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Can We Forgive?
There are as many paths to becoming a Christian as there are roads to Rome. For me, it was forgiveness. I struggled mightily after graduating from college as I stewed in resentment and animosity at a group of activists, self-proclaimed “feminists” as it so happened, who had taken something of great value from me. I am certainly not alone in having something taken from me. Something central to my being that I had worked a lifetime to attain only to see it snatched from me.
The hatred I felt was slowly warping me. Hatred, like envy, is a sin that leaves the sinner in a worse and spiraling state while the object of one’s ire is blissfully unaffected. I can recall the exact spot upon which I stood as I turned my heart over to Christ and was of an instant relieved of my hatred. And I forgave. I forgave those who had taken so much.
But like resisting addiction I suppose, forgiveness is a process. It is hard. It is easy to fall off the wagon and hard to get back on.
I bring this up because as I watch members of BLM yelling at and accosting innocent white patrons in outside cafes and forcing white people to their knees to beg forgiveness while Antifa thugs threaten and kill innocent people all the while spewing vitriol and hatred, I find myself wishing that some form of physical violence be visited upon these criminals in order to wipe the smug sneers off of their faces. And in doing so, I am spiraling further and further from forgiveness. I don’t wish to forgive them. And it is hurting only me. My world has gotten darker. And to what end?
Being conservative requires us to forgive. God willing the day will come when the practice of abortion is everywhere regarded as an abomination rightly cast upon the bonfire of atrocities comprised of the holocaust and slavery. And when that day comes, we will need to forgive. We will need to forgive our brothers and sisters who took part in the horror. And we will need to show love and understanding as so many women seek to forgive themselves. I suspect many of us know someone, a sister or a friend, who has been scarred by a decision they made out of fear and who suffers from a yearning to hug the child they put to death. We would do well to prepare for such a day by speaking loudly and clearly to our heartfelt desire to forgive and to love. As the other side aspires to a self-satisfied gloating, surely we can telegraph our love.
The looting we see each night on our screens will likely get worse before it gets better. And the likelihood that we will each come in contact with the animating hatred that drives the left increases. And my heart is struggling to forgive. I am not there yet. I may never make it there. But I will try. And I will pray that all of us make it there sooner rather than later.
Any and all thoughts on the matter are appreciated. Blessings.
Published in General
You don’t want my thoughts on this matter.
I forgive poorly. It’s a weakness of mine.
I’m not convinced that hatred is a sin. There are injunctions to hate evil in the Bible. I’m also not convinced that we should extend forgiveness to the unrepentant.
Respectfully, I do. If forgiveness was easy, it would not be such a blessing. It helps me to hear that others are similarly struggling. If I might ask, do you find yourself imagining that you were seated at one of the tables in the many videos where innocents are accosted? I do. I imagine the swift and sudden response I would visit upon the perpetrators. It is not healthy. To say that to do so would just further the hatred is not quite right. It seems to serve up a sort of moral equivalency which strikes me as inappropriate. Thrashing the bastards does appeal to me. I don’t know if a showing of kindness on our behalf would have any effect. But I know that wallowing in thoughts of revenge and making clear my desire to fight fire with fire will never change the hearts of BLM or Antifa adherents.
And even if I never have any effect on those who so hate this country, forgiveness might be the only thing that can change me. And I could use some change. I do not like what this violence is doing to me and my spirit and sense of love for my countrymen. And that is on me.
Fair enough. “Hatred” as a sin is perhaps too general. As you note, hatred often finds its corollary in love. To love sinlessness is to hate sinfullness and so on. But some hatred has no natural corollary. This seems especially true when the target of hatred is an actual person as there is no anti-person that corresponds to an Antifa or BLM thug.
Putting aside biblical admonitions, do you not feel that the inability to forgive the left leaves us all with a burden that only hurts us and that we would do well to endeavor to pass the burden onto Someone better equipped than us?
I shall try to never get on your bad side.
It takes real effort to get on my bad side. Not so easy to do.
Since you’ve asked for advice, I’ll give you mine. Turn off those screens each night. You probably don’t need to watch the scenes of looting.
Keep active. I just came back from a four-four hike with three of my tadpoles. It’s hard to feel angry when you’re huffing and puffing and crawling up a rock face.
And make sure you pray. Each time you feel that anger, pray that the Lord will use you to further his justice. As soon as possible, Lord, please.
