For the most part, I agree that it’s desirable. If I might expound a bit about “forgiveness”…
It seems to me that Christianity turns “forgiveness” into a very black-or-white thing. On the one hand you have “revenge,” which is bad and unhealthy, and on the other hand you have “forgiveness,” which is good and healthy.
The problem is that universal forgiveness is pretty unnatural. I heard someone on NPR talking about the fact that so many self-help books on toxic parents and sexual abuse and whatnot stress that you have to “forgive” your abuser. Since it’s not really natural to forgive someone who hurt you very badly and showed no contrition whatsoever, a lot of people apparently end up feeling like they, the victims, are bad people because they are unable to forgive. The healthy thing to do is to just let go of the abusive past, not to forgive but to, in a sense, forget- but our language has no word for the virtue of “letgoitude.”
One could even argue that forgiveness is cheapened by being given too freely. Forgiveness, to me, seems like it really is for people who show genuine contrition. If you thought the good son was ticked off about the feast for the prodigal, wait until you see how the prodigal responds to the feast given for the son who never repented at all. I think that the reality is, then, enormously more complex than the black-and-white dichotomy that our culture seems to present. One sort of forgiveness should be given to those who screwed up, but meant no wrong. Another, perhaps, for those who knew what they were doing, but later regretted the harm they caused to others. Another, “letgoitude,” for the people who show no contrition at all. I should also stress that forgiveness can be an actively bad thing, if it serves to enable the wrongdoer. Where would we be if all policemen turned the other cheek?
There are other dimensions to this, too. One aspect is the ethical dimension: how does your choice of forgiveness affect others? In most cases, there’s little difference between classical forgiveness and letting go, as far as, say, the now-dead toxic parent goes. But the second dimension, the dimension of what is healthy, is important as well. How does the choice of forgiveness affect the one forgiving? Many people will harm themselves considerably by trying to forgive when they can only let go. Why should we tell them that they are wrong for being unable to forgive?
Where one stands at the extreme end- forgiveness for people who show no contrition, and who cause enormous harm- depends, I think, on where one stands regarding the question of whether evil exists. If you think that people who cause enormous harm are evil, then forgiveness is not meant for them, and is, again, perhaps cheapened if it is wasted on them. If you believe that evil is just a form of ignorance or confusion, then forgiveness is appropriate on the grounds of “they know not what they do.” However, that is the position of a supremely enlightened person, and most people would emotionally injure themselves by trying such extreme forgiveness, just as I would injure myself if I tried to throw an Olympic shotput.
Although I am undecided on the question of evil, I tend to lean towards the position that evil is a form of ignorance which is ultimately self-destructive. That’s why the traditional fundamentalist Christian view of salvation is so frustrating to me. Sin is, in their view, a kind of substance, a crud that gets encrusted on your soul and has to be washed off with Jesus’ blood. Even when you get beyond, “Why would God sacrifice Himself to Himself in order to get around rules that He made Himself?” the system still doesn’t make sense, because sin isn’t a substance. You can’t wash it away, because sin is a part of you. Think of the greedy executive who can’t enjoy a trip to Hawaii because he’s always thinking of how much things cost, or of how well his stocks are doing. If he can’t enjoy Hawaii, then how can any of us truly experience heaven? The idea of a salvation based on forgiveness is utterly incomprehensible to me, because it so often seems to ignore the enormity of sin and turn it into a mark in God’s ledger which can be rubbed out with the appropriate eraser. If I believed in a God who wanted all of us to come to heaven, I would think that the only logical answer would lie in the beliefs of Johannes Scotus Erigena, a belief in a Saviour not of forgiveness so much as of education, a Saviour who, upon His return, grants us all a full understanding of the magnitude and consequences of all our acts, good and bad. Newly enlightened, truly understanding that every sin immediately traps us in a piece of hell, we would then be able to enter a heaven to which we were previously blind. I cannot imagine a more logical way to make it possible for us to pass into heaven, nor, for that matter, can I imagine a more just system of reward and punishment.
-Ben
Tuckerfan wrote:
Now now, FoG did stay and wrangle with the questioners for 4 or 5 long pages before he packed his bags and went home. (Not that his wrangling was terribly convincing, mind you, but still…)