Thoughts on forgiveness

[AnimatedDirt]

Then speculation on divine forgiveness are a bit pointless aren't they?

If you find it impossible to discuss within the frame of this thread, maybe you would find it less stressful to simply avoid this specific thread.

[Too Few Lions]

Then speculation on divine forgiveness are a bit pointless aren't they?

If you find it impossible to discuss within the frame of this thread, maybe you would find it less stressful to simply avoid this specific thread.

I'm not finding it stressful in the slightest, just pointless. And pointing out the pointlessness of theological speculation of a specific mythology on an atheist forum seems a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

I also think I am debating within the frame of this thread. I just asked you what if you don't carry any sin and don't require forgiveness from any deity? and I didn't receive a reply

[Heisenberg]

The still born child, while it has not sinned directly, it is genetically handed down from Adam.

And you actually believe this? Sometimes i wonder if theists are just messing with me, because I have a really hard time accepting the fact there are people out there who believe this is not only true, but somehow relevant.

[Too Few Lions]

The still born child, while it has not sinned directly, it is genetically handed down from Adam.

And you actually believe this? Sometimes i wonder if theists are just messing with me, because I have a really hard time accepting the fact there are people out there who believe this is not only true, but somehow relevant.

I have to say I find it ridiculous that anyone can call anyone else a 'sinner', as if it's their place to judge others, and really rather sick that anyone can look at an unborn baby that way

[Heisenberg]

The still born child, while it has not sinned directly, it is genetically handed down from Adam.

And you actually believe this? Sometimes i wonder if theists are just messing with me, because I have a really hard time accepting the fact there are people out there who believe this is not only true, but somehow relevant.

I have to say I find it ridiculous that anyone can call anyone else a 'sinner', as if it's their place to judge others, and really rather sick that anyone can look at an unborn baby that way

I don't know what else to say besides...

[Stevil]

Fact?  Is it really that difficult to understand, 'for arguments sake'?  I don't think the OP is meant to prove anything.

I am finding it difficult to distinguish what "for arguments sake" we are playing make believe and what you are pertaining as real consequences of that. This is a difficult task for me.

Forgiveness means one is excused or even pardoned from an act against another or a law.  Between friends it may simply be a release of anger or a harboring of resentment of a certain act against the other.  Everyone is offered this second type of forgiveness from God at any moment.

Besides that we don't know whether the god has forgiven us, I personally have received no feedback, or conformation of its forgiveness.
Forgiveness in many ways is for the benefit of the person holding the anger or resentment, not for the person who has performed the offensive act.
If there is a god and if it feels offended or hurt by my behaviour and allows that to escalate into anger or resentment then that is more of a personal issue of the god, not myself. I couldn't care less if the god has these feelings towards me and is struggling to forgive me. I wouldn't even know as the god is non interactive. I can't even tell if this god exists let alone is fighting an inner battle to forgive me for my "sins".
I would offer advice for anyone (including this god) holding onto anger or resentment that it is certainly best to forgive and move on with your life. Life is way too short to waste it on petty things, spend your time with people you like, spend your time thinking about things or people you like rather than mulling over the things people have done that you find offensive, degrading or personally hurtful. There are simply better things to do than to hold onto grudges, it only eats yourself up, and odds are the person you are focusing the hate on probably doesn't even realise your issue, and probably didn't think anything of the alleged incident.

So if the god is offering forgiveness (and we have no confirmation of this) then the god is doing this for its own benefit, not ours. In many ways the god is being selfish and high and mighty with regards to its expectations that we should live by its moral standard, especial given that we don't know what its moral standard is and we don't understand why its moral standard is the right way and why our moral standard is the wrong way. If I were to judge the god of the old testament by my moral standard then this god would fail miserably. Even the courts of my country would find its behaviour reprehensible and it would be locked up for a very long time.

