Forgive me...

Great Debates
21

Yeah, I know. That’s because I’m writing from the perspective of when I was an atheist, because the OP asked for an atheist perspective. I’ve since been able to reconcile the issue in a way that makes sense to me, but I didn’t explain it because:
a) It’s not really relevant to the conversation
b) I probably couldn’t explain it very well. I don’t understand the phenomenon, really. I’m simply able to believe that there is an answer, and have sufficient reason to convince me that such an answer is possible. I have some ideas, sure, but nothing real concrete. Besides, my ideas are unusual enough (semi-Danteian, really) to require a lot of explaination.
c) Just because it makes sense to me, based on my life experiences and way of reasoning, doesn’t mean it’ll satisfy anyone else. Faith is highly personal.

Anyway, I am aware that I was writing reasons against Christianity, because that was what they were for me. And no, this doesn’t lessen my faith now.

22

Firstly, many thanks for the responses to date. I’d like to push the deabate ahead a little if possible.

** stuffinb & andros ** both touched upon the same issue of what needs to be forgiven?

Before I became a Christian I figured things like this… murders 0, muggings 0, rapes 0, armed robberies 0, years in prison 0, etc etc. What do I need forgiveness for? As I explored Christianity and tried to understand things, someone asked me this simple question.

‘If everything you’ve ever done, said or thought was displayed on a billboard somewhere for everyone to see… your family, friends, colleagues, business acquaintances etc… are there any things which you would feel uncomfortable about?’

In my case, I knew immediatley that I needed forgiveness - even though I thought of myself as a ‘good guy’… on balance! We’ve all got to face that same question and answer it honestly.

As a Christian, I believe the the only person to have lived the ‘perfect’ life is Jesus Christ. Therefore, I personally find it difficult to believe that we don’t all have things that we regret or wish we hadn’t done, even if we don’t use the word of God as our guide! So, who doesn’t need forgiveness? (Steady now, please form an orderly line).

The depth of my need for forgiveness has grown and not diminished as I have become a Christian… as I have examined my past and current conduct in deeper ways, so my understanding of my sinful nature has progressed.

Guadere, BlackKnight, seawitch, MrO and others make the point that they prefer to approach individuals personally to resolve matters. To seek forgiveness directly.

That would have been my response a few years ago. I always thought of myself as a humanist even when I wasn’t a Christian.

There are a number of difficulties with this approach. Firstly, how about those people that are hurt or damaged by something that I say or do in situations where I cannot possibly track them down. Worse yet, what if I don’t even realise that the effect has happened or that I’m the cause?
Secondly, what about unworthy thoughts that do not harm or oppress a specific individual but are later considered by me to be ‘impure’.

MrO also argues that he attempts to live a decent life and avoids harming people on purpose or accidentally. This would be no different from me as a Christian and so I commend this approach. The ‘Eleventh commandment’ says that we should love one another. However, if I take a look around the world right now, this approach seems to be sadly lacking.

War, oppression, self-centredness, ‘me first’ mentality, look out for number one, ‘good guys finish last’…

Just think about the money we spend annually on locks, security sytems, police & law enforcement, the courts, the prison system… billions and billions of £/$ to protect ourselves from each other. What a sad world. Somebody’s doing all that stuff… somebody needs forgiveness!

MrO says that he was not born a sinner but an innocent baby. I would have argued that too until 1997.

I now believe that I was born a sinner… nobody taught me to be one, although there are plenty of role models around.

I don’t sin and then become a sinner… I am a sinner and that’s why I sin. The only difference for us as individuals is the way we sin… adultery, abuse, murder, theft, telling lies, fraud, stealing, deceiving, pornography… whatever is our predeliction. I accept that this is my take on things and that some of you may not consider any of the above as sins…

For me as a Christian, I also believe that I need the forgiveness of Christ. I know that this might not figure in the thinking of an atheist, but I need to be right with God to be able to follow my chosen path… which is his path.

Sooooooo… my next thought… if there is no God, and we are say, just biological accidents… then there is no judgement to face? (I expect some response or counterpoint to this assumption but bear with me).

With no judgement to face, why bother asking anyone for forgiveness for anything… after all, it doesn’t matter. If it feels good, do it, don’t worry,be happy.

Yet, I don’t sense this is the approach that most responders to this thread are proposing and I don’t wish to imply that atheists are by default, non-caring on non-humanist in their approach to life. Yet, the above non-caring approach would seem to make perfect sense in a world without God.

