Forgive and Forget

[Benedicta00]

Jason,

I'm going out on a limb here and I am going to say that we are to forgive those who we perceive have hurt us even if they aren’t sorry for our own befit and our own well fair.

We shouldn't let anyone walk all over us and if someone hurts us who is non reentant we are in no way obligated to have a relationship or ever see or talk to the person again, but we have to forgive them in so much as we do not wish them any evil and we pray for what is good and just for them. This is what Jesus meant by love your enemies.

 

[Dream]

by looking at what God does, and seeing no other reason to believe must behave differently.

Geo, you seem to be heading into dangerous terroritory. It seems to me as if you are jumping to conclusions and making assumptions based on what you don't see in the Bible.

I understand your point, but there seems to be a logical error.

The Bible does say one way or another if Jesus forgave those who were unrepentant.

When you refered me to the Catechism, I could not find a passage that followed your point. When I asked you to show me this passage, you said that it wouldn't be in there because the CCC doesn't list things we are not obligated to do.

By claiming that unconditional forgiveness is not necessary, you seem to be adding something to the Catechism and the Bible.

No, the Catechism doesn't say one way or the other. Neither does the Bible. But both the Catechism and the Bible do teach forgiveness.

If I followed your same logic, I could say that it is not necessary to forgive somebody born in the United States. Jesus never forgave anybody born in the US in the Bible. The Catechism doesn't specifically say it is necessary to forgive a US citizen nor does it say it is not necessary. Therefore, it is not necessary to forgive somebody from the US.

Forgive me Geo if I am misunderstanding you, but I just don't seem to follow your logic.

 

[Benedicta00]

After reflection, I think we need to define what forgiving is. It isn't forgetting what was done to you and sweeping it under the rug. It is holding someone responsible for their actions and wishing them no ill will. It is you wanting for them what God wants for them. It isn’t about holding a grudge, I don’t think Jason is meaning that, that if they don’t ask, you don't forgive, but he means we aren't obligated to just blow off what people do especially if they aren't sorry. We are to pray for them and leave them to God. We don’t have to keep putting up with them, we can tell them to take a hike if they aren’t sorry.

 

[plainswolf]

Just for myself, when in doubt-I prefer the safe road.. That I will forgive whether they are repentant or not in the sense that I will hate the sin but love the sinner, and hold no more against the other person than I wish my Lord to hold against me.

J.M.J.
plainswolf

 

[geocajun]

Jason,

I'm going out on a limb here and I am going to say that we are to forgive those who we perceive have hurt us even if they aren’t sorry for our own befit and our own well fair.

Michelle, no doubt there are theraputic benefits to forgiving those who hurt us, but it won't send us to hell if we don't do it (not an obligation).

 

[geocajun]

After reflection, I think we need to define what forgiving is. It isn't forgetting what was done to you and sweeping it under the rug. It is holding someone responsible for their actions and wishing them no ill will. It is you wanting for them what God wants for them. It isn’t about holding a grudge, I don’t think Jason is meaning that, that if they don’t ask, you don't forgive, but he means we aren't obligated to just blow off what people do especially if they aren't sorry. We are to pray for them and leave them to God. We don’t have to keep putting up with them, we can tell them to take a hike if they aren’t sorry.

exactly, well put, thanks

 

[geocajun]

Forgive me Geo if I am misunderstanding you, but I just don't seem to follow your logic.

DT, my logic is very simple. I dont believe we are obligated to forgive those who sin against us and aren't sorry because the Church does not teach it.
For this same reason, I do not believe Jesus was married, or that there are 5 gospels, or in sola fide, etc...

 

[Dream]

DT, my logic is very simple. I dont believe we are obligated to forgive those who sin against us and aren't sorry because the Church does not teach it.

Are we obligated to forgive those who are 80 years or older?

If so, how do you come to this conclusion? The Catechism never specifically says you are obligated to do so.

 

[geocajun]

think about what you said...

also, you must have accidently eliminated my examples " For this same reason, I do not believe Jesus was married, or that there are 5 gospels, or in sola fide, etc..."