When a believer is forgiven, he/she claims belief in Christ and claims His death as theirs.  For arguments sake, God can now justify by his own death, the life of a sinner.  However when an unbeliever gets forgiveness, he/she must die to pay for the act(s) against God's law (we know according to biblical claim - and for arguments sake, one sin can damn a person) the problem the unbeliever has is that God cannot then justify their forgiveness AND life everlasting as the wages of sin is death.  God is able to justify believers through Christ because Christ died apart from sin.  Christ (while being God himself) was raised by God (the father) because the Son was innocent to sin, yet died as the penalty of sin ONCE for all.  Just like Adam (and Eve) sinned once and therefore damned all of their offspring, so Christ has died and offers life to all that will accept the gift.

If I were to believe in the Christian god, but were to retain my own moral standard, my own ability to think for myself on moral issues, and if I were confronted by this god and asked to accept the gift of Jesus death as atonement for my sins, I would refuse.
As a mature adult I feel it is important to accept responsibility for my own actions, I would never feel that someone else should take responsibility for what I have done. With regards to a blood sacrifice, I would never accept this as a gift to me. I find this reprehensible, disgusting behavior, I would not condone an innocent person's death especially if I could benefit from it. I want no part of it and really struggle with the way Christians look to this as something good. Firstly an all powerful god has no need or benefit from a blood sacrifice. Secondly how does a blood sacrifice relate to atonement? It doesn't, it only fulfills a psychopathic blood lust. This is not my style, not my desire, I find it offensive and reprehensible, I want no part of it.

The still born child, while it has not sinned directly, it is genetically handed down from Adam.

In humans, genetics come from both the Mother and the Father. Our genetics is put together in a double helix, which is split down the middle when presented in egg or sperm form. Each egg or sperm contains only half the genetic material of each parent. When these two halves combine they contain the instructions for building a complete human being. Depending on the dominant and recessive genes the new human will take on specific characteristics of its mother and father, being similar but not the same. Often there is genetic mutation which is the source of evolution and is present in all animals not just humans. I have never before heard that sinful acts performed by the mother or father manifest themselves in DNA. It would be great if you could provide links that substantiate this comment of yours.

We won't really know this consequence until the end, but we are told of the consequence before so we have a choice.

Please be more specific, we are told of the consequeces by whom? Who has this knowledge? Is there anything to suggest they didn't just make it up?

True, but also, you are not without knowldege of the Loch Ness Monster should it be a god, nor of the Christian God should He be God.

I am without knowledge of the Loch Ness Monster. I have seen photos of a person swimming and been told that it is Nessy, and with a bit of imagination I could imagine an aquatic animal with a strange shape. This is not knowledge however, it is imagination. We have no knowledge of the Loch Ness Monster, only stories. Same applies of the gods.

[Tristan Jay]

I thought I would jump in on this whole "Thoughts on Forgiveness" thing, but only in broad strokes.  For me, this is a deeply personal subject, and a source of terrible sadness.

First thing, reading only a few posts into this discussion and I got fairly confused.  Not a good thing.  The next thing is that I find this forgiveness/condemnation/punishment problematic and dangerous, especially if there is confusion.  I learned what I thought was a great Christian lesson once upon a time, yet this lead to phenomenal problems with my wife when I found myself trying to reconcile seemingly conflicting ideals of forgiveness.

I've mentioned elsewhere, something this fraught with peril stemming out of misunderstandings is completely unacceptable.  As I've mentioned elsewhere, God is a big boy, supposedly capable of everything, can speak for an clarify his intentions, and therefore he has a responsibility to be clear in such important matters.  Failing to be clear is negligence on his part!  To keep it simple, if I've turned my back on the "Jesus is your savior" salvation option and He will not forgive me for my sins, then why would I forgive him for this (and many other instances) of failing to be clear in important matters.  If I chose to forgive Him for being an idiot at communicating his "system" it makes me feel like I'm rising above his inability to forgive.  I kind of feel like if I am capable of forgiving him for how he's failed myself and humanity, then he should be able to do the same for me.  Think about it, though: I, a simple "lowly, unworthy" human can contemplate doing a thing that he cannot.  What a jerk.  I almost feel like doing this out of spite, except that I think I already have forgiven him to a certain extent.  I won't rule out rescinding this though, since he can't rise to the occasion himself (HimDamned bloody incompetent!).  I dare Him to do what I can do, forgive without a blood sacrifice.  I double dare Him to forgive me, without the intervention of Jesus.  I can do it, so can many (most!?) other people on this planet!  He is God, after all.

