Unit 11 Open the Door to Forgiveness课文翻译综合教程二
Unit 11 Open the Door to Forgiveness
Lewis B. Smedes
It’s surgery of the soul, the loving, healing way to create new beginnings out of past pain.
1.Someone hurt you, maybe yesterday, maybe long ago, and you cannot forget it. You did not
deserve the hurt and it has lodged itself in your memory, where it keeps on hurting.
2.You are not alone. We all muddle our way through a world where even well-meaning people
hurt one another. A friend betrays us; a parent abuses us; a spouse leaves us.
3.Philosopher Hannah Arendt believes that the only power that can stop the stream of painful
memories is the “faculty of forgiving”. In that spirit, one December day in 1983, Pope John Paul II walked into a cell of Rebibbia prison outside Rome to meet Mehmet Ali Agca. The Pope took the hand of the man who had tried to kill him, and forgave him.
4.For most of us, however, it is not easy to forgive. Forgiving seems almost unnatural. Our
sense of fairness tells us that people should pay for the wrong they do. But in forgiving we can move from hurting and hating to healing and reconciliation.
5.Hate is our natural response to deep and unfair hurts. A woman wishes her former husband
would be miserable with his new wife. A man whose friend has betrayed him hopes the friend will be fired from his job. Hate is a malignancy that festers and grows, stifling joy and threatening our health. It hurts the hater more than the hated. It must be cut out — for our own sake.
6.How can this be done? How can you let go of a hurt, the way a child opens his hands and
frees a trapped butterfly? Here are guidelines to help you begin to forgive:
7.Confront your malice. None of us wants to admit that we hate someone, so we hide it from
ourselves. But the fury denied rages beneath the surface and infects all our relationships.
Admitting our hate compels us to make a decision about the surgery of the soul we call forgiving. We must acknowledge what has happened, face up to the other person and say: “You did me wrong.”
8.Liz was an assistant professor of biology at a university in California. She was a good teacher,
and the chairman of her department promised to ask the dean to promote her. Instead, his report was so critical of her performance that the dean advised her to look for another job. 9.Liz hated the chairman for betraying her, but she needed a recommendation from him. When
he said how sorry he was that his support could not convince the dean, she pretended to believe him. But she could not keep up the duplicity. One day she confronted him. His embarrassed denial enabled Liz to see him for the weak person he was. She began to feel the power she needed to forgive him and, in her decision to do so, was set free of her hate.
10.Separate the wrongdoer from the wrong. The Bible describes, in the ancient drama of
atonement, how God took a bundle of human sins off man’s back, tied it to a goat, and sent the “scapegoat” to a “solitary land”. Forgiving is finding a new vision of the person who has wronged us, the person stripped of his sins —who really lives beneath the cloak of his wrongdoing.
11.The first gift we get when we separate the wrong from the wrongdoer is insight. As we come
to see the deeper truth about people — that they are fallible — our feelings change. At 16 my adopted daughter, Cathy, was a hothead who bitterly resented her natural mother for giving her away. Why had she not been worth keeping? Then she found out that her parents had been very young and poor and not married.
12.About this time, one of Cathy’s friends became pregnant and, in fear and doubt, gave up her
ba by for adoption. Cathy shared her friend’s conflict, and was sure her decision had been right. Gradually she came to feel that her own mother, too, had done the right thing — she had given her baby away because she loved her too much to keep her. Cathy’s n ew understanding brought her resentment down to forgiving size.
13.Let go of the past. A friend of mine, a beautiful actress, was left crippled by a car accident a
few years ago. Her husband stayed with her until she had partially recovered. Then, coldly, he left her.
14.She could have mortgaged her future to hate. Instead, she forgave her husband and wished
him well. I was skeptical. “Suppose he married a sexy young starlet. Would you wish him to be happy with her?”
15.“Yes, I would,” she answered.
16.This does not mean my friend has entirely forgotten the hurt. In fact, forgetting too soon may
be a dangerous way to escape forgiving’s inner surgeries. Once we have forgiven, however, forgetting is a sign of health. We can forget, eventually, because we are healed.
17.Don’t give up on forgiveness — keep working at it. As a boy, the British scholar C. S. Lewis
was badly hurt by a bully of a teacher. For most of his life he could not forgive the teacher and this troubled him. But not long before he died, he wrote to a friend: “Only a few weeks ago, I realized suddenly that I had at last forgiven the cruel schoolmaster who so darkened my childhood. I’d been trying to do it for years, and each time I thought I’d done it, I found it had to be attempted again. But this time I feel sure it is the real thing.”
18.The hate habit is hard to break. We usually break it many times before we finally get rid of it.