 

[Benedicta00]

DT, my logic is very simple. I dont believe we are obligated to forgive those who sin against us and aren't sorry because the Church does not teach it.
For this same reason, I do not believe Jesus was married, or that there are 5 gospels, or in sola fide, etc...

Jason,

I must be missing something with what you are saying- I think don’t you mean we have the option to hold a grudge if a person isn’t sorry, right?

We are required to forgive someone even if they never repent in so much as we to show evangelical love to towards them by praying for their good. The Church does not teach that forgiveness is optional if the person doesn’t ask for it. Jesus said to go and be reconciled before you bring your gift to the altar and He loves us all while we are sinners. This is all that we are required to do, love those who hurt us by wishing them no ill will, this is what forgiveness is, it isn’t forgetting the evil and acting like it was okay that they did whatever to you. It is not harboring any ill will and it’s not holding their sins against them. It is praying for their good.

Jesus didn’t tell Mary Magdalene I’ll love you when you clean up your life, he even greeted Judas with a kiss (I just heard a priest say this). This does not mean we have to tolerate their sins over and over again. It means we are to always forgive them so we can leave the possibility of reconciliation open even if they never reconcile with us by being sorry and asking for forgiveness, we give it to them anyway and leave them to God. If it means we never have anything do with them because they won’t change then that is acceptable. What the Church doesn’t teach we have to be friends and be a doormat to those who sin against us and could care less that they do, we never have to ever see or talk to them again if this is the case.

Is this what you are talking about?

 

[Dream]

think about what you said...

Ok....

also, you must have accidently eliminated my examples " For this same reason, I do not believe Jesus was married, or that there are 5 gospels, or in sola fide, etc..."

Irrelevant.

The Church does not teach that Jesus was married. But the Church does teach forgiveness.

The Catechism teaches forgivness as a good thing. It does not give any exceptions and does not say it is sometimes unnecessary.

So if you jump to the conclusion that you don't have to forgive those who are unrepentant because it is not in the Catechism, I can jump to the conclusion that we don't have to forgive people over 80. The Catechism does not say one way or the other.

 

[geocajun]

Jason,

I must be missing something with what you are saying- I think don’t you mean we have the option to hold a grudge if a person isn’t sorry, right?

yes you have that right. You have a right to justice just like anyone else. You can hold a grudge, but don't dare you hold that grudge if they ask you to forgive them.
Its a whole different thing when someone sins against you, and is proud to have done it. In your prayers for them, you can even ask God to help them repent, but that does not preclude you being able to remain angry about the sin.

 

[geocajun]

Ok....



Irrelevant.

The Church does not teach that Jesus was married. But the Church does teach forgiveness.

The Catechism teaches forgivness as a good thing. It does not give any exceptions and does not say it is sometimes unnecessary.

So if you jump to the conclusion that you don't have to forgive those who are unrepentant because it is not in the Catechism, I can jump to the conclusion that we don't have to forgive people over 80. The Catechism does not say one way or the other.

DT, as i've said, if you want to hold some personal opinion that you are obligated to forgive those who do not repent, then go ahead. But don't pretend that is Catholic teaching - because it isn't.
No amount of playing around here is going to change that fact.

 

[geocajun]

Jimmy Akin agrees with me -

http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/2003/0309bt.asp

Preemptive Forgiveness?


We aren’t obligated to forgive people who do not want us to. This is one of the biggest stumbling blocks that people have regarding the topic. People have seen "unconditional" forgiveness and love hammered so often that they feel obligated to forgive someone even before that person has repented. Sometimes they even tell the unrepentant that they have preemptively forgiven him (much to the impenitent’s annoyance).

This is not what is required of us.

Consider Luke 17:3–4, where Jesus tells us, "If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him; and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, and says, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him."

Notice that Jesus says to forgive him if he repents, not regardless of whether he does so. Jesus also envisions the person coming back to you and admitting his wrong.

The upshot? If someone isn’t repentant, you don’t have to forgive him.