Getting back to the lesson that I didn't seem to "get" in a realistically finely tuned way.  I was at a church retreat one time, and they hashed out a lot of details regarding forgiveness.  One major point was that we were expected to forgive, in order to expect to receive forgiveness from God (there is stake in salvation established here).  For quite a lot of things, I didn't find it hard to forgive quite a lot.  I'm fairly patient with people.  Naturally, there were occasions where I struggled.  A Christian friend discussed with me the notion of continuing to take abuse and consistently forgiving, on the grounds that it sows the seed of a softening the heart of the person who is endlessly wronging you and blah blah blah (at the cost of destroying a perfectly loyal Christian in exchange for only the chance of a new convert).  In the face of this kind of self-destructive behavior to one's own personal well being, I'm always puzzled by the "tough love" Christians, and I don't understand why it seems like so many Christians support the Death Penalty.  Not very generous, not very forgiving.

Despite this, and even after having turned away from Christianity, I still practice a generous amount of forgiveness (possibly to a fault).  Now here's the really personal part.  My (soon to be ex-)wife, who claims herself to be a Christian, had a very different take on forgiveness.  While I was forgiving her faults unconditionally, while asking for change open-endedly, she completely withheld forgiveness unless/until I demonstrated a change in my faults which were bothering her.  She would criticize me for a small grudges against certain people, even though they were mainly defensively motivated.  So, despite her criticism that I did not forgive well enough for her liking, she didn't make much effort to let go of vindictive feelings towards me.  I will point out at this juncture that some of my behaviors that she would not forgive were the coming from any one of the combined Five Comorbid Mental-Health issues that I've discovered I've been having to cope with all my life.  Her "objectional" behaviors, which I constantly forgave, were part of her willful, prideful personality.  She has confessed that some of the things she did as our marital relationship collapsed were unfair.  I'm angry with her for throwing me out into the cold, having only freshly been diagnosed with all these mental health issues I'm having to cope with, and I'm having to learn how to live life on my own for the first time ever (I married and moved from my parents home to hers, something that a friend of mine also did successfully; so I had reason to believe it was workable).  I will eventually, hopefully talk through with her why I am angry; and I think I will be ready to forgive (yet, to a certain extent, I think I have forgiven much, and she still does not).

So, these have been my traumatic experiences for the last couple of months.  God can go to Hell for all I care.  Really, I want him to burn in Hell, so he can understand what it is he does.  Yet, I feel generous, too.  I think it would be nice if He would get over Himself, and be receptive to some constructive criticism.  I might feel forgiving if I saw some effort on his part; it doesn't even have to be in my own personal life, I would be impressed if he, say, turned things around for starving populations in Africa.  Or spoke up and made his "plan" crystal clear, and took clarifying questions, in a live action recorded medium.  Otherwise, he can go f*** Himself, and I wish Hell's torment on him.

Now back to my default mode of ignoring Him, and doing worthwhile stuff on this planet.  Cheers; peace and love to all (except God).

[AnimatedDirt]

If you can't discuss under a 'for arguments sake', then it is really impossible to convey to you (the Atheist) the ideas of Christianity in this manner and we can get back to arguing back and forth on what is or isn't right or provable.

We already know you think them to be gobbledygook.  It's no surprise the responses, and yours would go well in a thread in which the aim is convince you on God and his forgiveness.  This thread, at least the way I read the OP, is simply to discuss thoughts on forgiveness and what that means and maybe not ONLY what it means to a Christian, but also to an Atheist.