Being a Christian requires me to forgive. And wishing just punishment on those who have committed crimes, and who need our forgiveness is no sin and in no way mutually exclusive. Righteous anger is no sin. Blind hatred is a sin, because by wishing it upon others, we are wishing it upon ourselves (Matthew 22:36-40). But that is a very different matter from wishing those who have done wrong or broken the law acknowledge their transgressions or suffer the penalty.
I wrote about my own struggles with forgiveness here, after a couple of low-life thugs brutally assaulted my stepson, who suffered from serious and chronic mental illness, and put him in a coma for seven months, at which point he died (July 2018) without ever regaining consciousness.
The guidance and reassurance on my quest to get my mind right came from C.S. Lewis who, I’m pretty sure, wrote the book on the subject. For me, anyway.
I am unqualified to opine on forgiveness. In unguarded moments, I realize that I have stored grievances going back six decades. The only improvement I can report is that they are beginning to dissipate instead of earning interest as they once did.
I can approach a state of forgiveness by first not taking the offending person seriously. Why waste outrage when pity is more apt? It is easier to laugh at a buffoon than a Hitler.
Bless you.
But there’s also the practical application of love for the diners, shop owners, and others who are being threatened by the BLM and Antifa thugs. That application of love calls for protecting those diners, shop owners, and others from harm, perhaps by the swift application of physical force onto the individuals who are doing the threatening. We can then later deal with forgiveness.
I feel this rage too and it is unhealthy, a mental toxin and a lit fuse for violence on my part that could easily be visited on someone who only seems like the aggressor.
BLM may be corrupted, and people who support it largely ill-informed or misapprehending, but the idea that black people have fewer life chances and some of that is because of long-held assumptions and normalcy is not wrong.
Worse, many of the people involved in protests are certain that they are morally right, or at least not responsible for the moral wrongs going on around them.
I believe that ‘systemic racism’ is a myth, but that there is certainly not zero racism within a system because systems are made of people. I am not a racist, and I have no intention of allowing myself to become a racist. Videos of groups of black people saying stupid things while breaking laws and burning buildings are not helping.
Being a Christian, I will forgive the rioters, looters, and arsonists. However, it doesn’t mean I don’t want them to spend many years of hard time behind bars, even the death penalty for those who committed murder . . .
I am mostly Irish. I bring this up because it reminds me of a not far fetched joke about an Irishman with dementia. He forgot everything but the grudges. I have several grudges I don’t think I can give up. For me giving up on these would sort of like forgetting what happens when you touch a hot stove. I can forgive but just not certain things.
We call it Irish Alzheimer’s.
(I first heard about it in a talk from the sainted Fr. Benedict Groeschel, CFR. So funny because so true. He told us about his aunts, but I could tell you about my grandfather…)
I hope this isn’t the case because I’m not even convinced that true forgiveness exists. Even if it does, I am not forgiving, nor do I feel the need or desire to be. And I’m super-right-wing.
I am caught somewhere between these two thoughts.
But now, let him who has a purse take it along, likewise also a bag, and let him who has no sword sell his robe and buy one.
AND
As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
It is easier to forgive those who had abortions than those who tirelessly legalize, fund, excuse and promote abortions, not only on Americans but throughout the world; on those who would have acted differently, who would not have thought of having an abortion if the culture and the wherewithal were not at hand’s reach.
I agree. YHWH is never interested in extending forgiveness to the unrepentant. He extends them his mercy, giving them time and opportunity to repent (“he causes his sun to rise on…”) but forgiveness is offered and can be ignored or rejected. Even Jesus’ plea for the Father to forgive those murdering him as they were doing it is really an appeal for mercy, I think. It is certainly intercession on behalf of the guilty. At least, on the metaphysical level, where it matters most and means real change in the other person, forgiveness must be accompanied by if not preceded by an acknowledgement of wrongdoing and a turning away from it. Our part in forgiveness in our hearts is, I believe, abandoning our desire for vengeance. The greatest lesson that God ever taught me in forgiveness was forgiving my father for his adultery and the divorce that tore my family apart back in the 80’s. It took years. I may write something about it now that you have got me thinking about topic.
LOL. I’ve met a person or two from the Emerald Isle with that particular condition. If someone who’s not Irish (I’ve met plenty of them as well) exhibits such symptoms, is that a form of cultural appropriation?
