Forgiveness In The Philippines

Forgiveness is a way by which feeling anger and hatred towards another people is for gone. It is a pro social behaviour by which leads to peace and reconciliation. Forgiveness comes in the form of self-forgiveness and forgiveness of others. Forgiving is beneficial in the sense that it elevates the positive bonds of people and it also fosters the strengthening and development of positive affect over negative affect (Santos, 2012). Aside from being a valiant process for peace, it is also a virtue that is greatly magnified in religious and spiritual groups. Spiritual groups’ stresses that forgiveness is the key tool for liberation and solitude; it is in forgiving that true happiness can be found. Spirituality is considered as correlated to prosocial

Spirituality involves our inner selves in the experiences that we have wherein we seldom apply our logic and reasoning. It actually upholds the values and beliefs by which we apply in our everyday living ( Appleton, et. al. 2011). In the study of Rungduin and Rungduin (2013) on role of cultural values to forgiveness of Filipinos they have postulated that since the Philippines have a strong religious affiliation the culture of the country is greatly affected by the teaching of the church. Hence, the persons choice to grant forgiveness is highly related to his/her personal values and the society’s definition of forgiveness, which in this case is highly spiritual grounded. According to another study, by Batara (2015), there is an overlapping of religiosity and spirituality among Filipino youth from around the ages

According to Toussaint and Webb (2005), that there is no significant difference between genders in forgiveness but it is rather empathy that plays a major factor. This study also noticed that empathy in men is a factor on why they can forgive easily. Empathy is a pro-social behaviour that can be traced back in spirituality. Furthermore, a study by B. Zinnbauer et. Al (1997) found out that the debates concerning the exact difference between the definition of spirituality and religiosity cannot be easily reconciled since they are not totally independent from each other. In their study spirituality and self-related religiosity were fairly correlated (r= .21), and the participants also recognised that they are both spiritual and religious at the same time (S+R,74%). It since that both are significantly associated by prayer. In this case, it can be clearly seen that there spirituality and religiosity have some sort of