Genetics.  I should've placed genetics in quotes because it is not meant that sin is passed through DNA (if it is, I'm not aware of how so).  I have no explanation to prove how sin is passed.

[Tristan Jay]

Forgiveness in many ways is for the benefit of the person holding the anger or resentment, not for the person who has performed the offensive act.

Something that I wish I had learned earlier, rather than later.  I only came across this while watching a Tyler Perry movie with my wife.  She made a big deal out of reiterating it, yet ironically she failed to do this herself.  I've simply collected it in order to incorporate into and rework my understanding of forgiveness.

[Stevil]

My (soon to be ex-)wife, who claims herself to be a Christian, had a very different take on forgiveness.

Hey there Tristan, I always enjoy reading your posts, I find them very interesting and honest. Although it is sad to hear about your trials.
I am certainly no expert on marriage, it is extremely complicated and everyone is different.

In my case, I found that my wife had a vision of a perfect husband. Of course I could not live up to this perfect standard. I spent a bit of effort to lower her bar on this. Now she has next to no expectation from a husband, so when I do something that she likes, she is pleasantly surprised rather than being disappointed when I don't live up to her expectations.

It is working so far, but nothing comes with a guarantee.

[Stevil]

If you can't discuss under a 'for arguments sake', then it is really impossible to convey to you (the Atheist) the ideas of Christianity in this manner and we can get back to arguing back and forth on what is or isn't right or provable.

I thought I had done well with my last response to your post. Especially the second and third part.
I was playing make believe and I did address my feelings on what forgiveness means and why I would not "for aguments sake" accept the death of Jesus to wash away my sins, even if god and Jesus really exists.

This game is hard.

[Stevil]

I fully realize that biblical texts don't mean a whole lot on this forum, but I would like to discuss one issue related to forgiveness.  In I Corinthians 6:2 Paul says that the "saints will judge the world."  For Paul, "saints" meant believers.  In John 20:33, Jesus said to his followers that "if you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them...."  So, assume that Christians will judge the world, as Paul says.  According to the John passage, they could forgive any sin.  Why wouldn't they forgive everyone so that no one would be condemned?

I feel there is an aspect of exclusivity to Christianity. Believers go to heaven and non believers go to hell.
Obviously Christians put effort into their faith, they make sacrifices. I feel it is logical that they want to be rewarded for this. It is not much of a reward if everyone gets to have eternal happiness in heaven. Tragic as it may seem, many people take joy in others misery, it makes them feel special and privileged.

[Ecurb Noselrub]

I fully realize that biblical texts don't mean a whole lot on this forum, but I would like to discuss one issue related to forgiveness.  In I Corinthians 6:2 Paul says that the "saints will judge the world."  For Paul, "saints" meant believers.  In John 20:33, Jesus said to his followers that "if you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them...."  So, assume that Christians will judge the world, as Paul says.  According to the John passage, they could forgive any sin.  Why wouldn't they forgive everyone so that no one would be condemned?

I feel there is an aspect of exclusivity to Christianity. Believers go to heaven and non believers go to hell.
Obviously Christians put effort into their faith, they make sacrifices. I feel it is logical that they want to be rewarded for this. It is not much of a reward if everyone gets to have eternal happiness in heaven. Tragic as it may seem, many people take joy in others misery, it makes them feel special and privileged.

Well, at least you answered the question straight on.  This game is not so hard after all.  Yes, I have heard more than one Christian state something to the effect of "if there isn't a hell, I'm going to be disappointed."  I have a different view.  Assuming for the sake of argument that Christians did judge the world, I would be inclinded to go very heavy on the forgiveness button.  Perhaps there would be some who looked at the kingdom of God and concluded that they wanted nothing to do with it.  I assume that they would be satisfied with simple annihilation (which is pretty much what all atheists expect, anyway).  But I can't imagine any set of circumstances in which I would send anyone to a literal burning hell for eternity.  But maybe I'm in the minority as a Christian. 