Finally, I’d just like to thank Spiritus Mundi for the loan of his quote from a previous thread and for his answers which I have found helpful.

23

Ooops…

Alternative final papargraph…

Finally I’d just like to thank Spiritus Mundi for the loan of her quote from a previous thread and for her answers which I have found helpful.

*You know what I’m going to say now don’t you… please forgive me if I offended you either way. It was not intended. *:o

24

:shrug:

There’s no debate here, walor.

You believe you are a “sinner,” inherently and completely. I do not (largely because I do not agree with your idea of sin). I do accept that I have done bad(*) things.

(*)“Bad” in this case means harmful or hurtful to others.

You further believe that you require forgiveness for your sinful nature. I believe I owe contrition to those I have harmed, and seek forgiveness from them.

You believe that harming others, however indirectly, offends Allah. I do not.

An example that might help:

Suppose I was a jerk to my wife. I was snippy with her and showed a lack of respect for her abilities, and her feelings were hurt.

I was wrong. I owe her an apology. I hope she forgives me. If she doesn’t, I will have to find some way of regaining her trust and respect. Or simply live with the consequences of my actions, however painful that might be.

But god cannot forgive me in her place. I wasn’t a jerk to him–I was a jerk to my wife.

25

There’s no judgement from God, but there’s a lot of judgement from your fellow human beings. Sure, you can try to curtail their judgements, but that’s why we have police officers, judges, and laws.

26

The problem here is that you have lumped ethical behavior in with Christian behavior. They are demonstrably separate issues. Ethics is a human art, not a spiritual one, and certainly not tied to a specific religion.

IANAA, but if I hurt someone, I apologize to them not out of fear of God’s disappointment in me, but because of my disappointment with myself. Divine retribution doesn’t figure into rectifying a hurtful situation that I created between myself and another person. Empathy, sympathy and caring are not traits held solely by Christians. Atheists, Buddhists, Hindus and what-have-you all are (or at least, can and should be) empathic, sympathetic and caring people, who seek forgiveness from those they wrong out of a need to restore harmony with a fellow human being.

To forgive means to let go of resentment. I trust that God, being intimately familiar with my thought processes, has got the forgiveness thing under control (I mean, it’s hard to imagine God holding a grudge against me for my adolescent phase of not honoring my parents, etc.). As for the people I have wronged and cannot possibly apologize to, though I regret my actions, I can’t bring myself to believe that by apologizing to God, I have magically enabled the people I hurt to let go of their own resentment towards me. The girl I scorned on the playground in 2nd grade may have forgiven me, or forgotten about it, or remembers it with pain–nothing I say to God about it will ease that for her. It’s knowledge that I live with. I sincerely hope that she has forgiven me, but there is no action I can take which will guarantee that for me, nor do I have any right to expect it. Empathy is learned over time, and unfortunately, we transgress a whole lot on the way to learning it. Hurts do matter, in as much as you value the happiness of other people.

That brings me to the thought that a need for forgiveness can just as easily be met from within. If you feel terrible over things you did long ago, to people you cannot seek out now, learn to forgive yourself. Stop resenting your actions as a more selfish, unenlightened person and move on.

27

[musing]Create a need, and then fulfill it. Create more needs, then fulfill them. And then how can you leave, since you need it so much?[/musing]

I don’t think I neccessarily need to be forgiven for not being perfect. If what I have done doesn’t hurt anyone, I don’t ask anyone for forgiveness. And if I ding someone’s car door, asking God for forgiveness three years later will neither fix the door nor make that person feel any better about the door ding.

This is a problem even if you do believe in God. If you hurt people and ask Jesus’ forgiveness, that might make you feel better, but it isn’t an apology or reparation to the actual people you hurt, so they don’t feel better. Part of accepting responsibility for your actions, IMHO, is accepting that sometimes you won’t always be able to “make it up” to someone. If you kill someone, you can never bring them back, whether you are an atheist or a theist. This does not say to me “Wow, I need Someone to forgive me when I do some sort of irrevocable harm, so I can make the guilt about the hurt I did go away!” This says to me, “I better be damn careful about what I do, becuase I might hurt someone and not be able to ‘fix’ it.”

Mmmm…impure thoughts…

I don’t have guilt issues with sexual thoughts, so I hardly feel the need to ask for forgiveness for them. If I wish harm on another person and believe that wishing them harm is wrong, I will try not to do so again and think about how to make sure I don’t, but I don’t think there’s anyone whose forgiveness needs to be begged in this case. I have not actually hurt anyone.

