Resentment, or Who needs forgiveness and why – Orthodox magazine “Thomas”

When they grab a hammer

One of the best stories by Vasily Shukshin (which is called “The Resentment”) begins with a banal and, alas, ordinary situation: a person was rude. He came with his little daughter to the store to buy milk, and the saleswoman mistakenly took him for a hooligan who had started a drunken brawl there the day before. And no matter how much poor Sashka Ermolaev justified himself, no matter how much he explained to the people around him that he was not guilty of anything, it was all in vain. In front of his daughter they disgraced him and cursed him with the last words for who knows why. The story ends with a terrible picture: Sashka runs home to get a hammer to break the head of one of his offenders. And only a happy accident prevents him from committing murder.

This is, of course, just a work of art. But in it, Shukshin was able to surprisingly accurately show a strange feature of the human soul - to react sharply and very painfully to unfair accusations. In fact, what does it matter if they say nasty things about you that you have nothing to do with! After all, your conscience is clear and, it would seem, it’s time to just laugh and feel sorry for the people who are so deeply mistaken about you.

chiarally

But that was not the case... As soon as someone speaks badly about us, a wave of hostility towards this person immediately rises in our souls. And if the offender persists in his ridiculous accusations, this hostility can develop into real hatred, clouding the eyes, rejecting common sense and demanding only one thing - to repay the offender at all costs. In this state, it really won’t take long to grab a hammer...

What kind of terrible force is this that can push an honest and respectable person to commit a crime just because someone told him all sorts of nonsense?

In the language of Christian asceticism, such a force is called passion, but, of course, not in the sense that the authors of lyrical poems and romance novels put into this word. In the Christian understanding, passion is a certain property of human nature, which was initially good and useful, but later turned out to be disfigured beyond recognition by sin and turned into a dangerous disease. The patristic literature talks about eight main sinful passions, to one degree or another inherent in every person: gluttony, fornication, love of money, anger, sadness, despondency, vanity, pride. All these passions and diseases hide within us for the time being, remaining unnoticed, although in fact they can gradually determine the entire structure of our life. But as soon as those around you even slightly touch these sores, they immediately make themselves felt in the most direct way.

Actually, this is exactly what happened to the hero of Shukshin’s story. After all, Sashka Ermolaev was indeed absolutely not to blame for the outrages that the saleswoman attributed to him. But the unfair accusation hit his vanity and pride hard, and they, in turn, aroused anger. As a result, a nice and kind man almost became a murderer.

The clueless saleswoman and the indifferent customers who supported her attacks on the innocent were certainly wrong. And, of course, you can’t offend people; it’s even unnecessary to talk about it. But you can still perceive the insult inflicted in very, very different ways. You can grab a hammer. Or you can look into your heart and be horrified by the turbidity that an unjust insult has raised in it. It is in such a situation that it is easiest to see your spiritually painful state, to understand how deeply passion has taken root in you. And then the offenders become, albeit unwitting, but still benefactors who reveal to a person his spiritual ailments with their careless or even evil words and actions.

This is how the holy righteous John of Kronstadt spoke about this: “... do not be irritated by ridicule and do not harbor hatred for those who hate and slander, but love them as your doctors, whom God sent you in order to admonish you and teach you humility, and pray for them God...

Say: they do not slander me, but my passion; they do not beat me, but this snake that nests in my heart and hurts it when slander is applied. I console myself with the thought that, perhaps, good people will knock it out of there with their barbs, and then it won’t hurt.”

