Saying "I find it incredibly difficult to forgive" shows an acknowledgement that (a) forgiveness is an option and (b) forgiveness is something they are working towards.
"I have never forgiven anyone who has wronged me" is ... it's almost cartoonish in its villainy. The kind of thing a despotic ruler or a Bond villain would say, except in real life, that's absolutely fucking terrifying if you give the consequences even a moment's consideration.
Don’t think it’s that uncommon. It’s a central Christian idea, and part of the golden rule in various faiths, but it’s not a universal moral rule.
A lot of ‘honour’ culture is/was based on not forgiving people.
Now we've stopped being shocked, we've moved to appalled.
Heh, I don't know if this is a joke, or serious, but I don't understand the point you're making, or the specific difference you are seeing between the two words and the significance of it. Appalled, from the OED, is 'Bereft of courage or self-possession at the sudden recognition of something dreadful.' Similar to shock.
More "to be filled or overcome with horror, consternation, or fear; dismayed". And yes, a joke as well.
There can be many secondary responses to shock. Winning an award "shocked and delighted", receiving bomb through the post "shocked and scared", learning of a sudden death "shocked and saddened". In this case I was shocked and appalled.
Eutychus, I've seen people post such things online in forums just as much as say it orally in 'real life'. The heat of the moment emotions don't necessarily dissipate by writing them.
Posting requires thought and premeditation in a way that speaking doesn't. The fact that people take the liberty of assuming their audience ought to put up with anything they decide to attribute to "visceral reaction" displays a lack of respect for the "audience". The Ship says "engage brain before posting", because all of us can.
Saying "I find it incredibly difficult to forgive" shows an acknowledgement that (a) forgiveness is an option and (b) forgiveness is something they are working towards.
"I have never forgiven anyone who has wronged me" is ... it's almost cartoonish in its villainy. The kind of thing a despotic ruler or a Bond villain would say, except in real life, that's absolutely fucking terrifying if you give the consequences even a moment's consideration.
Don’t think it’s that uncommon. It’s a central Christian idea, and part of the golden rule in various faiths, but it’s not a universal moral rule.
A lot of ‘honour’ culture is/was based on not forgiving people.
This is an interesting point, as from my limited experience honour cultures seem to produce feelings of revulsion and horror over an infraction of the rules. This can lead to the murder of a relative, often a woman, who has committed adultery, married the wrong kind of person and so on. So the intensity of the emotional reaction is consonant with the remedy.
One of the interesting aspects of this is the shame experienced by families, and I was going to think about shame and guilt among death penalty advocates, precluding forgiveness, but alas, my bedtime cocoa is ready.
This discussion was created from comments split from: Children to be Screened for "Psychopathic Traits".
Welcome to the Ship System. Calling someone to hell is a gutsy move first up, and an admin at that. I salute you, and hope that you enjoy your time here as much as I do.
Dave, I didn't think Marvin was expecting us to play uncritical audience.
Neither did I - I think you've been doing that, as you've expressed your surprise at the reaction to something you think is no big deal. (I made that comment in response to your post, after all.)
Normally when people make such comments, people do go on to discuss more rationally, in my experience (both online writing and on real time speaking) But I am seeing a knee-jerk shock reaction to his comment, which seems just as instinctive and emotional as his.
I don't think either of them are knee-jerk or instinctive.
And in my experience, Marvin goes on to talk about how he thinks people who don't show his level of anger don't really care, and how "'Justice' is just a fancy word for 'caring more for the worst kind of scum than you do for the people they hurt'." So I suppose YMMV as regards the likelihood of subsequent rationality.
Does anyone truly think that violent impulses are not resident within each human being as an integral part of what makes us human?
Does anyone truly think it is a good idea to not acknowledge one's own violent ideas and feelings? Don't we all know that repressing and suppressing them means they will emerge elsewise? Freud had it that anger turned inward becomes depression and physical symptoms; also harm relationships.
I'm going to highlight this additionally from page one of this thread:
But he’s not really feeling anger. He’s just fantasizing about how he thinks he’d really like to torture and kill someone who murdered his child - a crime which has not actually happened.
And in any case, sharing his torture ideations on a bulletin board is hardly the only alternative to “repression” or “suppression” or whatever bullshit Freudian term you want to use. Not talking about every thought that crosses your mind isn’t the same thing as repression.
Exactly. Which is why they should have been in Hell.
A fact I have acknowledged.
