Ernie: I was making an assumption that, in retrospect, might have been spelled out
for the sake of greater clarity. Namely, being able to forgive is the other side of being forgiven. The two go together. However, and I think this is true without any dispute, many Christians regard willingness to forgive as intrinsic to being a Christian. I know that Evangeline does, she said so explicitly to me on one occasion that was very important to her. And she is sort of the "gold standard" of Evangelical faith to me. In other words, you become a Christian through being forgiven; you are a Christian because, throughout your life, you forgive others. Not 24/7 but as part of who you are, whenever you believe it is appropriate to do so. My point was simply that forgiveness has to be appropriate or it can backfire on you. Lots of good things in life are like that, including love. Someone can love the wrong person, after all, someone who is abusive or violent or irresponsible. We all know people who have loved someone who was wrong for them and paid a terrible price for "wrong love," to put it that way. Again, I had a discussion with Evie not so long ago and she brought this up. Which is to say that "wrong forgiveness" can be just as disastrous. Or misplaced trust, or misplaced sympathy, or misplaced hope. The word "appropriate" sounds too antiseptic, of course, but for now it will have to do. Some other word might be better but I can't think of what it is. Finally, this is an example of an interest of mine that goes way back, at least a decade. This concerns false absolutes. It has been my experience that a lot of people treat what may be called "conditional good" as if it was an Absolute. I need better terminology here also. What I'm trying to communicate is a quality that is usually for the Good, in cases at the 90% level, but that simply cannot be taken as 100% because there always is someone or a small set of people for whom forgiveness -or becoming a love object or a focus of one's sympathy, etc.- simply isn't appropriate and any such thing is an awful mistake. But we all like to think in terms of absolutes, it simplifies life. And our culture sometimes treats these 90% good things as if they simply must be absolutes because the media also likes to make use of absolutes. In a way it is like taking too much medicine. The right dose and you are healthy. Take too much and you get sick or die. Or, maybe a better analogy is a medicine that, it turns out, you are allergic to. This happened to me a year ago. I took a medication that, for 95% of the population, would have been a very good thing. For me, however, it seemed like a death pill, I thought I was going to die, it was that bad. At the hospital the doctor took care of the problem. I was good as new the next day, but if only I had known, it would have saved me a lot of agony. Usually forgiveness is all for the good, usually love is divine, etc. But -despite what we may wish- there are cases where forgiveness or love is a really bad idea which can have tragic consequences. That's the whole point, nothing more, nothing less. Billy ________________________________ From: Centroids <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, November 12, 2018 6:11 PM To: [email protected] Cc: Billy Rojas Subject: Forgiveness Re: [RC] Religious Faith and the Problem of Evil Hi Billy, > Some people, possibly a majority of Christians, define their faith in termsof > forgiveness. That is, what characterizes faith for them is willingness to > forgive, Wait, what?! I’m confused. Virtually every evangelical Christian I know defines their faith in terms of BEING forgiven for our sins. Forgiving others is a consequence of that, not the core. And frankly one that most people prefer to overlook. Are you equating the two? Do you see BEING forgiven as NOT part of your vision of Christianity? Love, Ernie -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
