Interview: Cancer Center Director on Art of Forgiveness
Recent studies, reports, and articles are saying that a positive attitude can improve a person’s health, including a patient battling cancer.
On Monday, Sept. 25, the Forgiveness Seminar – led by the Rev. Dr. Michael Barry, director of pastoral care at Cancer Treatment Centers of America’s (CTCA) Eastern Regional Medical Center – was held at McLean Bible Church in McLean, Va. Following the seminar, Barry shared with The Christian Post about how important it is for Christians especially to learn how to forgive and the health benefits that come along with the act of forgiveness.
CP: Did your study of forgiveness come before or after working with cancer patients?
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Barry: It actually came while I was doing some part-time ministry at the Cancer Center in Zion, Ill. God just put it in my heart to write, and as I wrote I learned that stress is the number one cause for your immune system to under-function. As I began to work with cancer patients, what I learned is that many of them – if not overwhelmingly the majority of them – have had some sort of emotional trauma within the 24-36 months prior to their diagnosis.
So people quite often who are getting cancer are people who have been devastated by situations or circumstances. The problem is that there isn’t a mechanism in their life to help them to get beyond that. So that is what got me started exploring the possibility of forgiveness and doing a study. I learned that no one is teaching them how to get beyond the painful situation.
CP: Why is the act of forgiveness so important for those who claim to be followers of Christ?
Barry: Christianity is incomprehensible without forgiveness. The reason Jesus came was to forgive us for our sins. Every time we gather to break bread and drink wine it is to be reminded of the forgiveness of sin – his body broken, his blood shed for the forgiveness of our sins. He has raised it up as a supreme value. The very purpose of his life was to forgive us of our sins, and I think he is trying to make it the purpose of our lives as well.
CP: How does understanding grace help someone to forgive?
Barry: Because grace reminds us that we are sinners. If we say we do not have sins then we deceive ourselves as I John teaches us. It helps to remind us that in essence when Christians gather it is the community of sinners gathering together before a good and holy God who has given them the gift of salvation. So grace reminds us that in spite of how unworthy we are, Christ died for us and his expectation is that we extend that grace to others.
CP: You said to not forgive is to withhold love from someone. From your experience, who is harmed the most – the one who withholds or the one who love is withheld from?
Barry: As an illustration, let’s say that I hurt you and you choose to withhold your love from me. I don’t care whether you withhold your love from me. ‘I’m not hurt at all!’ ‘The heck with you!’ Yet you are still here with the anger and the bitterness.
If I have a conscience and I care whether I hurt you or not then I might be wounded too. But a lot of times when people hurt people they don’t care about it. It was a thoughtless act and they could care less whether they hurt you or not.
But you – to the extent that you continue to withhold love from me – will continue to burn with anger and you will continue to never get over the incident. So I think the person who withholds love is the one who is hurt the most.
CP: Forgiveness is not the same as reconciliation. Can you briefly explain this?
Barry: Reconciliation requires two or more people to sit down and work through their problems together. The word ‘reconcile’ means to come back eye to eye and to sit down and work through problems. It is much like Joseph and his brothers who came back together, hugged, kissed and made up; that is reconciling.
Forgiveness does not require coming eye to eye with anyone. In fact, sometimes we forgive people that we will never ever see again for any number of reasons. Whether they are deceased, they’ve moved away, or the situation means they’ll never have anything to do with your lives. So forgiveness is something we do and ultimately the benefit is for us.
CP: When you said if you “humbly commit yourself to forgive, God will reveal the truth that will set you free from the pain,” what did you mean by “humbly commit?”
Barry: Psalm 51 says the sacrifice that delights the Lord is a broken and contrite heart. I think that when we come to God in our brokenness and we confess that we haven’t forgiven – maybe we didn’t know how, or maybe we don’t want to, or because it made us feel more self-righteous by keeping it in – for whatever reason, the challenge is to love unlimitedly.
It is like a 12-step program, you reach a point where you can’t do it on your own. It is the same with anger - you reach the point where you cannot forgive on your own. Like I mentioned earlier, when someone has hurt us, it is a miracle that we can forgive. When we come to God and ask God to help us to forgive this person, I believe God hears us to the extent which we are broken, contrite, and sincere and I believe God will help us do that.
CP: Some audience members shared that they experienced a “high” from being angry. What are some of the reasons for having a negative attitude?
Barry: What I dealt with quite often are people who are addicted to unhappiness. There are a lot of people who are just grouches by nature. They are the kind of people who always see things negatively, pessimistically, and see the glass half empty; they live in the land of negativity. That is what I was talking about. They don’t know what it means to feel good, to feel love, to feel happiness, or to feel joy. They don’t know what that feels like for any number of reasons – whether it is because they were brought up in an unhappy family or because they recently went through some personal turmoil like divorce or a death in the family – there are many reasons to be unhappy. But what ultimately happens with people is that they often don’t realize – and this is important point –it is easier to be unhappy than to be happy.
It is easier to be unhappy than to be happy. It takes effort to pick up a book that brings you joy; it takes effort to take a friend to dinner; it takes effort to go to the movies; it takes effort to draw or do a crossword puzzle; it takes effort to pick up the phone to call a friend; it takes effort to write a letter of encouragement – all of that takes effort and it makes us feel good when we do it. It takes no effort to be unhappy.
And quite often in a cancer context, the people who seem to not do very well are the people who are negative – the people who do nothing to help themselves. They sit there and they’re angry, bitter, or they feel that it’s unfair that they have cancer. They get so use to the negativity that they don’t know anything else. It becomes a behavioral change when they need to try to be positive.
Our minds are like gardens; if you leave it unattended it grows into weeds. We have to be intentional about taking care and weeding out negativity and planting positive thoughts. A lot of people they just get used to the weeds and it gets comfortable for them and what happen to them is they spiral down and down. They get more and more lonely, more and more depressed and isolated. Depression is the attributes of people who don’t become long-term survivors of cancer.
To contact Dr. Barry email: michael.barry@ctca-hope.com
