Reflections on the misery and hatred that comes with being forgiven, or receiving kindness

Sun, 08 Nov 2026 19:33:01 +0300

When we’ve wronged someone, we usually hope for forgiveness. Usually. However, it isn’t always that the granting of the pardon puts us at ease. Some of us must have known the distress and restlessness that is the result of a pardon where we expected punishment; we don’t always feel good when we are told, “it’s okay”. Being forgiven somehow places you in that person’s debt, and to be the one who’s been forgiven, the one who’s received mercy, the one who’s loved unconditionally, these aren’t things we easily appreciate and celebrate. As C. S. Lewis says in The Four Loves, we usually want to be loved for something, for our cleverness for instance; and when we are loved for nothing, the whole arrangement risks being unbearable. Sometimes people go so far as to figure out how to settle that score, how to punish such love and kindness. Often it’s by making ourselves pitiable, and making the other person feel guilty about being good and perfect and kind. We don’t always do it consciously.
Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism: “Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature—it requires, in fact, the nature of a true Individualist—to sympathise with a friend’s success.” The command in Scripture is to rejoice with those who rejoice, and to mourn with those who mourn (Romans 12:15), but I haven’t found it easy to sincerely rejoice with my friends when they win big; and most of them are. Winning big. I embarrassedly admit that I have at times secretly hoped for the stultifying of their progress, that they would hit a snag in their road of success and achievement. It will be no little comfort to know I have company. And sometimes our wish for a friend’s misfortune materializes. And unless we are psychopaths, such a terrible turn of circumstances for them leaves us with even more misery. Unexpectedly, the gladness of their failure has a bitter taste in our mouths, and it grates our stomachs. The thing is, someone’s failure doesn’t mean success for us, just as their success doesn’t mean we have failed or are failing; our minds and our hearts often conflate these things.
In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Baby Suggs puts up a big feast; she cooks so much food and lets her fellow freed slaves have all the fun they can. But then, afterwards, when you would expect them to be glad and grateful for such kindness and generosity, they resent it. “Ninety people who ate so well, and laughed so much, it made them angry… rocking with laughter, goodwill and food for ninety, made them angry. Too much, they thought. Where does she get it all, Baby Suggs, holy? Why is she and hers always the center of things? How come she always knows exactly what to do and when? Giving advice; passing messages; healing the sick, hiding fugitives, loving, cooking, cooking, loving, preaching, singing, dancing and loving everybody like it was her job and hers alone?” They hated her for her love and kindness, and wished her ill, and Baby Suggs felt it that morning. When they see Schoolteacher, they don’t warn Baby Suggs and Sethe, they stand back and let Baby Suggs pay. For her love and for her kindness.
In Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Alexei forgives Anna. Anna pleaded for forgiveness while in child-birth; the whole situation had looked so bleak and it seemed she would die. Alexei forgave her. And why shouldn’t he have when Anna by all appearances seemed about to die? But she lives. However unforeseeably, that unsurprisingly makes things very difficult for Anna. And very very awkward too. She cannot bear to continue living with a man who has forgiven her such grave a sin. She somehow wishes for punishment from Alexei and gets none of it, and it makes her hate him.
As does Ford Madox Ford’s Sylvia Tietjens in Parade’s End (I haven’t read the books, I’ve watched the HBO mini-series. She cheats on Christopher, but he grants her request, terse though it is, and allows her back into his life. He too does not punish her; he treats her kindly(though coldly) and respectfully, and of course he no longer loves her. It ends up being such great misery for her as she cannot find any one failure or mistake in his life; a blunder that will make her feel good and perhaps justified for her own sin. It is such great a torture for her that she must live with and continue to be the wife of a man so good and perfect (but surely we know no human being is ever so good, and certainly never perfect).
If you are a Christian, then you must know that we ever will be in someone’s debt; Jesus'. More than that gives the Christian joy and comfort, it is also the only basis on which he has claim to life and salvation, for otherwise isn’t he deserving of God’s full wrath? Of death? Just as the rest of the world?

November26 on Essais

Reflections on the misery and hatred that comes with being forgiven, or receiving kindness