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Wow. Blast from the past. It’s interesting to read my thoughts from nearly two years ago. What’s missing from my post is the context. That would help things make more sense.
I still don’t know how to dance around the issue but I’m reminded of Heber13’s snake story. The guy that reaches into the fire only to get bit by the snake again and again until they wise up and use a stick.
Maybe it’s the forgiveness that allows the person to reach out to help the snake again and again but over time the person wises up and uses a stick. Develops boundaries. They still try to help but the help has to take on a different form in order to protect oneself.
DarkJedi mentioned that he doesn’t forgive as easily since his FC. I find the same thing, sort of. It’s complicated. I had already been developing a view of mind and agency that automatically absolved most people of most offenses. (In fact, I had begun to wonder whether the atonement wasn’t necessary in part to punish the creator for making us this way. I now don’t think much of that kind of justice, but to my believing mind it made some sense.) I’ve gone further in that direction, so I sometimes forgive more easily.
But I also no longer have “forgive and you’ll be forgiven” and “judge not and you won’t be judged” as motivating principles. When I forgive someone, it’s all about making this life better, not the next one. Basically, without the weight of eternal consequences, I’m less motivated to forgive.
If someone raped and killed my child, I’d demand blood. I’d feel for his family, not blame them, and maybe try to help them. But the perpetrator? I’d want to remove him from the gene pool.
I wonder how much of this less forgiving attitude comes from just having less emotional energy. I already spend hours each week forgiving the Church for teaching me false hope, forcing me to pretend to believe, making me keep potential friends at arm’s length, and abusing my lesbian/bi daughter. It’s not much compared to what some people have to deal with, but it’s a persistent drain.
If there’s a god, I hope he/she/it forgives the entire idiotic human race, and is sufficiently contrite that I can reciprocate.
I am coming to learn that part of a FC/FT is changes in concepts of repentance and forgiveness. A very important part of this process is accepting what you still believe/value, and re-prioritizing or rejecting what no longer works. Becoming more nuanced in my choices has increased my tolerance and acceptance of others, which has decreased my need to “forgive” them – by re-defining and re-prioritizing the choices I make, it makes it easier for them not to “offend” me. Granted, the flip side is that it introduces other ways to be “offended”. It seems that it is always a work in progress… I think it is part of moving from a Fowler’s stage 3 to stage 4 or stage 5.
Roy wrote:
I hope that people do not understand this to be a required precedence – that to be forgiven they must forgive or to be loved they must love.I prefer to interpret it that we have been loved and forgiven and because of this example we, ourselves, can dare to love and forgive.
This is mostly where I land. I think the idea of a transactional god that demands that we do something before he/she will do something is limited in its scope. Frankly, it sounds awfully human.
To me, it’s empowering to think that someone, whether it was God/Jesus/regular Hebrew Joe, was visionary and idealistic enough to transcend tribal boundaries to the extent that love and forgiveness were top precepts. That other people also believed in the power of these ideals and our capabilities as people to live them enough that an entire Christian movement was created. If you believe that someone can love and forgive you, despite all of your true and untrue negative thoughts about yourself, then it becomes a possibility for you to extend that liberation to others. You can’t give anything to anyone else that you don’t already have, therefore the necessity to be loved and forgiven to be able to love and forgive.
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