I maintain that you aren't really thinking about what you're saying when you express them, either. They're pretty extreme even by Hell standards.
"Extreme" I'll accept, albeit while noting that part of that is due to Hell standards having shifted over the years while I have stayed in the same place.
On reflection (echoing @KarlLB a bit here), I think that in many ways your feelings aren't extreme enough - to you.
Some of us actually have regular dealings with people who have actually done, either the things you get angry about, or the things you imagine doing to those people. "Locking him/her up" - let alone anything more - means something tangible, real, experienced to us, not just a fantasy.
So it, um, feels very direct to us when you start talking like that. It's not fantasy for us.
It's often said a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged - and a liberal is a conservative who's been arrested. Perhaps you need to get arrested.
It seems to me that @Marvin the Martian is incapable of distinguishing between forgiving and excusing.
That hits the nail on the head.
Yes, it does. And yes, I am.
Let's look at the definitions of the two words:
Forgive
verb (used with object), for·gave, for·giv·en, for·giv·ing.
1 to grant pardon for or remission of (an offense, debt, etc.); absolve.
2 to give up all claim on account of; remit (a debt, obligation, etc.).
3 to grant pardon to (a person).
4 to cease to feel resentment against: to forgive one's enemies.
5 to cancel an indebtedness or liability of: to forgive the interest owed on a loan.
verb (used without object), for·gave, for·giv·en, for·giv·ing.
6 to pardon an offense or an offender.
Excuse (noun definitions excluded, because we're talking about the verb)
verb (used with object), ex·cused, ex·cus·ing.
1 to regard or judge with forgiveness or indulgence; pardon or forgive; overlook (a fault, error, etc.): Excuse his bad manners.
2 to offer an apology for; seek to remove the blame of: He excused his absence by saying that he was ill.
3 to serve as an apology or justification for; justify: Ignorance of the law excuses no one.
4 to release from an obligation or duty: to be excused from jury duty.
Is it really just me who sees those two (or three, if you want to add "pardon" to the mix) as being practically identical?
OK, I can see the pedantic difference that with "forgive" there's still guilt while with "excuse" the guilt itself is removed. But that seems a pretty empty - meaningless even - distinction given that the outcomes and consequences are the same.
"Forgive" excludes "to serve as a... justification for" and "seek to remove the blame of" - you might not think those matter much but they are important to most thinkers, The end point might be the same but the relationship of the parties and their regard for each other is rather different.
I think you've already pointed to the distinction in an earlier post - you can "forgive" when something's accidental but not when it's deliberate. But I think what you're calling "forgiveness" there is nothing of the kind - it's excusing, finding a reason to remove the blame or justify the action - it wasn't intentional.
Forgiveness is when you have a valid cause for complaint but choose to overlook it and even seek reconciliation despite it.
So the distinction is important - forgiveness does not require mitigating circumstances or any reason for the guilt of the offender to be less than it might otherwise be.
It's often said a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged - and a liberal is a conservative who's been arrested. Perhaps you need to get arrested.
Technically I've never been arrested, but I've been interviewed under caution, spent time in a holding cell, been in the dock before a magistrate, had all of my biometrics added to the police database and I have a caution on my record that will appear on every DBS certificate I request for the rest of my life.
FWIW, I've never been mugged either.
Also, I'm pretty sure if I'd come out with that saying and followed it by saying "perhaps you need to get mugged" then the place would be in uproar.
On reflection (echoing @KarlLB a bit here), I think that in many ways your feelings aren't extreme enough - to you.
Some of us actually have regular dealings with people who have actually done, either the things you get angry about, or the things you imagine doing to those people. "Locking him/her up" - let alone anything more - means something tangible, real, experienced to us, not just a fantasy.
So it, um, feels very direct to us when you start talking like that. It's not fantasy for us.
It's often said a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged - and a liberal is a conservative who's been arrested. Perhaps you need to get arrested.
Many of us haven't though. For most people their experiences of "locking them up" are second-hand and based on watching Orange is the New Black, Prison Break or Porridge. There's a danger with assuming that our experiences are universal and extrapolating from there.
It seems to me that @Marvin the Martian is incapable of distinguishing between forgiving and excusing.
That hits the nail on the head.
Yes, it does. And yes, I am.
Let's look at the definitions of the two words:
Forgive
verb (used with object), for·gave, for·giv·en, for·giv·ing.
1 to grant pardon for or remission of (an offense, debt, etc.); absolve.
