Pray that forgiveness leads to peace

Rather than pray for “Peace on Earth and Goodwill Toward All” this new year, I’m praying instead for its precursor: What leads to peace in people’s hearts. A curriculum to do this exists. While not a quick fix, its value is proven by scientific study, decades of evidence: It teaches what it means to forgive and "how-to."

When taught to generation after generation in grades K-12, the curriculum produces results startlingly successful even in places like Northern Ireland. First developed, tested, perfected at the University of Wisconsin—Madison in the Department of Education’s Ed Psych, it’s now offered by the International Forgiveness Institute. Here's why it works:

1. When a person feels angry at someone, they feel awful. Anger is well known to fester, affecting the heart, gut, sleep, relationships, ability to learn and prosper.

2. It makes no difference if the anger’s triggering offense is real or perceived. Until an individual lets go of the anger, the sadness, sense of victimhood and desire for payback infects motivations, habits, home, relationships. (Emotions are known to be highly contagious, so the anger of a few easily infect schools, workplaces, whole nation-states and the world.)

3. What does quell today’s pandemic of anger, victimhood and condemnation? Like COVID, each person must do their part. But in the case of anger scaling to the point of threatening a country’s stability or another person’s life, where flywheels of revenge result, the protocol does not call for handwashing or vaccination. Rather, the ‘cure’ comes from forgiving. Being compassionate and merciful toward others not only lowers their temperature but also serves to heal one’s own heart the most.

No strategies for fostering a lasting peace in a region or lasting peace in the heart are as proven as teaching the "how-to" of forgiveness at an early age. But without scaling this to the max now, given the state of the world what does the future hold? More anger which will beget more anger. More revenge which will beget more revenge. More hate, more contagion, hell on earth at an even larger scale.

So if you’re praying that millennia’s prayers for peace will be answered and stay answered, pray that the whole of humanity comes to know the value of forgiveness and "how-to," even if it takes one person at a time, one school or one country at a time.

Join me in making a gift to the International Forgiveness Institute so it can make forgiveness a fundamental skill in this generation and the next via K-12 curriculums everywhere. Consider contacting your local school about the curriculum so your community can, over time, experience the collegiality, improved mental and physical health that result.

And finally, forgive yourself for something you regret. Like an untreated virus, it’s growing inside you and infecting others. To forgive yourself is to rid yourself of it, a gift that keeps on giving to yourself and also your family and friends.