I enjoyed both videos. In Dr. Worthington's video about forgiveness, he describes
the Levels of Explanation by describing what forgiveness is and what it is not. He
then goes into how to forgive in the eyes of Psychology. There are five steps
using the acronym REACH. R stands for recall the hurt, E stands for empathize
with the person who hurt you, A stands for altruistic gift of forgiveness, C stands
for commit to the forgiveness, and H stands for hold on to forgiveness when you
doubt, and Dr Worthington's goes into detail about each one (Worthington 2014).
In the second video, Dr. McMinn does an excellent job at using the integration
approach in the discussion of Positive Psychology. For example, he talks about
how Psychology looked at religious traditions such as forgiveness and gratitude
and took religion out and studied forgiveness and gratitude (McMinn 2019).
He then explains the way Psychology looks at forgiveness. A lot of us have heard
about the benefits it does to oneself such as peace, getting your power back,
taking responsibility, feeling better. Dr. McMinn shows that most of this is all
about focusing on self. What we can get out of it. He then shifts the gear talking
about how the church can bring balance to this and not just focus on self
(McMinn 2019).
From a Christian point of view, we forgive because we love God, because he
forgave us, because it is the right thing to do, and we seek forgiveness and we
have it in our heart to want to do it c (McMinn 2019).
Another example is when he talks about gratitude. From a Psychological study,
he talks about the 2003 study on having a gratitude journal and the benefits of
the group that did a gratitude journal. After 9 weeks later they visited the group
and they were healthier, more optimistic, and had a more favorable life rating
than the other groups that did not have a gratitude journal (McMinn 2019).
Dr. McMinn points out that this is still all about me approach. When we bring
religion back, we focus on whom we are grateful too, its deeply heart felt, and we
connect grace and gratitude (McMinn 2019).
I learned that while the Psychology view is good to understand and learn, when
the Christian view is left out, people really miss some very important
components. We can follow Dr. Worthington's 5 step approach to forgiveness
using the REACH method and that's great, but it doesn't cover the deep virtues of
why.
It goes back to the stance of how I originally felt as I would like to integrate both
science and Christianity. Science to break down the details and help us
understand more with a focus on the science that is in align with God's word. We
bring the Christianity view and this helps us not forget the real the purpose and
the true meaning of everything and letting that be our guide.
I believe this is especially important in my research area of Trauma Psychology -
coping methods.
References
Everett Worthington, Jr. (2014, June 25). Why You Should Forgive and How to Do
It [Video].https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Or9OuxuYKw (Links to an external
site.)
Mark McMinn (2019, January 22). The Science of Virtue: Why Positive
Psychology Matters to the Church
[Video].https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3gFPgcVAEw (Links to an external
site.)
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