Does not saying thankyou (not ackowledging the forgiveness) invalidate the gracious gift of forgivenss?
The point here was that it is not the graciousness of acceptance but the realit of what it means.
If you do not care about Heaven and Hell then forgiveness is irrelevant.
but
If you live with guilt and regret you are not owning the forgiveness God gives.
Accepting forgiveness means that you are forgiven. If you do not own that fogiveness then the gift is meaningless. Gratitude is meanngless if there is no reality in the gift and you do not feel forgven. We are forgiven now, not just at the time of judgement.
(a)-(e) I don’t understand divine forgiveness, Richard, how it resolves anything at all. It’s a distraction from actual morality, which is between people. And it has nothing to do with the transcendent. What business would God have forgiving anyone anything? What’s it got to do with Him? All we could possibly need from Him would be proof of Love. That all will be well. It would make the meaningless suffering of life irrelevant. The maggot life of our imago.
Human justice v forgiveness
and
What has God got to do with it.
I will tackle the second one frst because it is easiest to answer.
If God is te creatoer then He is responsible for everything He ceated. He made the system which allows for evilso, He could justifiably feel guity for any and all things that make us uncomofrtable, or hurt, or die. We fob off earthly events “Acts of God” even though we dont think God really controlled the. But, They are still oart of His creation. God has as much if not more invested in creation that any individual. And, if God can forgive…
When you say
I wou say that you do not understand any forgiveness, divine or otherwise.
Human justice demands two things
Punishment for wrong
satisfaction for those affected
Yet, even when a crimnal has done their time they are not allowed to forget. There are registers for certain tyoes of offender, and police record, not to mention the long memories and anger of the families or friends involved. There has bee a recent trend to adorn the spot of a crime with flowers like you would a grave.I know of a mother who lost her child to a road accident and spent the rest of her life tending and mourning at his grave. She had no liife. it stopped when he died.
Human justice does not resolve anything. it is a compromise at best. “An eye for an eye” etc, still holds sway. Families feud, countries are permanently at war, all beause no one will back down, or say sorry, or forgive, and definately not forget.
Forgiveness is the antithesis of Justice. It washes eveything away as if it never happened. No justice. No satisfaction? no reompense, no revenge. But
If it is real, and genuine there is no continuance either. Not for the offender, but also not for the victims and those who would hold a grudge. There is no grudge if the thing is forgotten. There is no ill will. There is no anger. No unresolved justice, It never happened.
Human Justice plays to human satisfaction and the need to make two wrongs make a right.
The person in prison may as well be dead. They have no freedom, and therefor no life to speak of, not to mention the time, cost and effort of keeping them there.
Capitol punishment has been deemed wrong, not because it is unfair on the guilty but because of the risk to accused and inocent. Human justice is flawed.
There is little wonder that it takes so many lawyers, Barristers, judges and juries to try and adminster it, yet still there is disatisfation at the results.
Forgiveness is a valid alternative, but only if you are prepared to ignore the need for justice.
But
Only forgiveness can result in true peace. Justice never does.
Think of it in terms of irrigation channels with scheduled water days: the water is free, it get to your land for free, but unless you open your ditch gates you don’t get any.
Being “dead in trespasses and sins”, our spiritual “ditch gates” are naturally closed.
Sure – our spiritual “land” stays dry until we acknowledge and receive the water from the canal.
(a) Justice and forgiveness are evidentially entirely human concepts. Including (fundamentalist*) ideas of divine justice and forgiveness. Fairness is genetically hard wired in higher animals at least. Forgiveness too.
*And they’re all fundamentalist when based on sacred texts.
(b) If there were an intentional ground of being behind infinite, eternal existence, despite them denying it, creating as if they didn’t, they they have nothing to forgive and everything to explain. Which, being perfect Love, they can apparently only do in the transcendent. Where the answer, the explanation would be that the transcendent fixes everything for all. The maggot is fixed in the imago.
(c) If you say so.