Maybe they need to stop doing the bad stuff! Maybe they need to make up the bad stuff they do to the people they actually hurt, rather than just thinking it all the harm they did shouldn’t bother them a whit if they tell God they’re sorry.

I ask forgiveness if I have hurt people. But if it doesn’t hurt anyone, there is nothing to forgive.
[Edited by Gaudere on 07-11-2001 at 12:37 PM]

28

A few thoughts:
Everybody’s been bad
Yep. We have all done things that we can regret in retrospect. Most of us also agree that we would like to be forgiven for those things.

original sin
I can’t follow you there. Sin is an active principle. No action == no sin. If a person managed to live a life without ever committing a sin, would he be a sinner?

small and distant hurts
If I cannot track down the people I have hurt, then I cannot receive their forgiveness. If teh people that I have hurt do not choose to forgive me, I cannot receive their forgiveness.

The “Universal forgiveness of God” which you find vluable I find to be ethically unsound. If I hurt little Timmy back in the third grade, and little Timmy still bears a grudge, then I should not be able to salve my conscience by asking a third party to forgive me. If little Timmy holds a grudfge forever, so be it. My mistake, my price to pay.

I don’t want to be absolved of my mistakes. They are a part of what makes me who I am. I do like to be forgiven when I have earned forgiveness. Who decides? The person harmed.

impur thoughts
Sure, I have immoral thoughts (not about sex, though. My sexual thoughts are pure as the driven concubine.)

From whom do I seek forgiveness? From myself. I am the injured party.

who doesn’t need [complete] forgiveness?
Me. I think absolution is the ethical equivalent of “fool’s gold”.

why bother asking for forgiveness if there is no judgment?
Because there is judgment. It does not take a God to pass judgment upon a man. I have my own judgment to satisfy. Since I am neither a misanthrope nor a hermit, the judgment of people I love and respect is also important to me.

hermaphrodite?
Male, last time I checked.

29

Well, yes. According to most Christian dogma, at least. But no one lives without ever comitting a sin, because only Christ was perfect.

It’s one of the more untenable aspects of the faith, IMHO. See, no one lives without sin, because the ony one who ever did was Christ, because we’re all sinners axiomatically, except Christ, who was God. The reason we’re all sinners? Adam and Eve were weak. They were not sinners, until they chose sin, except that afterwards we are all sinners without choice.

And that’s even leaving aside the issue of infants who die without any chance of even understanding what is meant by sin. I assume they’re sinners too, since only Christ was not a sinner . . .

30

walor:

Forgiveness is important to one’s happiness. I forgive people all the time. I mean, you can’t go around holding grudges and nursing hatreds and expect to be happy.

How does being a Christian make it easier for you to forgive people?

31

The driven concubine? Driven like in a little black leather harness with bells on and pulling a tiny cart that you sit in while dressed in a green velvet coachmen’s outfit cracking an ostrich-hide whip?

You perv. Beg my forgiveness immediately for making me think of such a thing.

32

You prefer a riding crop? My bad.

Bad Spiritus. Bad.

I’m sorry.

[sub]but for some reason I can’t stop smiling.[/sub]

33

No forgiveness necessary on my part, Spiritus.

(And Gaudere, please forgive me for my impure thoughts about you wielding that ostrich-leather whip . . .)

34

Okay, nobody taught you to be a sinner. (In my case, I do remember being taught to do some things that you would probably consider sinful. I recall an elementary school classmate who gave a little playground lecture on the best ways to touch oneself in an “impure manner”–does this count? Not that I think of masturbation as a sin, but it’s true that I wasted a lot of time on the activity as a kid. Probably would have done better in school if I hadn’t. But it didn’t hurt anyone else–who will forgive me for it?)

Still, even if you weren’t taught to be a sinner, I still maintain that you were taught to believe that you were born a sinner. Or did the idea of original sin just pop into your head spontaneously? No, your religion taught you that one. In other words, it was hearsay.

35

I am terribly sorry that I butted into the middle of a serious Debate with a lousy joke. I’m also sorry that I misrepresented your words, andros.

Please forgive me.

I am not sorry, however, for my thoughts regarding Gaudere, a riding crop and a can of Cool Whip…

36

But do you need to be forgiven?

37

Which, of course, is basically saying that the children of Adam and Eve are being punished for the crimes of their parents (ancestors). Kinda hard for me to accept God as “just” when he’s using such extreme definitions.

