THOUGHTS ABOUT "WHAT IS DONE IS DONE!"

“What’s done is done”.
 
You cannot change the past. What is done is done but people use the cliché to justify forgiveness. The cliché aspires towards condemning people for being punitive but it upholds a double standard when it allows rewards for good works which are in the past and cannot be reversed either. Forgiveness cannot be granted on the grounds that the past is immutable and unalterable for it would be malice to pardon a person based on such a deceitful and unfair standard. Malicious forgiveness is a contradiction.

We have biological weak spots.  We are vulnerable.  We have many weak spots aside that. People who harm us willingly attack us for they know they will damage us.  So we cannot let something go just because it is in the past.  It takes time to feel safe enough with a person who has harmed us and they need to earn our trust.  God however is not vulnerable so he can simply let things go and forgive on tap.  For a person who thinks God alone ultimately matters, this can be dangerous.  Why? It is his forgiving that counts the most.  He after all makes everything 100%.

A second reason why his alone ultimately matters is that his forgiving allows him to heal your problems with others.  Religion rationalises that if this is not happening then you or they are not responding to his prompts and grace.  All you get from all this is a person doing harm and then acting as if nothing happened.  A forgiveness that leads to such arrogance is an amnesty.  Only a person who does not truly care what they have done seeks it.  It is something selfish masked as forgiveness.  It calls itself forgiveness and looks like it but it is anything but.

Now what if God hypothetically for some reason did not heal the problems?  Say it would violate our free will or something?  Should we forgive others because what is done cannot be undone?  Or should it be about the future, moving forward, as well?  What if it had to be one or the other?  If both matter, which one matters most?  And how much would that one matter most?  51%?  Is it one mattering 99% and the other 1%?

“I feel sorry for Fr Paul. I know he covered up for priests abusing children but it is so hard on him and he can’t undo the past.”

Compassion is an unpleasant feeling and should be reserved for the most deserving people. Why degrade yourself to lament for Fr Paul when there are babies starving in the world? Transfer your energy to that cause. Paul is stealing your compassion for he certainly wants it.
 
Given that most people believe in free will and hold that nobody is innocent and that punishment is for your own good and still have compassion for one another so that they have mercy we see that compassion in the context of saying that the past cannot be changed no and so what? is clearly saying the sin does not matter. If it does not matter then the criminal should be apologised to by society for they made a fuss about laws being broken and then they turn around and make out they never mattered. How could you have compassion on people who deserve to suffer? People say you can’t punish everybody so you have to have pity and forgive but why not just not punish instead of forgiving? Forgiveness given because you can’t punish is grudging and is not forgiveness but only looks like it. You would not be loving yourself as much as your neighbour if you let yourself get upset or think you should get upset over somebody that deserves to suffer. Many Humanists luckily deny free will for free will implies that compassion is always evil. It means the criminal can take no satisfaction in people’s compassion for he knows they are having it because they are made that way and not because it is right. It’s false. The love your neighbour as yourself doctrine as taught by God, Moses and Jesus is just a call to be false and two-faced and self-deceiving.