2 to give up all claim on account of; remit (a debt, obligation, etc.).
3 to grant pardon to (a person).
4 to cease to feel resentment against: to forgive one's enemies.
5 to cancel an indebtedness or liability of: to forgive the interest owed on a loan.
verb (used without object), for·gave, for·giv·en, for·giv·ing.
6 to pardon an offense or an offender.
Excuse (noun definitions excluded, because we're talking about the verb)
verb (used with object), ex·cused, ex·cus·ing.
1 to regard or judge with forgiveness or indulgence; pardon or forgive; overlook (a fault, error, etc.): Excuse his bad manners.
2 to offer an apology for; seek to remove the blame of: He excused his absence by saying that he was ill.
3 to serve as an apology or justification for; justify: Ignorance of the law excuses no one.
4 to release from an obligation or duty: to be excused from jury duty.
Is it really just me who sees those two (or three, if you want to add "pardon" to the mix) as being practically identical?
OK, I can see the pedantic difference that with "forgive" there's still guilt while with "excuse" the guilt itself is removed. But that seems a pretty empty - meaningless even - distinction given that the outcomes and consequences are the same.
Forgiveness is dependent on the the person doing the forgiving. I forgive Person X for something because I have been forgiven and am paying that forward. But I can only forgive them for myself, not on behalf of another. Expressing forgiveness - or wanting to and going through that process - is better for my mental and spiritual health than keeping hold of the wrong. Person X may not care, know or change one tiny bit.
Neither does forgiveness mean forgetting or continuing as before, putting yourself in the same position where the same person can continue doing you wrong. It means accepting that this, whatever needs forgiving, has happened and letting it go. Because why am I going to waste my energy hating that person, when I can use it so much more usefully.
I don’t think you have grounds to complain. Remember, you’re the one who thinks grieving parents aren’t suffering that much if they don’t meet your standard of performative anger.
I think you’re feeling in the same way an actor is feeling when they consciously try to imagine something horrible in order to generate a genuine-looking response. For an audience.
Again - do you share your scorn for forgiveness with someone who forgives you, and tell them they didn’t really care about your offense in the first place?
I guess if God is willing to forgive repentant sinners, he must be a real asshole for condemning anyone at all, since he evidently doesn’t care about sin!
You can only excuse someone who has an excuse. You can forgive anyone. Someone with a good enough excuse doesn't need to be forgiven -- they can be excused.
Neither does forgiveness mean forgetting or continuing as before, putting yourself in the same position where the same person can continue doing you wrong.
But that's still imposing negative consequences - punishment, if you will - on the perpetrator.
CS Lewis wrote: "Forgiveness says, Yes, you have done this thing, but I accept your apology; I will never hold it against you and everything between us two will be exactly as it was before.” That's broadly what I understand by the word as well. But that's not the model of forgiveness you're outlining, because you're explicitly saying that things will not be exactly as they were before - that your relationship with the person concerned will be irrevocably changed because of what they have done.
Forgiveness is dependent on the the person doing the forgiving. I forgive Person X for something because I have been forgiven and am paying that forward. But I can only forgive them for myself, not on behalf of another. Expressing forgiveness - or wanting to and going through that process - is better for my mental and spiritual health than keeping hold of the wrong. Person X may not care, know or change one tiny bit.
This may just be down to a defect in my ability to understand this sort of thing, but how does that differ from "get over it"?
Remember, you’re the one who thinks grieving parents aren’t suffering that much if they don’t meet your standard of performative anger.
I don't understand how someone can feel that kind of grief or anger and not want to take revenge. I believe those who say it's true for them, but I don't understand how it's possible to feel that way.
I think you’re feeling in the same way an actor is feeling when they consciously try to imagine something horrible in order to generate a genuine-looking response. For an audience.
I wasn't pretending. I was almost shaking with anger when I posted what I did.
Maybe it's unreasonable of me to react like that. But who would have thought that raping and murdering a child would be one of my triggers?
Again - do you share your scorn for forgiveness with someone who forgives you, and tell them they didn’t really care about your offense in the first place?
Of course not, because if I do so then they might recant their forgiveness and punish me all the more. But I'll definitely be thinking I got away with it.
I guess if God is willing to forgive repentant sinners, he must be a real asshole for condemning anyone at all, since he evidently doesn’t care about sin!
As threads passim will show, I have all kinds of issues with the various theologies of God's forgiveness, especially when applied to the question "how then should we live our lives".
