Unforgiveness

From Jerry Sittser's outstanding book, A Grace Disguised:

"Unforgiveness should not be confused with healthy responses to loss. The quest for justice, for example, reflects our belief in the moral nature of the universe. When wrong is done, we believe the wrongdoer should be punished. Anger, in turn, is a legitimate emotional response to suffering. When someone has done something hurtful to us, we want to strike back and hurt them. And grief is a natural condition that follows on the heels of loss. When we feel the absensce of someone or something we lost, our soul cries out in anguish. These responses indicate that a normal person has just suffered loss and has begun the healthy but painful process of healing.

"Unfortiveness is different from anger, grief, or the desire for justice. It is as ruinous as a plage. More destruction has been done from unforgiveness than from all the wrongdoing in the world that created the conditions for it...

"Unforgiveness uses victimization as an excuse. Unforgiving people become obsessed with the wrong done to them and are quick to say, 'You don't know how unbearable my suffering has been! You don't know how much that person hurt me!' They are, of course, right. No one can know. But I wonder sometimes if being right is worth all that much. Is it worth the misery it causes? Is it worth living in bondage to unforgiveness? Is it worth the cycle of destruction it perpetrates?" (pp. 136-137)