Yeah, I’m always amused by watching Christians try to explain how there aren’t babies burning in Hell, even though that’s the logical conclusion one draws from the whole “we are all born in sin” viewpoint. The idea of roasted toddlers makes the congregation squirm too much.

(And then, of course, there’s the argument that Ghandi must be burning in Hell because he didn’t embrace Christ, while Timothy McVeigh gets to recant in the morning before his execution and is ostensibly in Heaven as a result…)

38

I have to admit, the original sin and need for redemption idea is a great marketing ploy, if you can find customers gullible enough to buy it. (And there are lots of them. If you offer it, they will buy.)

The church creates the perceived need for forgiveness, and then, coincidentally, says that it (the church) is the only place where we can get that forgiveness (which we wouldn’t have needed in the first place, if it hadn’t been for the church and its stories). On the plus side, the selling of indulgences did help to finance those wonderful cathedrals all over Europe.

39

The idea of divine forgiveness seems to be present in most religions. e.g confessions in Christianity, the Haj for Islam, a bath in the Holy Ganges for Hindus.

It seems to me, that most religions count on people commiting sins. And religion offers a service where they absolve the guilt, make people sleep better in the hope of divine intervention.

And from time to time it also offers a ‘carte blanche’ of forgiveness, e.g the Crusades for Christianity, jihad for Islam, the holy wars for Hindus.

Personally, I find it hard to accept this kind of idea of forgiveness.

So you might say “there’s no divine judgement, no need for forgiveness, so sin all u like …”

Well, not so. IMHO, we still need forgiveness from ourselves and our fellow human beings. If u are a moral person, then its impossible to forgive urself of any serious sin u commit. And even then society may not forgive u.

I find it a lot better this way. As long as we keep the integrity of society’s moral fabric we’d be fine. As soon as we break it up into different religions with different shortcuts to forgiveness, Things would start to crumble at the boundaries.

just my 2 cents.

40

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by andros *
**
:shrug:

You further believe that you require forgiveness for your sinful nature. I believe I owe contrition to those I have harmed, and seek forgiveness from them.

You believe that harming others, however indirectly, offends Allah. I do not. **

[quote]

I agree with you that I owe a contrition to those I have harmed. As a Christian, I do feel that I have offended my father (God) also. As a father myself I know that I can feel pain through the behaviour of my children.

As a Christian parent, I know the importance of ‘guidance’ for my children. I also understand the need to allow them to make choices. Sometimes, their choices may hurt me inside, but I must honour them.

As a child, I’m certain that I inflicted pain on my parents directly and sometimes indirectly. I may have made choices without wishing to inflict pain, but that may have been the net result.

As a child of God, I have determined that I should endeavour to do God’s will and not my own. (Strange as it may sound, I do not regard this as bondage, but as freedom… another thread maybe). However, because I am not perfect (sinful even), I still fall short of God’s plan. My view is that when I fall short of God’s plan, it must be painful for him and I wish to make ammends to him… because I love him.

Sometimes, I do and say things, feeling them to be legitimate. Later, upon reading a piece of scripture perhaps, and appreciating God’s word in a deeper way, I realise that what appeared to be legitimate then was not in truth.

I have hurt the father (albeit unwittingly) and so I apologise (once I realise what I did). My consolation is in knowing that whilst God must despair at the depth and degree of human depravity, evilness, self-centredness etc. he is always willing to forgive someone who truly repents. His love is unconditional in that sense.

this teaches me to offer unconditional love to my children… even when they hurt me.

I’m no different to any of you guys who are declared atheists in the sense that I remain imperfect… even as a Christian. As I grow in my Christain faith, become more aware of my shortcomings (sinfulness), become more aware of God’s will, I hope that I change to become more like Christ.

yet, my view is that I will still die imperfect… but in the knowledge that God will accept me as his son, and therefoe into an eternal relatiuonship with him, because of Jesus’ sacrifice for me.

I fully appreciate that for any non-Christian that may well sound like clap-trap (not sure how well the translates outside of the UK). However, it’s what I believe.

I agree that your wife deserves an apology and the you should seek her forgiveness. However, I think you may misunderstand my need to ask God for forgiveness too. I do not ask him to forgive me * on her behalf*. I ask him to forgive me for the pain that I inflicted on him by not behaqving according to his will. see, he asks me to love and honour my wife… to respect her… when I don’t and choose my own way of treating her it must hurt him too… and so I ask him for forgiveness as well… not instead of!