피해자의 자리에서 본 용서에 대한 목회상담학적 고찰

Abstract

This paper considers forgiveness on the side of victims who actually need to forgive someone. The topic, forgiveness, has been a main concern of human beings for a long time. Most of the literature on forgiveness involves studies of victims forgiving attackers. Even though these studies are prevalent, the central question of this study arose because there had never been a study that considered forgiveness on the side of victims. This paper’s premise is that victims are forced to forgive. The study of forgiveness in existing psychology has emphasized the therapeutic effect of forgiveness in the study of emotional matters. Also, forgiveness has been delivered as a justifiable message in Christianity. These studies have insisted that forgiveness decreases negative emotion. In fact, although victims chose to forgive, they still experienced difficulties in forgiveness with the existence of a negative emotional experience. Therefore, they were not able to practice forgiveness. Likewise, the existing studies on forgiveness have overlooked the difficulties occurring in the middle of the forgiving process and only emphasized the consequential aspect of forgiveness. The researcher suggests the change of perspective to understand forgiveness not as a consequence, but as a process. Therefore, this study would rather understand forgiveness as a struggling process than focus on the consequence of forgiveness. Accordingly, victims do not aim to experience the therapeutic effects of forgiveness during the difficult and struggling process of forgiveness. Instead, they aim to endure and embrace that emotion without removing the negative emotion that still remains. In other words, the process of forgiveness starts with time to get angry enough, be frustrated enough, and be sad enough. The researcher, therefore, links the process of forgiveness to the process of mourning.