And the deeper the hurt, the longer it can take. But slowly it happens.
19.Persuasive arguments have been made against forgiving. Some say that forgiveness is unjust
because the wrongdoer should not be let off the hook. Others say forgiveness is a sign of weakness. Bernard Shaw called it “a beggar’s refuge”.
20.I disagree. Vengeance never evens the score. It ties both the injured and the injurer to an
endless escalator of retaliation. Gandhi was right: If we all live by the “eye for an eye” brand of justice, the whole world will be blind. Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr said after World War II: “We must finally be reconciled with our foe, lest w e both perish in the vicious circle of hatred.” Forgiveness breaks the grip that past wrong and pain have on our minds.
21.To understand forgiveness, we should keep in mind that we are seldom merely sinned against.
You may contribute to your spouse’s infidelity by ignoring your partner’s needs and desires, or bring on your children’s rebellion by your cold judgments and hot temper. A man I’ll call Mark thought of his wife, Karen, as domineering; himself as ineffective and timid. One night at a party, Karen lau ghingly called Mark a mama’s boy who had never grown up. When they got home Mark shouted: “I will never forgive you for this!” His rage was a cover for the weakness he dared not face.
22.Through her own contrition, Karen learned that she herself was weak and afraid. Her
toughness had been a way to keep her secret demons under control. When she found the courage to reveal her needs to Mark, he became strong enough to drop his mask of anger. In mutual forgiveness, they creatively combined their weaknesses and strengths to forge a far healthier relationship without illusions.
23.When we forgive, we come as close as any human can to the essentially divine act of creation.
We heal the hurt and create a new beginning out of past pain.
敞开宽容的大门
Lewis B. Smedes
这是心灵的外科手术，充满爱心，疗效显著，可以摆脱过去的伤痛，开创新的起点。
1.或许是昨天，或是很久以前，总有人伤害你，让你难以忘怀。你不应受到那伤害，但它留在你
的记忆中，不时隐隐作痛。
2.然而，有此不幸者绝非你一人。这个世界上即便好心者也可能伤害别人，会有朋友的背叛，会
有父母的错怪，会有配偶的离弃。
3.哲学家汉娜·阿伦特坚信：能够阻断痛苦记忆之湍流的唯一力量是“宽恕之力”。正因为有此精
神，1983年12月某一天，教皇约翰·保罗二世走进了罗马城外的雷比比亚监狱的一间监舍，会见了麦赫麦特·阿里·阿格卡，握住了这名企图杀害他的男子的手，宽恕了他。
4.就我们多数人而言，宽恕他人很不容易。宽恕似乎有些不合情理。我们的公正观认为：做错事
