honest explanation. That explanation humanizes you, and that makes forgiveness easier.
Seeking forgiveness is cleansing. It helps people release their anger at you, which reduces suffering. You can’t guarantee the response, but you open the door to communication and redemption, and you grow from facing the damage you caused. We’ve all screwed up. Seeking forgiveness is one of the best ways, maybe the only way, to undo our own damage and make things right again.
Granting Forgiveness
Forgiveness releases anger and other negative emotions, letting the harmed person live with, well, less anger and negativity. If someone wronged you, sure, it would have been better if it had never happened. But wouldn’t you feel better without those emotions sitting in the back of your mind, chipping away at your happiness every day?
To be clear, not everyone deserves forgiveness, and not every transgression is forgivable. Weigh the size of the harm and the intent behind it. Humanize the person who harmed us to understand why they did it: what factors were involved, whether they meant to hurt us, and whether they truly regret it. But it’s easy to hold a grudge by default, and that harms us. So it pays to look hard at our anger and ask whether there’s room to let it go.
Whether forgiveness is “warranted,” and on what conditions (Do they need to make reparations? Get psychological help?), is yours to decide. An apology or an act of amends might make it easier to forgive someone openly, but forgiveness is for you as well. Their repentance, or even their awareness, isn’t required.
Mercy is not for the weak. It doesn’t condone bad behavior, and it doesn’t invite more of it. Mercy is how we make our relationships and our society stronger, because it feeds forgiveness and redemption.
The Path to Forgiveness
Forgiveness centers on humanizing each other, so that both of you see the complex people you are. That usually takes cooperative communication, even if someone has to mediate. It isn’t always easy, but these steps will help:
- Realize that forgiveness is for YOU, not them. Anger and hate are bad for you, lower your quality of life, and may even raise your risk of dying younger. Forgiving doesn’t mean condoning the act or the crime. Holding a grudge extends the harm that was done to you, by your own hand. Some people hold a grudge to make the offender feel guiltier, as punishment. But that is an aggressive act in itself, the opposite of mercy, and it isn’t justice if the offender is genuinely remorseful.
- Humanize your offender. Why did they do it? Are they evil? Or did they have what they thought were good reasons or intentions? - Separate the act from the person. The person is not the action, so judge the action more than the person. We have all done things we regret, but we are not those acts. We are humans, and the acts have many possible explanations. - Ask whether they have shown remorse. You can forgive someone who is unrepentant, because again, this is for YOU. But if they show remorse, it’s likely they didn’t intend harm, or that they did and have learned from it. - Consider that free will may not exist, and that people sometimes do things beyond their control. Thinkers such as Sam Harris (Free Will) and Robert Sapolsky (Determined) argue that we are, to a large extent, products of our biology, background, and environment. Even the most hardened criminal may be partly a victim of circumstance, and that goes for all of us. If so, holding a grudge makes little sense, and the same reasoning argues for a justice system that leans toward rehabilitation rather than pure retribution.
- Decide whether to tell them. You don’t have to. Telling them you forgive them is for them, an act of mercy, not for you. But setting aside your anger is almost always right, and always to your benefit.
- Learn from the experience. Look for ways it made you stronger. You survived, and maybe you grew. What can you do to avoid ending up here again?
- See the anger for the useless emotion it is. Put it down and walk away: never forgetting, never condoning, but ending its hold on your life. It wouldn’t hurt to take a moment to celebrate letting it go.
When Forgiveness Is Questionable
What if the person who hurt you believes they did nothing wrong? What if you think you’re owed an apology that’s never coming? This happens more and more as political correctness leads some people to claim a “right not to be offended,” pitting them against people who treasure free speech and use it as a weapon against certain ideas (religion, for example). Then what?
Again, nuance. It’s up to you. But the fallback is always to humanize, and to defend your position with knowledge, not vitriol.
You may find common ground, or you may simply have to live with your differences, which is the likeliest outcome on matters of religion and politics. We are a diverse society, and freedom of speech trumps the “right not to be offended,” so be ready for this. It’s a big part of why civil discourse is key.
A Note About Online Mercy
The online crowd is quick to abandon mercy. It dehumanizes the offender to an extreme, slaps on labels (racist, homophobe, misogynist), and piles on insults until the person is driven out of the community, with no regard for why it happened. Many people cheer this on. That’s mass dehumanization.
Ostracization lowers quality of life and can shorten lives. It creates echo chambers and breeds intolerance, division, resentment, and hate on both sides. It damages the person cast out, you, and society.