Neither does forgiveness mean forgetting or continuing as before, putting yourself in the same position where the same person can continue doing you wrong.
But that's still imposing negative consequences - punishment, if you will - on the perpetrator.
CS Lewis wrote: "Forgiveness says, Yes, you have done this thing, but I accept your apology; I will never hold it against you and everything between us two will be exactly as it was before.” That's broadly what I understand by the word as well. But that's not the model of forgiveness you're outlining, because you're explicitly saying that things will not be exactly as they were before - that your relationship with the person concerned will be irrevocably changed because of what they have done.
Lewis is I think there going beyond forgiveness and into reconciliation. For one thing, he's talking about a situation where there is apology.
Forgiveness covers a range of meanings from merely dropping intention of taking revenge through to full reconciliation and building of a stronger relationship than before the wrong was committed, but the defining point for our purposes here which distinguishes it from excusing is that it makes no attempt to justify, mitigate or lessen the wrong done in the first place.
Funnily enough, there's a Radio 4 drama on at this very moment on exactly this topic. A check of the schedule tells me it's https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00040m2
Contributors to this thread could do worse than listen to it. It's not from a specifically Christian viewpoint but it covers a lot of the stuff we're trying to wrestle with here.
You can only excuse someone who has an excuse. You can forgive anyone. Someone with a good enough excuse doesn't need to be forgiven -- they can be excused.
You can only excuse someone who has an excuse. You can forgive anyone. Someone with a good enough excuse doesn't need to be forgiven -- they can be excused.
Semantics. What's the practical difference?
Well, in a situation where there is no possible excuse, mitigation or amelioration of the wrong, forgiveness is possible whereas merely excusing isn't.
Neither does forgiveness mean forgetting or continuing as before, putting yourself in the same position where the same person can continue doing you wrong.
But that's still imposing negative consequences - punishment, if you will - on the perpetrator.
CS Lewis wrote: "Forgiveness says, Yes, you have done this thing, but I accept your apology; I will never hold it against you and everything between us two will be exactly as it was before.” That's broadly what I understand by the word as well. But that's not the model of forgiveness you're outlining, because you're explicitly saying that things will not be exactly as they were before - that your relationship with the person concerned will be irrevocably changed because of what they have done.
But CS Lewis is assuming the other party is asking forgiveness. I'm thinking of situations where someone who has wronged me and has not asked my forgiveness, but I've forgiven them anyway, because I'm not having my life dominated by them. But if they are not asking forgiveness, there is nothing to say I have to continue as before, as if nothing has happened.
Another distinction which occurs to me - excusing requires grounds in the act or perpetrator - "You're excused because it was an accident". "You're excused because your dog had died and you weren't thinking straight", even "You're excused because you were having a psychotic attack and believed that I was an alien from Epsilon Eridani 4".
Forgiveness by contrast is offered because the forgiver chooses to do so.
Remember, you’re the one who thinks grieving parents aren’t suffering that much if they don’t meet your standard of performative anger.
I don't understand how someone can feel that kind of grief or anger and not want to take revenge. I believe those who say it's true for them, but I don't understand how it's possible to feel that way.
I think you’re feeling in the same way an actor is feeling when they consciously try to imagine something horrible in order to generate a genuine-looking response. For an audience.
I wasn't pretending. I was almost shaking with anger when I posted what I did.
Maybe it's unreasonable of me to react like that. But who would have thought that raping and murdering a child would be one of my triggers?
Again - do you share your scorn for forgiveness with someone who forgives you, and tell them they didn’t really care about your offense in the first place?
Of course not, because if I do so then they might recant their forgiveness and punish me all the more. But I'll definitely be thinking I got away with it.
I guess if God is willing to forgive repentant sinners, he must be a real asshole for condemning anyone at all, since he evidently doesn’t care about sin!
As threads passim will show, I have all kinds of issues with the various theologies of God's forgiveness, especially when applied to the question "how then should we live our lives".
Based on conversations I had with someone whose sister was murdered by her partner, there are things you can choose to forgive such as the loss of your loved one and it's impact on you. There are others you can't, such as the taking of a life. Because that's not yours to forgive. The only person who can forgive that is gone.
How people do that I don't know and I hope I never have to find out. Forgiveness is complicated and I think we don't do it or ourselves any favours by making it sound simple or easy
Remember, you’re the one who thinks grieving parents aren’t suffering that much if they don’t meet your standard of performative anger.
