FORGIVING FOR GOD'S SAKE

 
To forgive is to intentionally offer goodness to the person who has not been good or is not been good to you.  To forgive to please God contradicts what forgiveness is.

 

Those who believe that God unconditionally forgives the sinner so if the sinner is lost it is because he or she won't accept God's forgiveness naturally hold we need to forgive to be like the God who made us and in his honour.

 

The forgiving Christian is grounded on God’s pardon. In other words, “God forgives me and forgives through me. He gives me the power to forgive. I forgive causally because God is forgiving and I forgive motivationally because he is forgiving. God both makes my forgiving and inspires me to forgive.” That means the forgiveness is conditioned on there being a forgiving God! No God? Then the forgiveness is an illusion. If your faith is not real though you think it is then the forgiveness is fragile and will not last. Without a God to protect it it is only as good as the next two seconds.  If you worry about how much failing forgiveness there is and the trouble forgiveness causes when it is not real then worry about that risk!

 

Free will is a function for deciding what you will do. It is about deciding first. It is not about morality first. Giving it a religious role is vile for it suggests, “If you do x then you have done wrong in the eyes of God and that is what matters.” God based forgiving and seeking his pardon is inherently degrading. It involves denial of what free will is all about.

 

The Bible has a word for free and unconditional forgiveness.  The word is charizomai.  It is granted even without being asked for.  God then it follows forgives every single sin of every single person this way.  That means God is in a right relationship with you but the believers add it does not mean that you are responding or making things right from your side.

 

What you have to do from your side is called aphesis.  It is translated forgiveness in the Bible.  This is based on you saying sorry and meaning it and taking steps if possible to fix the harm you have done and to live better in the future.  1 John 1:9 says God will forgive us if we repent and is said to mean this forgiveness.

 

The only problem is that that is not God forgiving you but you accepting it.  So why does John say God forgives conditionally? 

 

The reality is that the Bible contradicts itself.   The doctrine that God forgives unconditionally and that any benefit is conditional on our response raises these issues:

 

1 If God struggles to forgive and you forgive to co-operate but the goal of forgiveness can be reached that means both sides grow.  The struggle is about it being mature. A God obviously cannot struggle so whatever you get from him it is not forgiveness no matter how much it is like it.

 

2 It is passive aggressive to accuse sinners of having forgiveness all along and not taking it. 

 

3 Forgiveness is not about treating saint and sinner the same as their deeds do not matter.  Unconditional forgiveness is not really forgiveness.  It is passive aggressive against good people.  It treats both evil and good people as being unable to earn anything bad.  That denies human dignity.

Personal antagonism towards the offender is the only real punishment and punishment means nothing without it. That is why it is extremely important that we do not condemn more actions than we need to - in practice that means trim moral rules down to the essentials and assume the best you can about people's motives.  Banning personal ill feeling towards a bad person is a way of furthering and protecting their evil while feigning condemnation.  A God who forgives unconditionally is only going to corrupt.  And so will belief in him!  The believer will become immune to what others think of her or him for it will be, "God does not look at me like that and that is all that matters to me."  Suppressing the antagonism is unnatural and an act of violence against nature.  It is meeting violence with another form of violence.

 

Those who demonstrate ability to be forgiving are often disliked for taking the high moral ground.  They want to be superior to those who do not forgive or cannot forgive.  And if they forgive something major they feel superior to those who forgive but who do not have a lot to forgive.  We can forgive those who forgive if we see how they have moved on and been an example.  But that will mean they have to produce good fruit on the human level.  Forgiving that is  made about pleasing God not man will not show such fruit.  Forgiving for man is wiser than forgiving for God because with man you really have to move on and do the hard work that is involved.  Forgiving for man feels right and feels inspirational for it is made about man.  I'd feel offended if I was forgiven just so that God could be happy.  That is actually bypassing me and not forgiving at all.

 

If there are forgiving people then we understandably should be sceptical of them for most forgivers are fakes and want to be superior to you morally out of pride.  Our scepticism should be deeper when the forgivers are all about God and doing it for him!  They want to be better than you who forgive for the enemy's sake and your own and for the sake of the community.