的人应当为他的行为付出代价。但是，有了宽恕，我们就能把伤害和仇恨转化为康复与和解。
5.仇恨，是我们对刻骨铭心、天理难容的伤害的自然反应。女人会诅咒她的前夫与新妻不得安生，
男人会因朋友背叛而希望人家丢了饭碗。仇恨是一种会化脓、膨胀的恶性肿瘤，扼杀我们的快乐，威胁我们的健康；它对恨人者的伤害比对被恨者的伤害更大。为了我们自己，我们必须消除仇恨。
6.如何能做到消除仇恨呢？你如何做到忘却伤害，就像孩子松开双手，放走一只刚抓到的蝴蝶呢？
如下几条原则可以助你开始做到宽恕他人：
7.直面你的怨意。没有人会承认自己仇恨某人，因此，我们都把仇恨藏在心底。但这种深藏的怒
火在我们心底燃烧，感染着我们的人际关系。承认心中所藏的仇恨，可促使我们决定对称之为“宽恕”的心灵做一次外科手术。我们必须承认既成的事实，勇敢地面对对方，说出：“你对不住我了！”
8.莉斯是加州某大学的生物学助理教授。她是一位好老师，她所在系的主任许诺要让学院院长提
拔她。不料，系主任的报告中对她的业绩十分挑剔，院长看后要她自己另谋出路。
9.莉斯对系主任的背叛痛恨不已，但需要他写一封推荐信。系主任说他的支持性意见没能打动院
长，因此他很抱歉，莉斯装作相信了他。但她无法一直口是心非地装下去。一天，她找他当面理论。他尴尬地否认了，不过，莉斯由此看清了他的虚弱无能。她开始感到自己拥有了足够的力量来宽恕他，而且，做出了宽恕他的决定后，她心中的恨意也就烟消云散了。
10.区别对待犯错之人与错事。《圣经》中记载了古代的赎罪情节中，上帝从人类的脊背上集拢了一
大捆罪恶，绑到了羊的身上，然后把这只“替罪羊”遣送到一个“荒无人烟的地方”。宽恕，就是找到一个新的视角看待那个曾经错待我们的人，那个与他所犯罪过剥离的人——实际上，他是生活在他以往过失的外衣之下。
11.一旦区分了错事与犯错之人，我们便获得了一项首要的天赋——洞察力。随着我们看到人们更
深层的本性——无人能不犯错，我们的感觉也就改变了。我的养女凯茜16岁时还是经常头脑发热，对把她送掉的亲生母亲恨之入骨：为什么她不能留着自己养呢？后来她发现自己的父母亲当时太年轻、太贫穷，而且没有结婚。
12.大约就在这一段时间，凯茜的一个朋友怀孕了，在恐惧和迟疑中，决定把孩子送人领养。凯茜
与她的朋友一同体验了这段感情冲突，认为朋友的决定是正确的。渐渐地，她开始觉得自己的母亲当时的决定也没错——她把孩子送给别人，是因为很爱孩子，无法自己留着。凯茜的新见解把心中的怨恨减弱到了一个可宽恕的程度。
13.忘掉过去。我的一个朋友，是一位美丽的女演员，几年前因为车祸瘸了腿。她丈夫与她一起生
活到了她部分康复的时候。然后，他冷酷地离开了她。
14.或许，她该从此以怨恨为生了。然而，她宽恕了自己的丈夫，并致以良好的祝愿。我有些不敢
相信，问她：“假如他再娶一个年轻、性感的小明星，你还会祝愿他们幸福吗？”
15.“是的，我会的。”她回答道。
16.这并不意味着我的朋友已经完全忘却了所受的伤害。其实，忘却太快，可能是逃避宽恕这一内
心外科手术的一种危险途径。不过，一旦我们宽恕人家了，忘却就成了健康的信号。我们最终能够忘却，就是因为我们已经走出了困境。
17.决勿放弃宽恕——不断为之努力。英国学者C·S·刘易斯因在儿童时代被一名老师凌辱而深受伤
害。他大半生以来都无法宽恕这名老师，这让他深感烦恼。在他去世前不久，他写信给朋友说：“就在几周前，我突然意识到，对于那位曾经让我的童年充满黑暗的老师，我终于能宽恕他了。
多年来，我一直竭力想宽恕他，而且每次我以为我做到了，却总发现那感觉仍然挥之不去。但
这次我确信我做到了。”
18.仇恨的惯性是很难破除的。我们总是要破除好几次，才能最终根除那种感觉。所受伤害越深，
根除所需的时间越长。但慢慢地，总归还是能做到。
19.有些巧言善辩之词反对宽恕。有人说：宽恕之举缺乏公正，因为犯错之人不应该让他们逃之夭
夭。还有人说：宽恕之举是一种软弱的表现。肖伯纳称之为“乞丐的庇护所”。
20.对上述言论，我不以为然。复仇永远不能让双方扯平，而只会把受害人和害人者绑在一台永不
停息的相互报复的自动扶梯上。甘地说的对：假如我们都生活在“以眼还眼（以其人之道还治其人之身）”的公正法则中，那么，整个世界都将瞎眼。神学家莱因霍尔德·尼布尔在第二次世界大战后说：“我们必须最终于我们的敌人和解，不然，我们均将在仇恨的恶毒轮回中毁灭。”
宽恕，可以破解过去的错事和痛苦对我们头脑的禁锢。
21.要理解宽恕之举，我们应该时时牢记，我们很难得是单纯受到冤屈的一群。你配偶的不忠，很
可能是由于你对对方的需求和欲望视而不见；你孩子的反叛，很可能是因为你言辞冷酷、脾气暴躁。一位我想以“马克”称呼之的男子，认为他的妻子凯伦总是盛气凌人，而他自己则胆小无能。某晚的一次聚会上，凯伦笑称马克是一个永远长不大、需要妈妈呵护的孩子。他们回到家后，马克对妻子咆哮道：“这次我永远不会原谅你！”他的怒火只是对他所不敢面对的弱点的一种掩饰。
22.通过自我反省，凯伦意识到她自己也很脆弱、胆怯。她的强硬，无非是压制她心底之魔的一种
方法。她找到了向马克展示需求的勇气之后，他也拥有了丢弃愤怒面具的勇敢之心。在相互宽恕之中，他们创造性地综合了各自的优缺点，形成了一种毫无幻想、健康得多的夫妻关系。23.做到了对人宽恕，我们便如同任何人一样，最大限度地走近了最基本的、神圣的创造之举：我
们治愈了伤害，摒弃了过去的伤痛，并缔造了一个崭新的开端。