Is the above passage describing something close to forgiveness? Or is it talking about mercy? What’s the difference? If you believe, as I think I do, that “mercy” involves the staying of just punishment, then I tend to put the above passage more on the “forgiveness” side, since I believe that forgiveness is separate from the imposition of just punishment. For example, I believe that there are some crimes so heinous that, at least, the possibility that the death penalty exists for them is right and proper. Not imposing it might be an act of mercy. But not of forgiveness. Others may think differently, and I don’t suppose we’ll resolve the issue once and for all here.
But I’m reminded again of a conversation that I had with my stepdaughter a couple of weeks ago about some people who’ve done some horrible things, at the close of which she said, “we’ll just put them on the list of people we pray for who fall in the category of, ‘I don’t like these people one bit and they’ve treated me horribly but man they have to live with themselves and that must suck–so here’s one for them’–people.”
That’s not exactly forgiveness either. But it’s a dose of reality, and perhaps that’s a start.
Yes, loving your enemies does involve forgiveness, which I think by its nature must be personal. And perhaps the difference between mercy and forgiveness is the distance between action and attitude. Mercy withholds the punishment and forgiveness ceases even to want to impose punishment for real harm and personal offense. One who forgives can still want justice, which is commensurate to the crime and impersonal, free of any element of rage or hatred, but one who does not forgive will still want revenge, which is dispropotionate and completely personal. “I will pay you back a thousand fold for what you did to me and mine!” vs. “What you did to me and mine was evil, but I will not punish you and I will do good to you if the opportunity presents itself.” Also, I think doing good to your enemies requires telling the moral truth about their deeds, i.e. a parent can forgive a child for aborting his/her grandchild, but a morally sound parent will not call that act good to spare the child’s feelings.
I think it’s a mistake to conflate violence with anger. I don’t like these puke protestors, and their actions against the weak and innocent are damnable. And it does make me angry.
But if I ever raised a hand to any of them, it wouldn’t be in anger. It would be in defense of an innocent or that innocent’s property. Now, I may inflict wounds and injuries to the greatest extent legally justified, to give the reprobate time for meditation and reflection during his months in traction.
@oldbathos, good for you, sir. No one likes a quitter.
And, yes, Jesus prayed to our Father for them to be forgiven. And some were: Paul is an example; he was likely present at Jesus’ crucifixion, but he was later saved, and has expressed repentance. And many more Jews believed and were forgiven as recorded in the book of Acts. But the Jews as a whole, corporately, were later punished in 70AD. Were all that Jesus prayed for forgiven? I think so: if Jesus asked for forgiveness for others, I see no reason why God the Father would not fulfill Jesus’ prayer.
But not all present at the time were forgiven. God can forgive corporately as a nation, and personally, but forgiveness can be, and is, individually extended. In short, the forgiveness Jesus requested for those who called for his crucifixion was granted, but this was not necessarily apart from the repentance of the forgiven.
Forgiveness requires the one who trespasses against you (harms you) to admit the harm, and ask for forgiveness. Then, and only then, should you forgive. Forgiving one who harms you, and states or indicates by behavior, that they would do it again in a heartbeat, helps no one, and almost ensures that the one who harms you will harm you and others repeatedly. That kind of “forgiveness” might make you feel better for a while, but it may also ensure your future harm.
Good for you. I don’t fault anyone who doesn’t forgive. It’s a hard thing to do at times. If someone harmed a member of my family, I doubt I’d be able to forgive them, like the family of the guy killed by the lady cop who entered the wrong apartment did. I hope she gets out of prison ASAP. Cops don’t do well behind bars . . .
Too, as we shouldn’t necessarily couple anger and violence, let’s not hook up forgiving and forgetting.
Someone may hose me in some way that the Big Guy gives me the grace to forgive. It’s forgiven, yes, but not forgotten. That person had the potential and motivation to hose me. Forgiven. But…”duly noted.”
See, this is what I don’t get. If some prior trespass remains in the back (or front!) of my mind when I interact with another person, have I really forgiven him (or her)? If that negative history colors our relationship, how is that forgiveness?
Well, see, I’m not saying that the relationship with the forgiven is colored. No spite, angst, bitterness, vituperativeness, nada. But the fact that that happened in the past will go into planning, risk mitigation and vulnerability assessments in the future.
You might say that having that outlook is not walking through the door of true forgiving. I would say anything but that outlook is walking through the door of true foolishness.
For the record, I don’t recall any offense but I forgive Boss Mongo preemptively and trust it’s reciprocal just so there are no misunderstandings and thus no need to involve EMTs.