God Doesn’t Forgive…Why Should You?

Photo by christian buehner on Unsplash

Forgive (\ fər-ˈgiv\) — to stop feeling anger toward; to stop blaming; to give up resentment.

I was (still am, I suppose) a huge fan of the sitcom, The Big Bang Theory. There are a ton of great one-liners in that show, but my favorite was a Sheldon line, delivered when the guys were stranded in the desert dressed as Star Trek characters. A number of things had gone wrong, not the least of which was that no one had a cell phone to call for help. One member of the group asks, “Got any ideas?”, and Sheldon responds, “Nope. The only thing left to do now is assign blame”.

I literally laugh out loud every time I hear it. It’s so beautifully and authentically human. Most of us do it automatically but would never voice it so honestly. The truth is, blame feels good. Forgiveness? Well, not so much. But why?

I understand how the notion of forgiveness can be a difficult one for us humans. When we’ve been hurt or wronged (by our standards), we feel powerless, vulnerable and sometimes afraid. It is in our very nature as humans, no matter our gender, age, race, culture, religion, etc. to reach for happiness. It’s innate, and we can’t help it.

Since anger, vengeance and blame feel a lot better than those more helpless feelings, it just makes sense (emotionally speaking) that we would prefer to hang out there. Depending on how egregious we deem the offense, we can hang out there for a long time — months, years or even a lifetime.

Further, since all manner of unwanted consequences in our lives stem from anger and resentment, we are usually in a pretty rough state when some well-meaning person says, “You just need to forgive them”. Our initial response to this advice is often to take a moment to add those idiots to our list of folks who can go f*$# themselves, then we dive quickly back into our swirling vortex of justified anger.

Unfortunately, the most annoying thing about those well-meaning folks is that they’re right. There is enormous benefit to climbing out of negativity and into forgiveness. I believe that for a lot of us, our aversion to forgiveness is due to a simple misunderstanding of the word itself, our feelings of context surrounding the word and our confusion concerning for whom the benefits of forgiveness are intended. With the right perspective, it’s actually really easy and incredibly rewarding to embrace forgiveness. Let’s explore it!

First, we’ll deal with the meaning of the word and for whom the benefits are intended. I’ve included the definition at the beginning of this article for easy reference. Notice that nowhere in the definition does it mention the nature of the offense, how wrong it was or how much it hurt. There is also no requirement in the definition of forgiveness to condone the offense in any way. It’s not there.

It’s not there, because it’s not relevant. People often fear that to forgive is to condone or to negate the severity of the offense. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Another common fear is that to forgive is to continue being victimized or to go back to that place of pain and vulnerability. We are afraid that if we accept what happened and let it go, we are resigning ourselves to the feelings of hurt, betrayal, vulnerability and “letting them get away with it”. That’s not true, either.

We do not have to choose between hurt or anger, vulnerability or outrage, powerlessness or vengeance. There are a lot of other options, and most of them feel a lot better than any of those.

On the emotional scale, just as anger and blame feel better than powerlessness, forgiveness feels better than anger and blame. And the ultimate goal is for you to feel better.

Forgiveness is the act of taking your focus (which is your personal power) from the offender/offense and bringing it back inside you, and that feels good, really good.

Your point of attention is incredibly powerful. If it is external, you suffer emotionally. If it is internal, you can heal, grow and continue to move up the emotional scale rather than cycle back and forth between revictimization and anger/resentment.

Scroll back up and check out that definition again. Notice that nothing is mentioned about the offender, either. Forgiveness is between you and you. That’s it. It is for you and about you entirely. It is not for the benefit of anyone else and is not directed toward anyone else. It’s no one else’s business, and no one else receives the benefit (except those around you that don’t have to endure your negativity anymore). It’s about you putting an end to the feelings that are negatively impacting you. It’s just for you.

Let’s move on to possible contextual issues. A big struggle with forgiveness can be its association with divinity, religion and “shoulds”. Many of us have been conditioned to associate forgiveness with religion, and in the throes of anger, rage and hurt, the last thing we give a shit about is being righteous (at least we’re better than the jerk who did whatever we’re mad about).

We don’t want to be told what we should do, we want revenge and justice. We want to feel better.

I can tell you from lots of personal experience that forgiveness is the path to feeling better. When a concept like forgiveness is associated with other beliefs, though, it can get sticky and messy. The best way I have found to deal with this problem is to disentangle the entire notion of forgiveness from any other belief system, whether you subscribe to the belief system or not.

For me, having been raised in an abusive environment and a religious cult, I had great difficulty in accepting the need for (or benefits of) forgiveness until I separated it completely from any other belief system or set of rules, expectations or instructions.

One day, it just hit me — God has never forgiven anyone. It doesn’t make sense that He would. If God is Love and Love is unconditional and free of judgment, then the very concept of forgiveness would never even occur to God. There would never be a need for it. If there are no conditions to love, and there is no judgment, then there could be no need for forgiveness. That’s just people making things up!

To forgive isn’t divine. It’s human. We sometimes use our idea of forgiveness as divine to excuse ourselves from forgiving: “Well, I’m only human, and I just can’t forgive them for that”.

The truth is that to err is human and to forgive those errors is human, not divine. To me, if your Divine is unconditional, non-judgmental, pure Love, He/She would have no use for forgiveness.

So, there is no excuse for unforgiveness. There are choices, and you’re free to choose anger and resentment. No judgment here. Just own that choice, and take responsibility for it. It’s not because you’re human. It’s because you choose it.

We tell ourselves all kinds of things to justify unforgiveness. We have a “right” to be mad. They don’t deserve forgiveness. What they did is unforgivable….I’m not saying we’re wrong or unjustified in those feelings. I’m just saying it doesn’t serve us individually or collectively to live that way. It truly is like drinking poison and hoping the other person falls dead.

The immense freedom that comes from the act of true forgiveness is indescribable. It is so unbelievably empowering to decide how you will feel based on your choices and not someone else’s actions. You just have to experience it to understand.

Whatever happened that is causing anger, blame or resentment cannot be undone no matter how upset you are. There is no amount of anger that you can conjure toward a person or situation that can change what has happened. It is in the past.

Your options are to accept it and release it or allow the resistance of acceptance to eat you alive from the inside out. For me, that has become an easy choice after experiencing the effects.

I don’t recommend forgiving simply because I believe it is what you should do. Quite the opposite. In fact, I recommend intentionally leaving should or right or good out of it. If you need motivation, consider your own health and happiness, but don’t consider what anyone thinks you should do.

Choosing to forgive is about you and how much better your life will be when you don’t let human error dictate your well-being.

Blame and anger do feel good when you’re reaching for something better than hurt, helplessness and vulnerability, and that’s totally normal and natural. Just don’t stay there. It doesn’t feel good for long. It turns into other things.

If you stay there, it will negatively impact your health and your life overall — there’s no way around that. Instead, keep moving up that emotional scale from hurt, through blame and anger, into forgiveness and on your way to freedom and joy.

I understand that there are a lot of people who feel very strongly about their own religious beliefs. I’m not attempting to tell anyone how to believe or invalidate anyone’s beliefs. I have known a number of beautiful people of varying religions that live peaceful lives and contribute to the world in amazing ways, and I value them greatly.

Nothing that anyone believes is any of my business. I am not interested in swaying another’s beliefs or arguing for my own. I do think that it is very unlikely that I am alone in having felt confusion and frustration with the concept and practice of forgiveness, and it is to that end that I write this in the hopes that it can help someone else choose forgiveness and in that choice improve their own life.

-M