The value of forgiveness

[Mike]

What is the value of forgiveness? What's it's value to the one granting it and/or the one being forgiven? How much does it matter whether or not the one receiving the forgiveness is actually sorry for what they did and/or even wants to be forgiven?

[Tahlvin]

The real value is the psychological value to the person doing the forgiving. Sure, the attitude of the person being forgiven can have an impact on things, but the real purpose is the psychological "letting go" that occurs for the forgiver. And yes, like The Shack, the person may have to forgive over and over, not just once.

[Walrus]

[Phoebe]

Wow, how did I miss this post before? Maybe Christianity has given me an odd view of this subject but I think forgiveness has to be completely free and clear from any and all calculation. It's an act of grace, divine grace, and we as human forgivers and forgivens share in a bit of that grace. To me it isn't the sort of thing one reasons about or adds up or weighs in the balance or sheds as a burden or decides is no longer important or whatever. No retribution or repayment earns it, but it's a free gift that might or might not make sense. On the other hand, I have apparently committed unforgivable acts, and it's kind of funny because if you would have asked me, what does an unforgivable act look like? I would never have guessed. And in some cases I remain in the dark about what it was. I would have guessed the usuals, you know, crimes and such. Yet people are forgiven for those.

There are maybe two people who wronged me for real that I have forgiven and in neither case was it clear how forgiveness arose. It was kind of like a splinter festering and one day some sort of effervescence of soul helped to lift it out and send the light around. And there was the forgiveness in its wake, unbidden, ungenerated, just fully present and available. One poor soul probably doesn't know she has been forgiven and never will, and is probably no longer living, and the other soul knows he was forgiven and so that's good.

[Walrus]

By a christian perspective, I have clearly committed the most unforgivable sin. But that has never mattered to me much. The idea of someone asking or receiving forgiveness from someone who was not involved in the crime makes it meaningless in my opinion.

[Phoebe]

What is that, blaspheming against the holy spirit?

[Bonefish]

Ya know, I pretty much agree with Phoebe on this one.

[bralbovsky]

One of my favorite things from Goethe is "And if I love you, what business is that of yours?"

I think forgiveness is a similar grace. Mutuality amplifies it, but it doesn't ask permission, and if sincere (a big if) it has a powerful and positive influence on the active party.

[Phoebe]

[bralbovsky]

I'd concur. Sad that it pisses her off. But if one grows up with a mercantile view of love or sex or anything for that matter, I could see how you might think you owe someone. It's what annoys people who don't appreciate being forgiven. They think they have some control, which is probably why they were an asshole in the first place.

A more concrete manifestation is the gift test: If you give a gift, (or throw something in the trash) do you still maintain that you have a right to expect the recipient to appreciate it? Or does ownership really pass 100% (Does it bug you if someone makes cash off of something you discarded?) Sometimes our affection is so conditional it's heartbreaking. I guess that's the beginning of thinking of winning or losing in a relationship. In some sense, if both of you don't win, you both lose.

[Phoebe]

The gift one is good too. However, I find it is extremely common, even among particularly nice people, to view gift-giving in a transactional context, especially around things like Weddings, Christmas, re-gifting, etc. Gifts are sometimes thought of as the reward converse to punishments, where both are preferred to be retributive. Punishments fit the crime, and gifts are deserved and appreciated accordingly. I kind of like randomness in the gifting that disrupts this process, but it's okay, I go along with it. Sometimes I wish my affections for other people were more retributive than they are, lol.

[Ronster]

[Phoebe]

It's interesting that forgiveness sort of emerges in you after whatever appropriate readying takes place in your soul, and maybe you can make choices that influence the readying or examine the situation rationally and decide that forgiveness is appropriate, but to experience that is something even further. Meanwhile, when I think about ANGER, which in some cases is broken up and displaced in the process of forgiving or being forgiven, I feel like it should be entirely under my rational control, but it's not like that always.

You know how Christians talk a lot about leaving things to God or handing things over to God? (and I realize that people who don't have this type of religious experience may have no truck with the concept). Anyway, for some reason I never feel like handing anger over to God, even though I consider that option and will pray for the ability to become forgiving, by contrast, and that seems to help! So why not with Anger? It's like the Anger is a hard ball of something that used to be a dog toy but now is a frozen blob in the yard (yeah the anger is cold, like revenge), and to deal with it you're going to have to thaw it and decide to put it in the trash. But instead I just let it sit out there in the yard, dirtying up the place, in the way, hard and immobile. I should try to get rid of it, should hypnotize myself and visualize handing that shit over to the Great Refuse Collector, but I feel like I made this refuse, and it's mine, and I neither wish to bother God with it nor give it away to God, as if I had options where God is concerned, lol.

That's another thing I've never been able to explain to people who don't believe in any gods and wonder what on earth I'm talking about. It's not like this was a choice I made one day - oh, I'll just decide the arguments work and I'll believe in God. No, it's just There regardless. I feel kind of distressed and nauseous when I read about people like Mother Teresa who apparently had periods of looking inside and not finding God at all, but going on with faith anyway. Here I find myself with it and it doesn't seem particularly deserved. I know someone, let us say, someone I know well, who due to inexplicable, unjust suffering is losing the sense that God is with anyone or real in the universe at all, and it kills me because this person used to be the one who wondered how/why I could legit entertain thoughts of agnosticism or atheism without running up against the obvious truth that there's a God. Well... wow. Why do I now have that truth and the person who suffers is thereby caused to lose it? Bad situation.

[Ronster]

Yeah anger is like the dog toy..the nasty one I like, but God isn't going to take it from me. He has a better thing a new thing, but I can't have the new good unless I let go of it...I only have the one mouth to gnaw things with and I have become addicted to the taste and smell of the old rotten possum bones. When I give it up, not bury it for later I can get to the new good stuff, but God lets me do it in my own time. Speaking from personal experience I haven't tasted a lot of the new stuff, but I have found I enjoy it better when I finally do.

As far as other peoples' faith it does kinda go like that. We do all have a spark of it and it can smolder or it can grow. a lot depends on what we do on our end. It is easy to say that no one deserve all the crap that comes their way. Is it a test? maybe, but tests come at the time when you are ready for the next grade like an EOCT. There is absolutely no logic to it though.
I have questioned my faith many times and I think I am better for it, but when the bad stuff comes I personally have never asked the "why me?" question. I am the "God help me!" type, not that one is better than the other I just ask for help a lot I guess. I take comfort in the fact that I believe I am heard whether the reply is to my liking or not.
God isn't threatened by our questions though, so there's that.