Humanists want to transform society for the better. Abandoning mercy and pouncing transforms nothing; it reinforces society’s ills. Good people like you do bad things all the time, and they deserve mercy by default. Not mercy that OKs bad behavior, but mercy that understands good people sometimes do bad things for reasons only they understand (and sometimes not even they do), and that the way to make things better is to keep them in the fold.
When someone in our community falls, offer a hand instead of a mean word. When someone says they’re sorry, they probably mean it. Don’t delight in the misery of people denied society’s comfort.
None of this means excusing people who consistently or deliberately do harm. As with forgiveness, be mindful with mercy. But don’t be stingy with it, even though part of our brain wants to dehumanize and outgroup. We all do bad or disagreeable things sometimes, and when we’re caught or challenged, we don’t need judgment and ostracization. We need Humanism.
Redemption
Redemption is usually a religious word: someone who has sinned shows they are worthy again of a respected place in the congregation. Everyone makes mistakes, and regret over past misdeeds is a big part of what draws people to religion, because each faith offers a clear path back. Christianity, for example, asks for belief in Jesus (often with prayers for forgiveness and acts of service) in order to be redeemed, that is, seen as righteous.
Religion offers an authoritative, easy, band-aid fix for the guilt most people feel (and some religions are very good at keeping that guilt front of mind). The trouble is that it can let guilty people feel better about themselves without truly earning it, while the underlying problem goes unaddressed.
Humanist Redemption
Humanists can’t ignore the need for redemption just because ignoring it is easier. We have no supernatural judge to grant it, so we rely on the basic principles of humanization: civil discourse, empathy, and the Greater Good.
As it turns out, Humanism does redemption better than any single preacher or authority figure can, because it centers on mutual understanding and communication rather than the needs and interests of a church. It means solving problems, making amends, and learning from mistakes, while weighing the needs of the people harmed and the nuances of each case.
There is no cookie-cutter template. No rules to satisfy so everything gets swept under the rug. No prayers to repeat, no donations or indulgences to buy your way back. Humanist redemption must be earned and genuine, and we like it that way.
Not everyone deserves redemption. But if someone is doing their part to show they’ve changed their thinking and behavior, trying to be good and to communicate cooperatively, then yes, we as Humanists have a responsibility to help that person become a better version of themselves. That’s why we’re here!
This is our virtue. In religion, the preacher declares that God has forgiven you; in Humanism, it’s up to us. We as a community decide who is redeemed, and eagerly offering a path to redemption traces straight back to the Practically-objective Good. Everyone benefits when mindful, earnest redemption is allowed and honored.
Refusing to allow redemption without due consideration is an act of dehumanization. It refuses to see the whole person, and the ways people change over time.
The Path to Redemption
Humanism has one distinct disadvantage compared to religion: we have no leaders who can pronounce someone “redeemed.” With us, it isn’t “pay a tithe, say a prayer, and God forgives you, so say we all.” Redemption is earned through actions, and each member of our society decides whether it has been. Some will say yes; others won’t.
So what does it take? Will a simple apology do? A few minutes, or much longer? It’s nuanced and individual, but here are the steps we think anyone who has wronged someone should take on the way back:
- Realize you are in charge. Your words and actions are yours. Setting aside the free-will question above, you are responsible for your actions, for better or worse.
- Admit that you did harm, or argue civilly that you didn’t. (If you don’t believe you did wrong, you can’t be redeemed, because you don’t feel remorse.)
- Think about the motivations behind what you did, and own them. Did dehumanization play a part? What did you want to accomplish, and why? Many bad actions come from layers of issues. Find the core motivation and start there.
- List everyone you harmed, and try to make amends. Share what you discovered in step 3: disclose your motivation and where your head was, and humanize yourself as much as you can. It must be genuine, and show your self-reflection and your desire to do better. - If the harm was done in person, apologize face to face (if they’re willing to see you). - If it happened online, make amends in public too. Earn that forgiveness; don’t bury the apology!
- Change your behavior, so whatever you did doesn’t happen again, or happens less often or less severely. Forgiving is not forgetting, and repeating the same behavior shows you aren’t serious about redemption.
- Don’t demand forgiveness or redemption. Earn it. No one is required to forgive you, and society isn’t required to take you back. If your transgression was too large or badly motivated, if you don’t offer to fix things, or if you don’t feel real remorse, you may not get the response you’re hoping for.
Summary
Forgiveness and redemption sit at the heart of Christianity, and this is something religion gets right. We need to bring them back for the nonreligious community, including our own here at Humanist.com, and it starts with each of us owning that both matter. Letting people be forgiven and welcomed back strengthens our community and protects our cause from the splintering that hobbles our ability to do good.
So forgive the people who hurt you. Apologize to the people you hurt. Make room for people to come home. That isn’t just Humanist; it’s best for everyone.