So, i was thinking about forgiveness

[Keith&Co.]

On a drive back from the post office.

Specifically, family of a mass shooting victim expressed that they had forgiven the shooter.
This is entirely internal.
It doesn't make the shooter not guilty of murder. It doesn't hamstring the DAs ability to prosecute. Won't reduce sentencing any amount.
Won't replace the dead. Won't speed anyone's physical therapy, or surgery time.

It's just the survivors making the choice not to allow the fucker to mess them up further by taking up emotional space in their head. It's saying, "i am done with you, i go on with my life. Awa' w' thee."

Nice if you can manage it, i suppose.

That's about where my thoughts got when someone cut me off by the hospital. Their bumpersticker reminded me that Christains are, in their view, not perfect, but forgiven.
Does that mean they're going to Heaven? Or is Jesus just saying he's not going to allow their sins to mess up his day in Paradise? Are they still going to Hell, but with God's love instead of God's emnity?

I know 'forgive' can also mean to cancel a debt, but i never quite grasped how my coveting my neighbor's second wife created a debt to God.

 

[skepticalbip]

....... i never quite grasped how my coveting my neighbor's second wife created a debt to God.

Could be that he's lusting after her too and resents the competition from you. So not so much debt to god but enmity from god.

 

[ideologyhunter]

You didn't say if you followed the Christians, pulled up beside them, and menaced them. (Personally, I wouldn't, too many Christians are packing these days.)
Forget coveting the neighbor's wife...God apparently put a hurt on mankind for fruit theft. It's why dropping a baby hurts like a bitch. (I was reading Genesis 3 yesterday just to make sure that it really said what I thought it said. And it does. A & E eat the fruit in verse 6. Verse 7 says their eyes were then opened, and they could "know good and evil." In other words, before they ate the fruit, they were incapable of understanding sin. When God punished them, it was like someone taking a stick of wood to beat a puppy that chewed a sock.) Forgive me if I misstated any of that.

 

[none]

meh, boom click boom.. two in the head. click boom. one in the chest.
there forgiven

 

[Wiploc]

...God apparently put a hurt on mankind for fruit theft. It's why dropping a baby hurts like a bitch.

This bit is from the sixties. I don't know if it makes sense to people today. But, for all I know, you people are from the sixties too.

So, Adam and Eve taste the fruit of knowledge. God, explains to them their punishment: "You'll have pain in childbirth.
You will have to earn your food by the sweat of your brow. You'll have to subdue weeds. You'll have to cover your nakedness with raiment. And you ..." god says, pointing sternly at Eve, "gots to button yours backwards."

 

[Lion IRC]

....This is entirely internal.
It doesn't make the shooter not guilty of murder. It doesn't hamstring the DAs ability to prosecute. Won't reduce sentencing any amount.

Correct.
So what's the problem?
Willingness to forgive is the flipside of remorse.
Im not quite sure what your Op is getting at.

Won't replace the dead. Won't speed anyone's physical therapy, or surgery time.

Who said that's the intended purpose of forgiveness?
The repentant murderer, likewise, knows they can't undo their action. Yet, their remorse and their victim's willingness to forgive are 'good' deeds. And it could be argued that these can infact at least partially 'undo' the harm.

It's just the survivors making the choice not to allow the fucker to mess them up further by taking up emotional space in their head. It's saying, "i am done with you, i go on with my life. Awa' w' thee."

No, it's not solely about a single act of internal, unilateral absolution - one person putting something in the past. It extends beyond that to encompass the wider scope of neighbor/community and God.

My sins against my fellow human being and my subsequent remorse (or lack thereof), along with my neighbor's willingness or unwillingness to forgive me, are at the heart of biblical teachings about what Jesus described as the Two Greatest Commandments.

...bumpersticker reminded me that Christains are, in their view, not perfect, but forgiven.
Does that mean they're going to Heaven? Or is Jesus just saying he's not going to allow their sins to mess up his day in Paradise? Are they still going to Hell, but with God's love instead of God's emnity?

Your cynicism about forgiveness seems to arise from ignorance or indifference as to the consequences if we lived in a world where mercy didn't exist.

No early parole for good behaviour. No reduced sentence for pleading guilty. The remorseful sinner is punished just as harshly as the unrepentant sinner. This scenario leads to a form of "who cares" futility because remorse would be useless. And Original Sin would become Unforgivable Sin so trying NOT to sin would pointless.

Think of the Monty Python Life of Brian movie where the blasphemer who is about to be stoned to death gets warned that he's only making it worse for himself by continuing to say Jehovah.

I know 'forgive' can also mean to cancel a debt, but i never quite grasped how my coveting my neighbor's second wife created a debt to God.

If a person's crime/sin harms one of God's creations, then God is a stakeholder. If a person's crime/sin gets ignored and goes unpunished, this acts as an incentive - enabler - to others who say well if its OK for them to break the law, why can't I?

Suppose I am observed breaking the speed limit and crashing into some else's vehicle. Thats not an isolated MYOB matter solely between me and that other driver.

My wilful law breaking offends a Higher Authority and a wider community which has collectively agreed that ppl ought not be allowed to decide for themselves whether they wish to speed.

 

[Politesse]

Well, there's more than one sense of forgiveness, yes? Not all forgiveness is in your head, you cite several other ways that a person might be forgiven in your very post.