I don't understand how someone can feel that kind of grief or anger and not want to take revenge. I believe those who say it's true for them, but I don't understand how it's possible to feel that way.
I think you’re feeling in the same way an actor is feeling when they consciously try to imagine something horrible in order to generate a genuine-looking response. For an audience.
I wasn't pretending. I was almost shaking with anger when I posted what I did.
Maybe it's unreasonable of me to react like that. But who would have thought that raping and murdering a child would be one of my triggers?
Again - do you share your scorn for forgiveness with someone who forgives you, and tell them they didn’t really care about your offense in the first place?
Of course not, because if I do so then they might recant their forgiveness and punish me all the more. But I'll definitely be thinking I got away with it.
I guess if God is willing to forgive repentant sinners, he must be a real asshole for condemning anyone at all, since he evidently doesn’t care about sin!
As threads passim will show, I have all kinds of issues with the various theologies of God's forgiveness, especially when applied to the question "how then should we live our lives".
Based on conversations I had with someone whose sister was murdered by her partner, there are things you can choose to forgive such as the loss of your loved one and it's impact on you. There are others you can't, such as the taking of a life. Because that's not yours to forgive. The only person who can forgive that is gone.
How people do that I don't know and I hope I never have to find out. Forgiveness is complicated and I think we don't do it or ourselves any favours by making it sound simple or easy
I'm not even sure I understand what people mean sometimes when they talk about "forgiveness." Sometimes it's just a case of drawing a line under something and getting on with your own life - they don't even want to hear you saying that you "forgive" them.
You can only excuse someone who has an excuse. You can forgive anyone. Someone with a good enough excuse doesn't need to be forgiven -- they can be excused.
Semantics. What's the practical difference?
Well, in a situation where there is no possible excuse, mitigation or amelioration of the wrong, forgiveness is possible whereas merely excusing isn't.
That still sounds like doing exactly the same thing, but calling it something different depending on the circumstances. It's the actual thing being done that I'm talking about, and I still don't see how it's any different in either case.
You don't see a difference between "I understand why you did that so I can let it pass" and "there's absolutely no excuse for that whatsoever but I'm going to choose to forgive it?"
But you yourself have pointed to a difference, saying you could do the former but not the latter.
So excusing is the thing you think you could do. Forgiving is the thing you don't think you could do.
It's much easier to forgive if someone has stolen your bike or broken into your house, than if someone has directly hurt you or a person you are close to, i.e., there's forgiveness for interpersonal acts and forgiveness regarding acts regarding things. It's quite quite different. They should be discussed differently as the experience is so disparate.
The Correctional Service of Canada and the National Parole Board have made this distinction, where parole is not allowed to be considered at the same time frames for offences of violence against persons than non-violent offences, and they can further "detain" someone to serve out the entire prison sentence if they satisfy the requirements to demonstrate likelihood to commit an offence of violence before sentence expiry.
1) The extremity of Marv's expressions, relative to Hell.
I can totally see how it might have been uncomfortable for Purgatory, but there's no way in Hell (pun intended) that this kind of expression would have been officially sanctioned during my (extremely long) term as Hellhost. Granted, times have changed (says the guy no longer able to be an Admin), but the purely hypothetical nature of the comment still seems obviously free and clear to me.
2) Marv's petulant inability to acknowledge the value of forgiveness.
Frank Herbert has a great bit in Dune about "Fear is the mind-killer." I have come to have a parallel thought about how hate is the soul killer. While hate is a perfectly natural reaction to something hateful, to allow hate to remain inside of our self or to control our actions is exactly the degree to which we allow ourselves to become its victim. This is the kernel that the story of Jesus gets perfectly right.
Any hypothetical parents who manage to not demand torture for their child's killer are not caring less, they are caring more about letting themselves focus on their loving memories. If any of us were to die, would we really want our deaths to kill the joy of our loved ones, to corrupt them into hate-driven monsters? After ensuring that no more harm will be done, further revenge serves no useful purpose other than to nurture hate.
It's much easier to forgive if someone has stolen your bike or broken into your house, than if someone has directly hurt you or a person you are close to, i.e., there's forgiveness for interpersonal acts and forgiveness regarding acts regarding things. It's quite quite different. They should be discussed differently as the experience is so disparate.
You do realise I'm talking about direct hurt here, don't you?