(d) Justice involves infinitely more than addressing individual personal abuses of power. It’s social above all.
(e) Forgiveness does what justice cannot for surviving victims who cannot be compensated enough. It’s a psychological mechanism. Forgiveness can drive reconciliation on an epic social scale. All essential for an intentional, social species. It is a ‘complex psychological process that involves letting go of resentment and negative feelings towards someone who has caused harm, promoting emotional healing and well-being’, and so is a matter of enlightened self interest.
However, ’ However, there are scenarios in which forgiveness is not the best course for a particular person. Sometimes a victim of sexual abuse becomes more empowered when they give themselves permission not to forgive.'. In many situations, it just doesn’t arise.
But I must be wrong about that understanding, as you say : )
The idea that God forgives therefore we must was a powerful primitive driver of social control, nearly equalled on average, often surpassed, by the impulse to violence to the degree of injustice.
That is not a judgement, it is an observation. Are you going to deny it?
There is a point where idealism fails and pragmatism and reality takes over.
Forgiving a seriel killer has little value if it means they can continue. There has to be some sort of intent to change and/or protection for those vulnerable to the continuence.
Christ told Peter he must forgive 70 x 7 without any comment on whether the repetition was the same or different, or the recipient had any regrets or change.
The net result will always be imperfect and a compromise of ideals and principles and reality.
Whether humans have to take such things into consderation or not, does not mean that God does. We cannot impose human justice, or morality, or reality onto God, espcially in terms of Judgement and/or eternity.
We can always cite reasons not to do the right thing, or even the thing Scripture might indicate. I guess it then boils down to personal conscience and understanding.
In terms of God’s forgiveness and its scope I verge on the idealism rather than human practicality or Justice.
You gave your analogy. It had nothing to do with this life. You showed no benefit to forgiveness in this life, nor disadvantage to not receiving it in this life.
Perhaps if you focussed on the problem of guilt you might understand how fogiveness can really change this life for the better.
Instead all you seem to care about is beng spiritual or not. And the only reason to be spiritual is for acceptance into the next life, not living this one. Being spiritrual is its own reward as in
“I thank God I am not like this Tax colletor(ff)”
Part of the difficulty of the topic [hell], as with the others we have been studying, is that the word hell conjures up an image gained more from medieval imagery than from the earliest Christian writings. Just as many who were brought up to think of God as a bearded old gentleman sitting on a cloud decided that when they stopped believing in such a being they had therefore stopped believing in God, so many who were taught to think of hell as a literal underground location full of worms and fire, or for that matter as a kind of torture chamber at the center of God’s castle of heavenly delights, decided that when they stopped believing in that, so they stopped believing in hell. The first group decided that because they couldn’t believe in childish images of God, they must be atheists. The second decided that because they couldn’t believe in childish images of hell, they must be universalists.
There are of course better reasons for becoming an atheist and better reasons for becoming a universalist. Many who occupy one of those positions have gone by a much more sophisticated route than the ones I just described. But, at least at a popular level, it is not the serious early Christian doctrine of final judgment that has been rejected but rather one or other gross caricature.
Wright, N. T.. Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (p. 175). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
I wonder whether any vision of Hell can be justified?
I guess one question I would love to ask Jesus is why He brought it up at all? It can only be a deterrent for bad or selfish behaviour but if it isn’t real it becomes an empty threat. I have difficulty rectifying forgiveness and Hell, they would appear to be diametrically opposed.
Many people, like me, do not react well to threats, it puts me automatically on the defence. If the reason for the threat is real then the temptation is to justify my position and so negate the need for the threat rather than confront the problem head on. Perhaps that is just me.
Forgiveness only makes sense when it is free from coercion. In many religious settings, it has been used as a tool of control, particularly against women and the oppressed. This involves demanding reconciliation without truth, silence without justice and spiritual maturity without safety. This is not forgiveness, but submission disguised as virtue.