 

A popular definition of forgiveness is: restoration of relationship and not just wiping the state clean. If you rebuild your relationship with your wife or parent and do it for God mainly or solely for God then it is not about building your relationship with them. Forgiveness is essentially atheist but because it is good it has been hijacked by the believers.
 
Forgiveness, especially God’s forgiveness, makes no sense and it is another reason for discarding belief in free will. Where there is no freedom there is nothing to forgive. Mercy exposes some reasons why it is so bad to believe in free will. You can show mercy if you believe that evil is not sin but sickness.

The scary thing about Christian mercy is that it is better to give mercy to the more undeserving than to somebody who deserves it more. The worse the sin you forgive the more praise you get from God for it shows the most gratitude to God who has forgiven you so much. That is plainly saying that religious considerations should have more weight than human considerations. It is saying that man is made for faith and not faith for man. Yet the inconsistent Jesus was the one that said that man was not made for the Sabbath but the Sabbath was made for man! That translates as that man was not made for prayer but prayer for man which shows that somebody may not always have been a believer in God and was perhaps a humanist or near-humanist at times.
 
Religion says that God has done us the greatest of favours by forgiving us so the worse the sin we forgive the better. We should concentrate on forgiving the worst and only take time if it is available later to forgive those who were not so bad.
 
It would totally churlish to deny mercy to a good man who has committed some crime and who isn’t sorry and to give it to somebody who has barely done a good deed in his life and who is sorry. Good has to be acknowledged. Actions must be put before virtues and attitudes. It is results we need.
 
The Church says that two equally evil people can come to God in confession for pardon and both will be pardoned even though one was barely sorry and the other deeply sorry. They get the main benefit forgiveness. So the goal is reached without much resolve to avoid evil in the future. This is condoning and not forgiveness even by the Church’s own standards.
 
The Bible detests on the authority of God, atheists and homosexuals and heretics. If God is right to hate them then they should receive less mercy than those God likes or likes better. The Christian faith infers that a man who kills one of these people should receive mercy in preference to somebody who has slaughtered somebody God likes better. We plainly see that no religion should be allowed to get away with condemning Atheists, homosexuals and heretics.

Christians can do you harm. Then they feel guilt and a need for forgiveness. Why do they look for forgiveness from God? As God comes first going to him for forgiveness matters more than them going to you. They transfer their guilt for how they hurt you to God by pretending it was him they hurt not you. This is appalling. No wonder they soon sin again! No wonder they could still be a danger to you.
 
God alone matters. Jesus said we must love him with all our hearts. God does not want us to be sorry then for thumping John but for breaking his law that we must not exercise unnecessary violence. It’s about God and not John. In this scenario, we see there is no value in arguing that sin should be avoided because God is good and that God is therefore a helpful idea.

Many people like the God concept because they want to use it to exploit others. They want others to feel guilty about hurting other people for it hurts the perfectly good God who is not physically harmed but who disapproves of the sin and is justly offended by it and can punish for it. But the truth of the matter is that it is none of God’s business what we do to each other. The reply, “Oh yes it is because God loves us all and whoever hurts another person hurts what is dear to him and therefore hurts him”, does not work. Then it is not so much that the person is hurt that matters to him but the insult offered to him by damaging his property.
 
Another is that God made us all and to hurt another is to hurt his property. That does not work either. Why? Sin cannot hurt God and to say it does is only a metaphor. He does not disapprove of sin but he “disapproves”. Disapproval is not pleasant while God’s happiness cannot be marred. We might be offending God but we have nothing to apologise to him for. It is like saying sorry to a man who does not mind you kicking his wall for it can’t do him any harm. God would be evil and vindictive if he did mind our sins. And God says he will bring good out of the evil we have done and he uses evil though he is almighty meaning he needs it. Once again he has no business telling us to come to him for forgiveness.
 
To be more concerned about an invulnerable God than a human being is a great mental sickness. It is a further insult against people who after being hurt need to be assured that they are loved for themselves and not for any God.
 