Status and aphorisms about forgiveness

A person without forgiveness is like a guitarist without fingers or a singer without a tongue.
Forgiveness is an art. What not everyone can do.
Sometimes the first step to forgiveness is realizing that the other person is a complete idiot.
Forgiveness is a needle that can sew up the wrongs caused.
When you forgive, you are healed. And when you let go, you grow.
Forgive others as quickly as you expect God to forgive you.
When you choose to forgive those who have hurt you, you take away their power.
Forgiveness heals wounds, forgetfulness erases scars.
Forgive yourself for your mistakes and mistakes and take a step forward.
Man is a creature doomed to forgiveness. Forgiveness is a greatness that he sometimes cannot bear.
Just let go and then forgive, it’s better to live this way. Resentment is like cancer and can be fatal to you. Forgive and forget!
If someone makes you suffer, know that the best revenge is forgiveness.
Forgiveness does not always mean going back to the way things were.
Anger is a heavy burden. Wearing it is tiring. Forgiveness allows you to get rid of it.
To forgive means to break the spiral of evil with the invincible weapon of love.
Bridges are built when we ask for forgiveness.
It is better to forgive too much than to judge too much.
When you refuse to apologize to someone, remember this when you ask for forgiveness.
What you can't forget... God can't remember!
Forgiving yourself, believing in yourself, and choosing to love yourself are the best gifts you can receive.
Anger hurts the body, so forgive and be healthy.
You will never forgive anyone more than God has already forgiven you.
I can always forgive if I understand.
The Lord does not forgive excuses, He forgives sin.
Forgiveness is something we must find within ourselves.

From coal to fire

Very often people get offended by seemingly completely harmless things. It’s not just a word, but just a glance, a gesture or an intonation that is enough for a person to see in them something offensive to himself. It’s a strange thing: after all, no one even thought of offending anyone, but the offense is right there again, scratching your heart with a clawed paw and not allowing you to live in peace.

ThoroughlyReviewed

The paradox here is that any unforgiven offense is always the “product” of the offended person himself and does not at all depend on anyone else’s efforts or lack thereof. Even the grammatical structure of the word offended directly indicates this. Indeed, in this case, “sya” is nothing more than the now out-of-use Slavic vowel of the pronoun “oneself.” Thus, being offended means offending oneself, that is, giving free rein to thoughts that kindle in the soul a sweet mixture of consciousness of one’s own humiliation and a sense of moral superiority over the offender. And although people do not like to admit such things even to themselves, everyone knows from childhood how pleasant it is to feel offended. There is some kind of unhealthy pleasure in this, becoming addicted to which you begin to look for offense even where there was no trace of it.

F. M. Dostoevsky writes in “The Brothers Karamazov”: “It’s sometimes very pleasant to be offended, isn’t it? And after all, a person knows that no one offended him, but that he invented an insult to himself and lied for beauty, exaggerated it himself in order to create a picture, became attached to a word and made a mountain out of a pea - he himself knows this, and yet he is the very first he is offended, he is offended to the point of pleasantness, to the feeling of greater pleasure, and thereby reaches true enmity ... "

In this all-too-familiar painful “pleasure” of resentment, one can find the answer to the question: why in Christianity is an unforgiven resentment defined as a grave sin.

To put it very briefly, the word sin is what the Church calls that which contradicts God’s plan for man. In other words, sin is everything that is contrary to our nature, destroys us, harms our mental or physical health, but at the same time promises some short-term pleasure and therefore seems desirable and pleasant. The suicidal principle of a person’s attraction to sinful “joys” is quite accurately expressed in the famous Pushkin line: “...Everything, everything that threatens death, / for the mortal heart conceals / inexplicable pleasures...” St. Isaac the Syrian, who said, even more categorically defined the destructive sweetness of sin. that the sinner is like a dog who licks the saw and becomes drunk with the taste of his own blood.

It is not difficult to notice how much this tragic image resembles the rapture of one’s own resentment, described by Dostoevsky. And even if the offense turns out to be not far-fetched, but very real, this does not change anything.

Elina Baltiņa

The ember of resentment can be carefully fanned in your heart by thinking about the injustice of what happened, endless mental dialogues with the offender, the consciousness of your own rightness, and other ways that an offended person will always have a great variety of. And as a result of all these “spiritual exercises,” resentment gradually turns from a small coal into a raging flame that can blaze in the soul for many months, or even years. And if, because of someone else’s offensive word or deed, a person ignited such a fire in his own soul, then it would be quite natural to say about him that he was offended. That is, he offended himself.