You don't see a difference between "I understand why you did that so I can let it pass" and "there's absolutely no excuse for that whatsoever but I'm going to choose to forgive it?"
Its more like "I understand why you did that so I can let it pass" and "there's absolutely no excuse for that whatsoever but I'm going to choose to let it pass".
You’re still letting it pass either way, which to me means it’s essentially the same thing bar the semantics.
So if you want to define “excusing” as letting something pass because you understand why it happened (or even think there were valid reasons for it) and “forgiving” as letting something pass even though you know it’s completely beyond the pale and cannot be justified by any reason then I guess I really do find it incredibly difficult - if not impossible - to forgive.
You don't see a difference between "I understand why you did that so I can let it pass" and "there's absolutely no excuse for that whatsoever but I'm going to choose to forgive it?"
Its more like "I understand why you did that so I can let it pass" and "there's absolutely no excuse for that whatsoever but I'm going to choose to let it pass".
You’re still letting it pass either way, which to me means it’s essentially the same thing bar the semantics.
So if you want to define “excusing” as letting something pass because you understand why it happened (or even think there were valid reasons for it) and “forgiving” as letting something pass even though you know it’s completely beyond the pale and cannot be justified by any reason then I guess I really do find it incredibly difficult - if not impossible - to forgive.
So do you cross your fingers during the Lord's Prayer?
Comments
Don’t think it’s that uncommon. It’s a central Christian idea, and part of the golden rule in various faiths, but it’s not a universal moral rule.
A lot of ‘honour’ culture is/was based on not forgiving people.
Heh, I don't know if this is a joke, or serious, but I don't understand the point you're making, or the specific difference you are seeing between the two words and the significance of it. Appalled, from the OED, is 'Bereft of courage or self-possession at the sudden recognition of something dreadful.' Similar to shock.
There can be many secondary responses to shock. Winning an award "shocked and delighted", receiving bomb through the post "shocked and scared", learning of a sudden death "shocked and saddened". In this case I was shocked and appalled.
Posting requires thought and premeditation in a way that speaking doesn't. The fact that people take the liberty of assuming their audience ought to put up with anything they decide to attribute to "visceral reaction" displays a lack of respect for the "audience". The Ship says "engage brain before posting", because all of us can.
Does that involve pearl clutching?!
This is an interesting point, as from my limited experience honour cultures seem to produce feelings of revulsion and horror over an infraction of the rules. This can lead to the murder of a relative, often a woman, who has committed adultery, married the wrong kind of person and so on. So the intensity of the emotional reaction is consonant with the remedy.
One of the interesting aspects of this is the shame experienced by families, and I was going to think about shame and guilt among death penalty advocates, precluding forgiveness, but alas, my bedtime cocoa is ready.
Welcome to the Ship System. Calling someone to hell is a gutsy move first up, and an admin at that. I salute you, and hope that you enjoy your time here as much as I do.
And in my experience, Marvin goes on to talk about how he thinks people who don't show his level of anger don't really care, and how "'Justice' is just a fancy word for 'caring more for the worst kind of scum than you do for the people they hurt'." So I suppose YMMV as regards the likelihood of subsequent rationality.
Does anyone truly think it is a good idea to not acknowledge one's own violent ideas and feelings? Don't we all know that repressing and suppressing them means they will emerge elsewise? Freud had it that anger turned inward becomes depression and physical symptoms; also harm relationships.
I'm going to highlight this additionally from page one of this thread:
And in any case, sharing his torture ideations on a bulletin board is hardly the only alternative to “repression” or “suppression” or whatever bullshit Freudian term you want to use. Not talking about every thought that crosses your mind isn’t the same thing as repression.
I don't see Marvin "discussing his feelings" much in that exchange.
So now you know exactly what I’m feeling?
“Expressing” more than “discussing”.
Exactly. Which is why they should have been in Hell.
I maintain that you aren't really thinking about what you're saying when you express them, either. They're pretty extreme even by Hell standards.
That hits the nail on the head.
Forgiving, excusing and explaining are often confused. Often comes with using the spleen to think with.
A fact I have acknowledged.
"Extreme" I'll accept, albeit while noting that part of that is due to Hell standards having shifted over the years while I have stayed in the same place.
On reflection (echoing @KarlLB a bit here), I think that in many ways your feelings aren't extreme enough - to you.
Some of us actually have regular dealings with people who have actually done, either the things you get angry about, or the things you imagine doing to those people. "Locking him/her up" - let alone anything more - means something tangible, real, experienced to us, not just a fantasy.