From a liberation perspective, forgiveness begins with truth. Before anything can be forgiven, harm must be recognised as such. Jesus never asked the wounded to pretend they were not wounded. He consistently supported those whose suffering had been minimised or normalised. In that sense, forgiveness is not the erasure of anger or grief, but rather what becomes possible after these emotions have been acknowledged rather than suppressed.
Psychologically, forgiveness is more a process of integration than an act of will. Trauma fragments experience: pain is split off, anger is buried, and memory is distorted. When people are pressured to forgive prematurely, their nervous system experiences this as another violation. Genuine forgiveness, if it comes at all, emerges only when the body feels safe enough to let go of its vigilance. It cannot be commanded by God or by anyone else.
This is where the recovery of the feminine becomes essential. The feminine dimension of spirituality understands time, cycles and gestation. It recognises that healing takes time, and that wounds need to be cared for before they can heal. In this sense, forgiveness is womb-like rather than juridical: it contains pain, processes it, and eventually transforms it — not for the sake of the offender, but for the restoration of life within the wounded person.
Therefore, divine forgiveness is not best imagined as a judge deciding to overlook wrongdoing. Rather, it is better understood as God’s refusal to abandon the relationship, even in the presence of truth. Jesus’ attitude towards those who harmed others was not indulgence, but an invitation to reconnect with their humanity. This invitation does not cancel out the consequences of their actions, nor does it bypass accountability. Zacchaeus is forgiven, but he repays what he stole. Forgiveness and justice are not opposites; they are interdependent.
Importantly, in this tradition, forgiveness does not require reconciliation. Jesus forgives from the cross, but he does not restore his trust in those who crucify him. Liberation theology is clear on this point: reconciliation without justice is false peace. Forgiveness does not mean re-entering abusive systems, nor does it mean giving up resistance. It is possible to forgive internally while still refusing proximity, cooperation, or silence.
From a trauma-informed perspective, forgiveness is often more about reclaiming the self than absolving the other. It is the moment when the injured person no longer has to organise their inner life around what was done to them. This process cannot be rushed, and it may not manifest as benevolence or warmth. Sometimes, forgiveness is simply deciding not to let hatred complete the work of the original harm.
In the Christian narrative, forgiveness is inextricably linked to the concept of resurrection. This does not mean that everything is made right, but rather that life is not exhausted by violence. Resurrection says that what was done to you does not have the final say in who you become. When it appears, forgiveness is a sign that love has survived contact with cruelty, not that the cruelty was acceptable.
Therefore, forgiveness does not fit into this picture as a moral demand, but rather as a possible outcome of healing. Human forgiveness arises when truth is told, power is acknowledged, and the soul is allowed to heal. Divine forgiveness is an unwavering presence that refuses to reduce anyone, whether victim or perpetrator, to their worst act.
In this sense, forgiveness belongs to love, not power. And, as I have often said, love does not force itself through domination. It breaks through slowly and persistently, like dandelions through concrete, but only when the ground is permeable
You may. Nice. Nett. Post hoc rhetoric. Therapeutic. Transcending primitive legalistic ideas of forgiveness, trying to address the brute fact necessity of reconciliation. To past evil. And, I would suggest, in Jesus, to ongoing evil. Beyond mundane sin, abuse of power, there is mind choking horror for which forgiveness is meaningless. He put himself there. Beyond therapeutic forgiveness, of, to God; there is gratitude in acceptance of oblivion. The end of suffering.
In metamorphosis in God there would be complete healing for all, of which mutual forgiveness would be inseparable. Apart from that They have no right to forgive, let alone condemn.
You care too much about justice. Forgiveness is not about justice. Justice is the antithesis of Forgiveness. To try and merge them is to destroy both.
Forgiveness and justice are rooted in past actions.
The aim of either punishment or forgiveness is to change the future actions rather than dwell on the past, but, just as the penal system often fails to achieve this, so can forgiveness.
This is why human justice will never fully fathom Divine forgiveness, and we can never second guess God in this matter.