Bible Quotes about Forgiveness

Be compassionate to one another and forgive one another, just as God has forgiven you through Christ. (Ephesians 4 verse 32, modern translation)
Judge not and you will not be judged, do not condemn and you will not be condemned, forgive and you will be forgiven. (Gospel of Luke 6 chapter, 37 verse)
Watch yourself. If your brother sins against you, reprimand him; and if he repents, forgive him; and if he sins against you seven times a day, and seven times a day he turns back and says, “I repent,” forgive him. (Gospel of Luke chapter 17, 3 and 4 verses)
If you forgive those who have sinned against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. And if you do not forgive those who have sinned against you, then your Father will not forgive you your sins (Gospel of Matthew 6, 14, 15 verses, modern translation)
Be lenient with each other and forgive each other all your grievances. Forgive as the Lord has forgiven you. (Colossians 3 chapter 13 verse, “New Russian translation”)

Right to be offended?

Several decades ago, a positive image of a touchy hero arose in Soviet culture (though his touchiness was then bashfully renamed vulnerability for the sake of euphony). This type wandered through various works of art and quietly took offense at the injustices and oppression that rained down on him from the generous author’s hand. This is how writers and filmmakers expressed their protest against human callousness, trying to draw the audience’s attention to the suffering and loneliness of a person in a soulless society of cog people. The goal was, of course, noble, and the image of a vulnerable hero worked here perfectly. But, unfortunately, every stick has two ends. The downside of this artistic method was the romanticization of resentment itself. After all, if the one who offends is bad, then the one who is offended is good. Therefore: to offend is bad, but to be offended is good.

As a result of this identification of the hero’s moral assessments and his state of mind, a whole generation of very vulnerable, and in fact just touchy people, grew up on the same beautiful, piercing and kind stories of Vasily Makarovich Shukshin. They considered the right to be offended to be a completely normal attribute of a person with a fine mental organization, and therefore they reacted extremely sharply to the slightest manifestation of someone else’s rudeness and callousness. This moral position was very convincingly voiced in his lyric poem by Eduard Asadov:

How easy it is to offend a person: He took and threw a word, angrier than a pepper... And then sometimes a century is not enough to return a lost heart.

At first glance, everything here is correct and clear. And you should not offend a person under any circumstances, and you need to watch your words when communicating - that’s all true. But there is another very important theme in this short poem, which seems to be in the background and therefore not so noticeable. The offended hero (remaining, as they say, behind the scenes) turns out to be so vulnerable that because of one evil word he is ready to forever close his heart to a person, and to a person close to him, since you can only lose what was yours. From such categoricalness of the hero, from this intolerance of other people’s weaknesses and shortcomings, one becomes alarmed, first of all, for himself. After all, with such a “subtlety” of nature, in the end you can end up completely left in splendid isolation, offended by the whole world. And this state is much more terrible and destructive than the most evil words and insults.

An offended person buries himself alive in the shell of his own claims to others, and even the Lord will not be able to free him from such a terrible imprisonment. Because you can break this shell only from the inside, by sincerely forgiving your offenders. And let the offenders not need our forgiveness at all. But we ourselves urgently need it.

Hieromartyr Arseny (Zhadanovsky), killed by the Bolsheviks in 1937, wrote: “The virtue of forgiveness is also attractive because it immediately brings a reward for itself in the heart. At first glance, it will seem to you that forgiveness will humiliate, disgrace you and elevate your enemy. But that's not the case in reality. You have not reconciled and, apparently, have placed yourself highly - but look, you have placed an oppressive, heavy stone in your heart, and given food for mental suffering. And vice versa: you forgave and, as it were, humiliated yourself, but at the same time you lightened your heart, brought joy and consolation into it.”