With God, you are asking for pardon as if the sin you committed was against him and not John which is not only evil but also stupid. The sin could not be entirely against God. The fact that John was hurt has nothing to do with God for John is not God. The fact is that God’s handwork was damaged but that is a separate issue. You can’t go to God and say, “I confess that I hit John and I want you to forgive me”. What you say is, “I confess and ask forgiveness for abusing your creation, a person you made and thereby I disrespected your rights and your property”. The Christians have been conditioned to go to God for relief when their consciences condemn them but in fact they can’t do that. It doesn’t make sense. This is really about them using religion to feel better. It is evil to apologise to God for John's suffering. Go to John. The matter is not over until you forget God and do that. Obviously, God is pompously and rudely making what is directed at John his business. So this shows the true face of the mercy of God. It is based on hatred of the rights of the person and is therefore condoning sin and not true mercy for it is sin itself. The pardon is just used by religion as an attractant for the unwary. The only reason we get any mercy is because God wants to show off his power. To exult in the mercy of God is to declare that God should be followed and obeyed because he is powerful and not because he is good. Might is right and if the Church is the Church of God it will be utterly ruthless and a dictatorship. God is a substitute for apologising to John. It is certain too that Christianity would never have taken off if it wasn’t sending people to apologise to God instead of to those whom they hurt. They even make it more important to go to God than to the offended party when it should be the other way round.
 
If you have sinned against God at all then you have sinned indirectly against him and directly against John. The emphasis is put on asking God for pardon which could make some sense if God exists more than on John. But this is incorrect because the person directly offended still comes first. God has stolen the place of John and sticking his nose in where it should not be.
 
If we forgive for God, that means we forgive because God has forgiven. Many Christians say that when God forgives he is not ceasing to have a spiteful attitude towards somebody for he is not like that but he is simply cancelling their punishment and he only punishes because he loves and making peace with them to help them to do better in the future when they are set free from their sins.  Some say that the punishment is inflicted by the sin and so God has to prevent that.  It is impossible to see how a God who is almighty could be spiteful for he does not need anything from us. If he cancels their punishment then we must do the same and so we cannot put criminals in jail. God is more important than us and if he can do it so should we. So the view that God simply cancels the punishment is ridiculous for it wants us to encourage criminals by doing nothing about them.
 
The forgiveness so eulogised by the Church is really fake forgiveness because real forgiveness is supposed to be something free and not forced. The motive behind real is supposed to be basically one of generosity. This is giving a person what you do not need to give them and what they have not earned. But Christianity with a forgiving God makes it a duty for you to forgive others. Jesus said that because God has forgiven you, you have to forgive others in gratitude to God. His claim that he died so that our sins might be pardoned makes it worse for then if we do not forgive we are insulting God for he got their sins paid for. What the Church believes in is not forgiving but in condoning – condoning is admitting an act was wrong but choosing to reward it as if it never happened. It gives you a pat on the back for being a baddie while pretending to condemn your badness! Many philosophers believe there is no difference between forgiving and condoning full stop. The important thing about forgiveness is what it does in practice. It does seem that it is Catholic delusionalism then to say that forgiving and condoning are not the same when both have the same effect and the same dangers.

 

If God has forgiven already and all I need to do is accept then I cannot ask for forgiveness. I can only say, “I accept.” That is not character-forming or productive forgiving.  Real forgiving is a hard process where both offended and offender have to walk together and sometimes fall on the way and both learn and better themselves through the journey.  Forgiveness that does not involve a battle between offended and offender to learn from the experience is doomed to fail maybe not today but next week is another week.

 

Nobody but the most arrogantly superficial would easily lap up the thought that God forgives all along even as they sin.  If you take your wrongdoing seriously you will struggle to believe that.  The passive aggressive side of such doctrines as sweet as they seem is that the person is being judgementally accused of doing self-inflicted harm.  In other words they are not forgiving themselves by taking the forgiveness God has already granted.  So they are horrible and ungrateful.  They totally ask for any bad results.  Without faith in God we would have less to condemn them for!!  Look at the example they give others for you don't see too many running to God to reconcile with him.

 

Christian forgiveness is superficial. Religion urges us to be genuine about it and do it for the sake of God. That ensures that its pleas for us to forgive will not work. Those who forgive just have it in them to forgive. Religion must never be given the credit.