If you do forgive him anyway, that can be meritorious, provided it doesn’t otherwise have bad effects (e.g., encouraging future bad behavior). But it isn’t required of us that we forgive the person.

This may strike some people as odd. They may have heard unconditional love and forgiveness preached so often that the idea of not indiscriminately forgiving everybody sounds unspiritual to them. They might even ask, "But wouldn’t it be more spiritual to forgive everyone?"

I sympathize with this argument, but there is a two-word rejoinder to it: God doesn’t.

Not everybody is forgiven. Otherwise, we’d all be walking around in a state of grace all the time and have no need of repentance to attain salvation. God doesn’t like people being unforgiven, and he is willing to grant forgiveness to all, but he isn’t willing to force it on people who don’t want it. If people are unrepentant of what they know to be sinful, they are not forgiven.

Jesus died once and for all to pay a price sufficient to cover all the sins of our lives, but God doesn’t apply his forgiveness to us in a once-and-for-all manner. He forgives us as we repent. That’s why we continue to pray "Forgive us our trespasses," because we regularly have new sins that we have repented of—some venial and some mortal, but all needing forgiveness.

If God doesn’t forgive the unrepentant, and it is not correct to tell people that they need to do so, what is required of us?

Also -

What Forgiveness Is


Jesus calls us to be like God in the showing of mercy "that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven" (Matt. 5:45). So how does God forgive?

Scripture tells us that he "desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim. 2:4) and the he is "not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance" (2 Pet. 3:9).

We should have the same attitude. We should will the good of every soul, even the most evil ones. No matter who they are or what they’ve done, we need to will their ultimate good, which is salvation through repentance.

What if they don’t repent?

One may hope that they were not culpable for their actions and so can be saved, that they were affected by mental disorder, intense pressure, ignorance, indoctrination, or something that affected their judgment so that they weren’t responsible for their actions at the time they committed them.

But what if they were?

We may hope that they are brought around to repentance. In fact, we ought to hope this even for those who weren’t responsible for their actions. But to be brought to repentance often requires suffering the consequences of one’s sins.

This is where righteous anger comes in. It is often said that anger is a desire for vengeance (cf. ST II-II:158:1). This puts it a little more harshly than many today would want to say it, but anger does involve a desire that the offending person experience the consequences of his sins. Without this desire, the feeling would be something less than anger, such as simple frustration.

Anger is righteous—in keeping with justice—if it is still fundamentally directed toward the good. Thus one may wish that a person experience the consequences of his offenses to sufficiently understand how he has hurt others, and teach him to not commit them in the future.

However, "if he desires the punishment of one who has not deserved it, or beyond his deserts, or again contrary to the order prescribed by law, or not for the due end—namely the maintaining of justice and the correction of faults—then the desire of anger will be sinful" (ibid., 2).

It is so easy for us in our fallen state to slip into sinful anger that Scripture repeatedly warns us against it, but anger serves a fundamental purpose.

If a person with whom we are angry repents, then the obligation to forgive kicks in. This means that we must be willing to set aside our anger because he no longer deserves it. We may still feel it for a time, and it can even be advisable to let him know this in order to underscore the lesson he needs to have learned. But we do need to manage our emotions so that we let the anger go and, to the best of our ability, encourage it to fade.

And what if a person doesn’t repent when all is said and done?

At some point we need to let our feeling of anger fade, not for his sake but for ours. It isn’t good for us to stay angry, and it poses temptations to sin. Ultimately, we have to let go of the feeling of anger and move on with life. Frequently we have to do so even when a person has not repented.

But for the person himself, what should we hope? With regret, we recognize that it is appropriate that he gets what he chose, even if that was hell. This is, after all, the attitude taken by God toward those who choose death rather than life.

 

[Dream]

DT, as i've said, if you want to hold some personal opinion that you are obligated to forgive those who do not repent, then go ahead. But don't pretend that is Catholic teaching - because it isn't.
No amount of playing around here is going to change that fact.