So it, um, feels very direct to us when you start talking like that. It's not fantasy for us.
It's often said a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged - and a liberal is a conservative who's been arrested. Perhaps you need to get arrested.
Yes, it does. And yes, I am.
Let's look at the definitions of the two words:
Forgive
verb (used with object), for·gave, for·giv·en, for·giv·ing.
1 to grant pardon for or remission of (an offense, debt, etc.); absolve.
2 to give up all claim on account of; remit (a debt, obligation, etc.).
3 to grant pardon to (a person).
4 to cease to feel resentment against: to forgive one's enemies.
5 to cancel an indebtedness or liability of: to forgive the interest owed on a loan.
verb (used without object), for·gave, for·giv·en, for·giv·ing.
6 to pardon an offense or an offender.
Excuse (noun definitions excluded, because we're talking about the verb)
verb (used with object), ex·cused, ex·cus·ing.
1 to regard or judge with forgiveness or indulgence; pardon or forgive; overlook (a fault, error, etc.): Excuse his bad manners.
2 to offer an apology for; seek to remove the blame of: He excused his absence by saying that he was ill.
3 to serve as an apology or justification for; justify: Ignorance of the law excuses no one.
4 to release from an obligation or duty: to be excused from jury duty.
Is it really just me who sees those two (or three, if you want to add "pardon" to the mix) as being practically identical?
OK, I can see the pedantic difference that with "forgive" there's still guilt while with "excuse" the guilt itself is removed. But that seems a pretty empty - meaningless even - distinction given that the outcomes and consequences are the same.
I think you've already pointed to the distinction in an earlier post - you can "forgive" when something's accidental but not when it's deliberate. But I think what you're calling "forgiveness" there is nothing of the kind - it's excusing, finding a reason to remove the blame or justify the action - it wasn't intentional.
Forgiveness is when you have a valid cause for complaint but choose to overlook it and even seek reconciliation despite it.
So the distinction is important - forgiveness does not require mitigating circumstances or any reason for the guilt of the offender to be less than it might otherwise be.
Technically I've never been arrested, but I've been interviewed under caution, spent time in a holding cell, been in the dock before a magistrate, had all of my biometrics added to the police database and I have a caution on my record that will appear on every DBS certificate I request for the rest of my life.
FWIW, I've never been mugged either.
Also, I'm pretty sure if I'd come out with that saying and followed it by saying "perhaps you need to get mugged" then the place would be in uproar.
Many of us haven't though. For most people their experiences of "locking them up" are second-hand and based on watching Orange is the New Black, Prison Break or Porridge. There's a danger with assuming that our experiences are universal and extrapolating from there.
Forgiveness is dependent on the the person doing the forgiving. I forgive Person X for something because I have been forgiven and am paying that forward. But I can only forgive them for myself, not on behalf of another. Expressing forgiveness - or wanting to and going through that process - is better for my mental and spiritual health than keeping hold of the wrong. Person X may not care, know or change one tiny bit.
I think you’re feeling in the same way an actor is feeling when they consciously try to imagine something horrible in order to generate a genuine-looking response. For an audience.
Again - do you share your scorn for forgiveness with someone who forgives you, and tell them they didn’t really care about your offense in the first place?
I guess if God is willing to forgive repentant sinners, he must be a real asshole for condemning anyone at all, since he evidently doesn’t care about sin!
But that's still imposing negative consequences - punishment, if you will - on the perpetrator.
CS Lewis wrote: "Forgiveness says, Yes, you have done this thing, but I accept your apology; I will never hold it against you and everything between us two will be exactly as it was before.” That's broadly what I understand by the word as well. But that's not the model of forgiveness you're outlining, because you're explicitly saying that things will not be exactly as they were before - that your relationship with the person concerned will be irrevocably changed because of what they have done.
This may just be down to a defect in my ability to understand this sort of thing, but how does that differ from "get over it"?
Forgiveness removes resentment and bitterness and is beneficial to the forgiver.
The forgiven may never know they’ve been forgiven (for example, they may have killed themselves as well as their victims)
I don't understand how someone can feel that kind of grief or anger and not want to take revenge. I believe those who say it's true for them, but I don't understand how it's possible to feel that way.
I wasn't pretending. I was almost shaking with anger when I posted what I did.
Maybe it's unreasonable of me to react like that. But who would have thought that raping and murdering a child would be one of my triggers?