Its seems to me, though I acknowledge it wouldn't to other Christians, that you are creating a bit of confusion by blending Torah and Pauline theology as you are doing here. I do not think the ancient Jews were meant to "feel bad" about coveting their neighbor's wife as such, or at least this wasn't the primary reason for the Law to exist. Law exists to regulate society and social interactions, not our emotional lives per se. Torah was a contract, and perception of those following Jesus (who believed the world was going to end in a matter of decades from their time) was that Israel had broken that contract irrevocably, observing few of its precepts and politically prostituted out to the seat of earthly power in Rome. Jesus acknowledged this but offered them a path other than violent retributive justice against their neighbors. As they forgave slights, so they would be forgiven for their own deviations. A fundamentally different model of society, Jesus' "Kingdom of God", in which moral conduct took precedence over earthly authority rather than trailing after it.

Paul was writing just a few decades later, but he hadn't met Jesus, and interpreted his theology in a much more abstracted way, clearly strongly influenced by the self-sacrifical Pagan mythos that marked so many of the culture-heroes of the Classical Mediterranean. Redemptive blood sacrifice, etc. Though he still understood that love was the central hallmark of the Christian paradigm, and that problems of law and government had to give way to living the right kind of life.

 

[lpetrich]

Reminds me of a thread I'd started some time back: Rep. Ilhan Omar sort of turns the other cheek

Man Who Threatened to ‘Put a Bullet’ in Rep. Omar Pleads Guilty - The New York Times

Rep. Ilhan Omar asks for 'compassion' in sentencing of Islamaphobic man who threatened to kill her - The Washington Post

Rep. Ilhan Omar on Twitter: "Sharing my full letter on the the sentencing of Patrick W. Carlineo, a man convicted of threatening my life.
We must apply a system of compassion to criminal justice.
Who are we as a nation if we respond to threats of political retribution with retribution ourselves? (link)" / Twitter

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

You didn't say if you followed the Christians, pulled up beside them, and menaced them. (Personally, I wouldn't, too many Christians are packing these days.)
Forget coveting the neighbor's wife...God apparently put a hurt on mankind for fruit theft. It's why dropping a baby hurts like a bitch. (I was reading Genesis 3 yesterday just to make sure that it really said what I thought it said. And it does. A & E eat the fruit in verse 6. Verse 7 says their eyes were then opened, and they could "know good and evil." In other words, before they ate the fruit, they were incapable of understanding sin. When God punished them, it was like someone taking a stick of wood to beat a puppy that chewed a sock.) Forgive me if I misstated any of that.

You are forgiven, mainly because that forgiveness thing is truly a love / hate relationship. We all hate the sin but love the sinner, though I admit to loving both regularly and even hating the sinner quite often. If the sin is particularly egregious the love can be hateful and the hate can be lovely.

 

[ronburgundy]

On a drive back from the post office.

Specifically, family of a mass shooting victim expressed that they had forgiven the shooter.
This is entirely internal.
It doesn't make the shooter not guilty of murder. It doesn't hamstring the DAs ability to prosecute. Won't reduce sentencing any amount.
Won't replace the dead. Won't speed anyone's physical therapy, or surgery time.

It's just the survivors making the choice not to allow the fucker to mess them up further by taking up emotional space in their head. It's saying, "i am done with you, i go on with my life. Awa' w' thee."

Nice if you can manage it, i suppose.

I'd argue that just moving on and putting the offender completely out of mind, isn't actual forgiveness. But it is a healthy response, if there is no further recourse that can be taken.

Forgiveness means you still see, interact with, or at least still think about the person, but feel no ill will towards them, truly as you would had they never wronged you in the first place. I don't see any benefit of doing this unless you have evidence it was truly an accident, or the offender sincerely changed and isn't a threat to do it again, or there is no chance they can wrong anyone again b/c they are dead.

I think expressed Christian "forgiveness" is usually disingenuous and just a way for the person to score piety points. IOW, it doesn't reflect any real change psychological state regarding thoughts or emotions toward the offender. I don't feel like searching for it, but their is a neuro study out there supporting this, showing that devout Christians who say they "forgive" an offender are actually more likely to continue to show brain patterns indicating they feel negative toward to person.

That's about where my thoughts got when someone cut me off by the hospital. Their bumpersticker reminded me that Christains are, in their view, not perfect, but forgiven.
Does that mean they're going to Heaven? Or is Jesus just saying he's not going to allow their sins to mess up his day in Paradise? Are they still going to Hell, but with God's love instead of God's emnity?

I know 'forgive' can also mean to cancel a debt, but i never quite grasped how my coveting my neighbor's second wife created a debt to God.

Ultimately, the concept of God's forgiveness is mostly about proving that the only thing that matters is bending to God's authority, not how you feel, not how much harm you've done others or they've done to you, not whether they will harm you again in the future. So long as they submit to God at some point, that wipes their slate clean, b/c worldly justice among humans is irrelevant.

 

[Jarhyn]

As I said to my very Catholic DM: personally, I don't think forgiveness is a good schema to hold. I'll generally forgive others for things but I don't think that anyone should ever really forgive themselves. Perhaps that amounts to God not forgiving you, for the autotheist, or for the atheist, or for the agnostic.

How the knowledge of the past influences the future may decrease as a function of potential proximity to the identity of the event. If you come close to some part of it, the specific guilty experience of the past, and experiences of the past generally, ought influence how you behave, and guilt arising from a lack of internal forgiveness is a powerful mechanism to that end.