Forgiveness Quotes That Show Why It's Important to Forgive

When you hold a grudge against another, you are bound to that person or their condition by an emotional bond that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to break this connection and free yourself. (Catherine Ponder)
Anger begets more anger, and forgiveness and love lead to more forgiveness and love. (Gina Mahavira) (We recommend reading beautiful quotes and sayings about love).
Forgiving is the highest, most beautiful form of love. In return, you will receive inexpressible peace and happiness. (Robert Muller)
We don't forgive people because they deserve it. We forgive them because they and we need it. (Bree Despain)
Forgiveness is the only gift you don't give to others. Rather, it is a gift you give yourself to finally be free. (Shannon Older)
The human soul never seems so strong as when it renounces revenge. (Edwin Hubbell Chapin)
Forgiveness is a sign that the person who wronged you means more to you than the harm they caused. (Ben Greenhalgh)
They inflicted the first wound, but you inflict the rest; that's what unforgiveness does. They started, but you continue. Forgive and let them go, otherwise it will eat you alive. You think they made you feel this way, but when you don't forgive, you hurt yourself. (Bryant McGill)
Forgiveness is a choice. And risk. By forgiving, we risk getting hurt again. But there is no other way if we want to live fully. (Abby Glines)
By asking for forgiveness, a person gains freedom. Therefore, the word “sorry” should be used more often. This word and “I love you” are words that you can never have too many of. (Karen Kingsbury)

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To sum up this short reflection, we can say: forgiveness is a process. The main thing is to start with the smallest steps, without expecting big results from yourself right away. Don't think that if we have a diagram of five conditions, we have found a recipe for forgiveness. If our grievances last for years and decades, we will not be able to get rid of them in a month or two.

It is worth getting ready for serious and long-term work, honesty with yourself and with God. And, who knows, maybe this process itself will bear fruits that we do not expect, as often happens when God gives us even more than we sometimes dared to want.

Proverbs and sayings about forgiveness

He who understands everything forgives everything. (Polish proverb)
Be patient with your enemies and forgive your friends. (Afghan proverbs) (I recommend reading quotes about patience and endurance).
Forgiving the unrepentant is like painting pictures on water. (Japanese proverbs)
Forgive me three times, and on the fourth I'm sick. (Russian proverbs)
Forgiveness is more satisfying than revenge. (Arabic proverbs)
Where blood has been shed, the tree of forgiveness cannot grow. (Brazilian proverbs)
Goodbye, don't worry. (Russian proverb)
If you forgive the fox for stealing your chickens, he will take your sheep. (Georgian proverbs)
He who forgives wins. (African proverb)
Women and fools never forgive. (Chinese proverb)
Forgiveness is a pillar of justice. (Ukrainian proverb)
What is forgiven is usually remembered well. (English proverb)
The noblest revenge is to forgive. (Muslim proverbs)
The wine is forgiven, but the bottle is hanged. (French proverbs)
The Irish forgive their great men when they are safely buried. (Irish proverbs)
Those who have done you a very bad deed will never forgive you. (Czech proverb)
Kind speech and forgiveness are better than alms followed by resentment. (Islamic proverb)
You forgive everything to someone who does not forgive himself. (Chinese proverb)
There was guilt, but it was forgiven. (Russian proverb)
If you offend, ask for forgiveness; If you offended me, forgive me. (Ethiopian proverbs)
A Christian forgives, a fool does not forget. (Italian proverb)
God forgives sinners, otherwise His heaven would be overflowing. (German proverb)
On the day of forgiveness, the son-in-law visits his mother-in-law. (Russian proverb)
If there were no transgression, there would be no forgiveness. (Egyptian proverbs)
For the abundant offering and forgiveness of sins. (Russian)

Final words about quotes about forgiveness of offenses

Lack of forgiveness comes in many forms. Unexpected breakups, family trauma, or betrayal of any kind can easily cause resentment to take root in our hearts. Letting go of past hurts and beginning to heal can be a very difficult task, but choosing to forgive will ultimately lead to a happier, more fulfilling life.

It is important to understand that choosing to forgive does not mean that you are rejecting or justifying the pain someone has caused you. But forgiveness creates room in your mind and heart for real joy. Because you have been given another chance to start over. There is no love without forgiveness, and there is no forgiveness without love.

And if you don’t know where to start, these quotes about forgiveness from great and famous people will definitely tell you the right direction in which to move. I ask you to share your opinion about these quotes and thoughts about forgiveness in the comments.