Of course not, because if I do so then they might recant their forgiveness and punish me all the more. But I'll definitely be thinking I got away with it.
As threads passim will show, I have all kinds of issues with the various theologies of God's forgiveness, especially when applied to the question "how then should we live our lives".
Lewis is I think there going beyond forgiveness and into reconciliation. For one thing, he's talking about a situation where there is apology.
Forgiveness covers a range of meanings from merely dropping intention of taking revenge through to full reconciliation and building of a stronger relationship than before the wrong was committed, but the defining point for our purposes here which distinguishes it from excusing is that it makes no attempt to justify, mitigate or lessen the wrong done in the first place.
Funnily enough, there's a Radio 4 drama on at this very moment on exactly this topic. A check of the schedule tells me it's https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00040m2
Contributors to this thread could do worse than listen to it. It's not from a specifically Christian viewpoint but it covers a lot of the stuff we're trying to wrestle with here.
Semantics. What's the practical difference?
Well, in a situation where there is no possible excuse, mitigation or amelioration of the wrong, forgiveness is possible whereas merely excusing isn't.
But CS Lewis is assuming the other party is asking forgiveness. I'm thinking of situations where someone who has wronged me and has not asked my forgiveness, but I've forgiven them anyway, because I'm not having my life dominated by them. But if they are not asking forgiveness, there is nothing to say I have to continue as before, as if nothing has happened.
eta to add a missing word
Forgiveness by contrast is offered because the forgiver chooses to do so.
Based on conversations I had with someone whose sister was murdered by her partner, there are things you can choose to forgive such as the loss of your loved one and it's impact on you. There are others you can't, such as the taking of a life. Because that's not yours to forgive. The only person who can forgive that is gone.
How people do that I don't know and I hope I never have to find out. Forgiveness is complicated and I think we don't do it or ourselves any favours by making it sound simple or easy
I'm not even sure I understand what people mean sometimes when they talk about "forgiveness." Sometimes it's just a case of drawing a line under something and getting on with your own life - they don't even want to hear you saying that you "forgive" them.
That still sounds like doing exactly the same thing, but calling it something different depending on the circumstances. It's the actual thing being done that I'm talking about, and I still don't see how it's any different in either case.
But you yourself have pointed to a difference, saying you could do the former but not the latter.
So excusing is the thing you think you could do. Forgiving is the thing you don't think you could do.
The Correctional Service of Canada and the National Parole Board have made this distinction, where parole is not allowed to be considered at the same time frames for offences of violence against persons than non-violent offences, and they can further "detain" someone to serve out the entire prison sentence if they satisfy the requirements to demonstrate likelihood to commit an offence of violence before sentence expiry.
1) The extremity of Marv's expressions, relative to Hell.
I can totally see how it might have been uncomfortable for Purgatory, but there's no way in Hell (pun intended) that this kind of expression would have been officially sanctioned during my (extremely long) term as Hellhost. Granted, times have changed (says the guy no longer able to be an Admin), but the purely hypothetical nature of the comment still seems obviously free and clear to me.
2) Marv's petulant inability to acknowledge the value of forgiveness.
Frank Herbert has a great bit in Dune about "Fear is the mind-killer." I have come to have a parallel thought about how hate is the soul killer. While hate is a perfectly natural reaction to something hateful, to allow hate to remain inside of our self or to control our actions is exactly the degree to which we allow ourselves to become its victim. This is the kernel that the story of Jesus gets perfectly right.
Any hypothetical parents who manage to not demand torture for their child's killer are not caring less, they are caring more about letting themselves focus on their loving memories. If any of us were to die, would we really want our deaths to kill the joy of our loved ones, to corrupt them into hate-driven monsters? After ensuring that no more harm will be done, further revenge serves no useful purpose other than to nurture hate.
Move forward.
You do realise I'm talking about direct hurt here, don't you?
Its more like "I understand why you did that so I can let it pass" and "there's absolutely no excuse for that whatsoever but I'm going to choose to let it pass".
You’re still letting it pass either way, which to me means it’s essentially the same thing bar the semantics.
So if you want to define “excusing” as letting something pass because you understand why it happened (or even think there were valid reasons for it) and “forgiving” as letting something pass even though you know it’s completely beyond the pale and cannot be justified by any reason then I guess I really do find it incredibly difficult - if not impossible - to forgive.
So do you cross your fingers during the Lord's Prayer?
Coward.