Geo, I am not claiming it is Catholic teaching.

The fact is, the Catholic Church teaches forgiveness. Their is no teaching, of my knowledge, of any exceptions to this rule. When you and Jimmy Akin say that it is unnecessary to forgive the unrepentant, you are making your own exceptions to the rule, hopefully not for your own convience. You may be right. You may be wrong. But you cannot claim this as fact.

 

[geocajun]

DT, ok, whatever i'm easy

 

[Benedicta00]

yes you have that right. You have a right to justice just like anyone else. You can hold a grudge, but don't dare you hold that grudge if they ask you to forgive them.
Its a whole different thing when someone sins against you, and is proud to have done it. In your prayers for them, you can even ask God to help them repent, but that does not preclude you being able to remain angry about the sin.

I tell you why I am confused, because this was my argument in the death penalty thread and you seemed to disagree with me. Well, you did disagree with me …and that’s okay.

I think we are speaking past each other. I understand that we do not have to forgive in the sense we have to accept and embrace anyone who hurts us and are unrepentant about it. Even if someone is sorry, and says as much, if they don't change their ways, I am in no way obligated to put up with them, but I am obligated to forgive them as in I wish them no ill will.

We can also feel hate, have feelings of hate but not actively hate. This is a fine line here and I think we are saying the same thing but are looking at different using different words to express it.

If some punches you for no reason, you aren't very well gong to say, "God bless him, he punched me" you can really feel hate for someone who did that but you can not hate as in wish them harm. Forgiving is that, not wanting harm to come to them. But you can wish that he be arrested an jailed for his actions, that isn't wishing ill will towards him but what is good and just for his own sake of repentance and being accountable.

Like I said, in the case of the Peterson, this is how I see this, and you disagreed, and that is what has me confused.

 

[Irenaeus]

Everyone,

Let us remember some key things before we continue to discuss this very moral topic:

God forgives us because he is good. He doesn't have to.
Neither do we, when our Brother (or enemy) asks us to forgive them. We are required to forgive them, as Christ forgave us. He who shows no mercy will receive no mercy.

There is also, listed as a spiritual work of mercy, the belief that forbearing the vices of another is an act of mercy...nothing is there mentioned their asking for forbearance and patience first.

There is also nothing wrong with desiring justice for someone who does wrong to you or someone else. There is something wrong with trying to "even the scales" by revenge when the danger is not proximate.

Let's also observe in our discussions a common practice of the saints to frequent the company of those who are repulsive to our nature, as in, our personalities. This does not mean they frequented occasions to sin, but they still attempted to be as kind and charitable as possible toward all, but they did not necessarily like all a person's acts. As St. Augustine said, "Hate the error, love he who errs."

My 2 cents.

 

[geocajun]

Like I said, in the case of the Peterson, this is how I see this, and you disagreed, and that is what has me confused.

What I never seemed to get across to you in the scott peterson trial, is that while its OK to be mad at scott, and scott deserves to be punished, we do not have a right to kill him unless we are defending ourselves or others.
I never said the people he killed did not deserve justice - what I said was that there are boundaries to the justice we can morally take on someone, and we should not be led by our emotions.

 

[Benedicta00]

What I never seemed to get across to you in the scott peterson trial, is that while its OK to be mad at scott, and scott deserves to be punished, we do not have a right to kill him unless we are defending ourselves or others.
I never said the people he killed did not deserve justice - what I said was that there are boundaries to the justice we can morally take on someone, and we should not be led by our emotions.

And I agree with you on this pint but IIRC it was the warm fuzzy gospel of love and forgiveness (the one that the church does not teach) that was being preached pertaining to him, maybe not by you but by many others. We have to forgive him… we have to love him… we have to put ourselves in his families shoes…

No we don’t. We are not obligated to forgive in that sense. On that I agree with you, BUT let’s say the mother of his victim to go and forgive him, then she is a saint. Her love would be the saving love that does bring someone to repentance.

So I guess, it is how do we define “obligated.” NO, we don’t have to forgive but we are called to forgive.