Yes, your anger and forgiveness can coexist

Open almost any conversation about wrongdoing in America, and the idea of forgiveness will not be far behind. Yes, your anger and forgiveness can coexist Too often, we place forgiveness and anger on opposite sides, as if they’re in competition. The truth is more complex. Yes, your anger and forgiveness can coexist Too often, we place forgiveness and anger on opposite sides, as if they’re in competition. The truth is more complex. Sean Illing is the host of The Gray Area podcast. It’s one of our most cherished cultural ideals. We talk about it as a form of moral strength, as something good people do, as the final step in healing. Forgiveness is often framed as the path to closure and reconciliation. And when someone refuses to forgive, we tend to treat that refusal as a flaw rather than a legitimate response to what was done. Key takeaways: Forgiveness is often treated as a universal virtue, yet our cultural obsession with it can flatten the reality of harm and push victims to carry burdens that don’t belong to them. Anger is not simply a failure of self control. It’s a moral emotion that helps us register injustice, affirm value, and demand accountability. Forgiveness can be powerful, but it can’t repair the past on its own. Nor is it always the appropriate response to wrongdoing, especially when harm is ongoing. Myisha Cherry thinks we should slow down. Cherry is a philosopher whose work explores anger, moral agency, and the complexities of ethical life. Her recent book, Failures of Forgiveness , asks what happens when forgiveness becomes something we idolize. What gets lost when we demand it too quickly, praise it too uncritically, or treat it as the only road to healing? I invited Cherry onto The Gray Area to talk about why forgiveness is harder and more complicated than we tend to admit, and why anger deserves more respect than we usually give it. This conversation ranges from the Charleston church shooting to family betrayal to the role of anger in political movements and the uneasy question of what collective forgiveness might look like in a country still shaped by the legacies of slavery. As always, there’s much more in the full podcast, which drops every Monday, so listen and follow us on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , Pandora , or wherever you find podcasts. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. What do you mean when you say we idolize forgiveness? To idolize forgiveness is to treat it as something that can solve all our problems. It becomes a kind of magical thinking. American culture has a deep love of happy endings. We want closure. We want a moment when the pain disappears and the future brightens. Forgiveness becomes the symbol of that transformation. It’s the thing we believe will restore relationships, heal communities, and mend the past. The problem is that when we idolize forgiveness, we give it too much power. We start thinking that refusing to...

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