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Forgiving God can be healthy for the soul, according CWRU social psychologist Julie Juola-Exline. She and a team of researchers found that the inability to forgive God and let go of anger or disappointment when bad things happen is linked to depression, anger, and anxiety.
Reporting on the study "When God Disappoints: Difficulty Forgiving God and its Role in Negative Emotion" in the Journal of Health Psychology were Juola-Exline, a research associate in CWRU's Department of Psychology; Ann Marie Yali from the Behavioral Medicine and Oncology Division of the University of Pittsburgh's Cancer Institute; and Marci Lobel from the Department of Psychology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
The researchers found that people who said they had experienced disappointment, frustration, or unforgiveness in their relationships with God reported more emotional distress than other people. Juola-Exline says that much of this distress centered on anger and feelings of alienation from God. "On the brighter side, those who were able to forgive God for a specific, powerful incident reported lower levels of anxiety and depression," she adds.
"These findings demonstrate that difficulty forgiving God can play an important role not only in religious life, but in emotional life as well," reports Juola-Exline.
What does it mean to forgive God? She explains that people get angry at God when they suffer or when they think about all the evil and unfairness in the world.
"If they believe that God has caused or allowed these misfortunes, people can become intensely angry at God," she says. "This seems to be true even though many people do not believe that God makes mistakes or deliberately causes harm." Forgiving God means letting go or resolving one's anger towards God.
The study involved 200 undergraduate college students, of which 60 were men and 140 were women. Students practiced Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, and New Age faiths or reported they were atheist or agnostic.
The study found that 25 percent of the participants recalled at least one or more times when they found it difficult to forgive God. Reasons noted for this difficulty were the traumatic death of someone close to them, parental divorce, relationship breakups, and abuse.
One of the surprise findings of the study was that the nonbelievers reported a greater difficulty forgiving God.
"This raises the question of whether, for some people, feelings of anger at God might serve as barriers to believing that God exists," says Juola-Exline.
Prior studies have shown the importance of forgiveness in promoting the individual's well being. Juola-Exline says this study concludes that it is important for spiritual and emotional health, too.
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