Ernie: In a way it has been useful to discuss the topic of forgiveness; and your e-mail / essay
was well said. However, gotta tell you, this is a subject that is anything but an "interest" of mine. There are about 30 or 40 other themes that mean more to me. Still, as you can tell, it matters a great deal to Evangeline and it matters a great deal to large numbers of Christians. Indeed, the subject of forgiveness does make me think when it is combined with people I care about. Then it hits home -maybe strongly, even very strongly when Evangeline is part of the picture. She has been dealing with the effects of forgiveness or lack of forgiveness virtually every day for the past 3 years. But make this into an abstract subject for theology and my eyes glaze over. It does not register. You now know some of the reasons for my views, and they are all personal. No idea why this subject is high on your list; maybe you can share the reasons why. That is, what is the story you are trying to tell? One thing that is striking is the low priority you give to a related subject, however, namely, justice. For me justice is a priority topic, far more than forgiveness. Even if, for sure, when it comes to some specific individuals then the theme of forgiveness takes on special importance. Otherwise I do not spend much time even thinking about it. Because? Because most of the time I don't see where it is productive of much of anything. And in a world where justice is within reach -granted it may be out of reach in various circumstances- forgiveness is secondary. Do I need forgiveness? If we were discussing a limited number of specific people the answer would be "yes," of course. But what I think I do need and deserve, is justice. And justice has a practical dimension that allows me (or anyone) to be objective -that is, more objective then usual. Billy ________________________________ From: Dr. Ernie Prabhakar <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, November 17, 2018 3:53 AM To: Billy Rojas Cc: Centroids Discussions Subject: Transcendence vs Reconciliation Re: Forgiveness Re: [RC] Religious Faith and the Problem of Evil ......... Hi Billy, On Nov 12, 2018, at 7:04 PM, Billy Rojas <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: 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. You know, that is a fantastic point. I think you may be on to something. Modern Christianity has a deeply confused understanding of forgiveness. As Chris mentioned, the English word is overloaded with many different connotations: The first sentence of yours, above, exemplifies the point I was trying to make. I think the problem with the Tibbits definition of forgiveness is that it runs counter to the common use of forgiveness. It could be better stated as, put the evil ones in your past, as much as you can, so you don’t get impeded by their evil. Maybe we Radical Centrists can come up with some better terminology. One possibility is to distinguish between “internal” and “external” forgiveness: how we treat ourselves versus how we treat others. Perhaps we could use a word like Transcendance for the internal aspect of forgiveness. Like Chris said, we want to put the evil ones in our past, rather than being consumed by revenge and anger. I think you once described it as being “objective” and taking the long view, rather than caught up our sense of being wronged. What a lot of people imply when they say forgiveness is more about the other person, and might be better termed Reconciliation: “hey, don’t worry about it, we’re all good.” As you rightly point out, God has a REALLY high bar for reconciliation. It requires repentance, restoration, and rebuilding of trust. It is completely conditional. On the other hand, Transcendence is an unconditional practice, very much like the Buddhist idea of Compassion. In meditation, we seek to free ourselves from the personal sense of injury in order to be able to see the bigger picture and make wise choices compatible with our long-term values and vision. We refuse to be controlled by the wrong others have done to us. This could help us better understand verses like Ephesians 4:32: Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Yes, Christ on the cross transcended his enemies by asked God to forgive them. But he also made it abundantly clear that He will come back to punish those who don’t repent. Does that clear things up? — Ernie P. -- -- 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.