[Tristan Jay]

My (soon to be ex-)wife, who claims herself to be a Christian, had a very different take on forgiveness.

Hey there Tristan, I always enjoy reading your posts, I find them very interesting and honest. Although it is sad to hear about your trials.

Having had the chance to vent my frustrated thoughts on forgiveness, I was able to clear my head and go back to look through some of the other posts.  My thoughts overlap on a couple of points regarding forgiveness and (the bizarre, needlessness of) God's system.  I'm glad I read your post after I wrote mine, and it was rewarding to feel like I'm able to come to coherent conclusions through the cloud of how this stuff intersects with my personal life.

You've got some great points which I wish would enter the discourse more.  I'm curious about the Christian thoughts on the appearance of a double standard on God's part, "for arguments sake."  But not as a hostile challenge to their faith.  I would like to see the rhetoric of "God works in mysterious ways" and "God is God, that's reason enough for what he does and why he's exempt from the rules he demands of us" be set aside, and address those issues; because obviously those are important issues that God and/or his followers really need to make a concerted effort to explore beyond the rhetoric, if saving as many people as possible is the ultimate goal.

Yes, I have heard more than one Christian state something to the effect of "if there isn't a hell, I'm going to be disappointed."

In some sense, it's almost as if God's incompetency at forgiving sends the wrong message to Christians.  They say the words, they listen to the sermon, yet I have to wonder if God's own example poisons the effectiveness of his intent, and Christians subconsciously rationalize their lapses in not forgiving because they are rationalizing away or trying to bury and ignore the failure of God's message.

[Ecurb Noselrub]

In some sense, it's almost as if God's incompetency at forgiving sends the wrong message to Christians.  They say the words, they listen to the sermon, yet I have to wonder if God's own example poisons the effectiveness of his intent, and Christians subconsciously rationalize their lapses in not forgiving because they are rationalizing away or trying to bury and ignore the failure of God's message.

Yes, it does seem as if the typical theology of forgiving is missing the boat at times. "For the sake of argument" let's assume that the "facts" of Christianity are true (Jesus is the Son of God, he died "for our sins", he was buried, and he rose on the third day, seen by a number of witnesses), but see if there is another interpretation that fits the "facts." What if "dying for our sins" was not necessary because God needed some kind of sacrifice to appease his wrath or legal requirements, but instead was necessary because of the general mentality of human beings at the time?  People 2000 years ago generally conceived of gods as needing to be appeased, and felt guilty or shameful because of their inability to keep whatever commandments their god required. So they sacrificed animals (or people) to appease the wrath of their god, and to keep in good standing with them. They all had some concept of their own "sinfulness" in the sense of falling short of their gods' requirements. 

So Jesus accommodates this particular world view of mankind (which was also present in Judaism) and essentially says: "OK, I'm going to put an end to this "sin" thing altogether. I'll "die for your sins" once and for all, and eliminate the need for further sacrifice and shame and guilt, so we can then get on to the business of having an adult relationship where "sin" is not an issue anymore." 

But "sin" is a big business, and without it priests and preachers have been deprived of their stock in trade.  So the "sin" idea is kept alive after Jesus by organized religion, which has been reaping more benefits from "sin" than Las Vegas for 2000 years. 

But if Jesus came to "take away the sin of the world" as the gospel of John says, then maybe from God's viewpoint it's not an issue anymore. Maybe organized religion is just deceiving us, and keeping us from having free communion with God.  Jesus also said in John 8 that "if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed."  I don't think sin is an issue with God anymore, so the only real forgiveness that needs to take place is forgiving oneself or forgiving others who have wronged you.  God's already forgiven, if he actually had to in the first place.  He didn't need the sacrifice of Jesus - humankind did.  Maybe it's time to move beyond that to real freedom.