DERRIDA SHOWS THAT MOST IF NOT ALL RELIGIOUS FORGIVING IS NOT REAL

Derrida argued that forgiveness is not real unless you see the wrong as unforgiveable.  You forgive because it cannot be forgiven and because forgiveness is a gift and a true gift does not want anybody to know it has been granted.  He said that forgiving the forgiveable is amnesty, letting it go, not forgiveness.

Forgiving puts it in the past and amnesty is trying to pretend it does not matter any more.  But pretending means that deep down it still matters.

The arguments if correct refute the Christian God who just forgives and who denies that any evil is unforgiveable.  They show that Christianity is not the great force for truth and mercy it says it is.

CHRISTIAN FORGIVENESS

Derrida noticed that in Christian forgiveness, the person is forgiven as well as the act. But that leads to you saying, “I forgive you but if you will not do this thing again.” Priests say that in confession.  You have to be repentant.  Derrida says that forgiveness is forgiving the unforgiveable so there should be no condition. Derrida is clear that this is not true forgiveness at all.

The Christian wants to be respected as a forgiver instead of the other, and is thus taking advantage of the forgiveness.

The Christian wants the other to learn and do better in future. This may look like respect but you would "respect" even Hitler who you hate, that way!

The Christian wants to respect God who is offended by the sin. God forgives but promises it heals and that he can help the bad person grow into a better one.

The Christian has to forgive as an instrument of God - God forgives using the disciple.

The Christian sees forgiving as a reward in itself and a gift of God that God rewards. This contradicts Derrida's insistence that real forgiveness avoids ANY hope or anticipation of a reward. It is not to be a reward in itself or rewarded. 

So if secular forgiveness which forgives the person and the act has problems faith in God based forgiveness is worse and adds to the problems.

Some Christians say when they forgive they forgive the bad thing somebody did and they also forgive that person. That is wrong. The act cannot be separated from the person for the person is the problem. There is only forgiving the person.

It is better to genuinely try and forgive what cannot be forgiven. You do not forgive for you cannot but the intention is totally about goodness. To argue that forgiveness is better than this intention is ridiculous. Trying is what matters.  The argument makes a laughing stock of any attempt to make sense of right and wrong. Forgiveness can only be simulated not granted if there is no right and wrong or if you think there isn’t.

If something is unforgiveable in itself that is a separate thing from whether or not we feel it is unforgiveable. If something is unforgivable in itself and/or is unforgiveable as far as our feelings are concerned then what? For us to see and feel it is unforgiveable means that if we still forgive, then forgiveness is a painful heroic gift.  We would have to aspire to uniting mind and heart in detecting how unforgiveable evil is.  Only then can we give the gift without any strings to the evil person. 

Nobody wants to suffer to forgive and all who talk about forgiveness do it to get inner peace. If it is agony to forgive then is the moving on worth it? No. And even more so when forgiveness as Derrida notes is not a one time deed but a deed spread over what could be a very long time. It seems you would only do it for a God. Also it is clear that most of those who say they forgive are in fact dealing with a hurt by making excuses for the perpetrator - they are condoning. And all know how to mask this. They are also pressured to mask it for human nature tends to disparage the doormat.
 
UNCOMMON?

Suppose that it is true that evils are forgiveable as Christianity says.

There are many evils that to us are unforgiveable when they are forgiveable.  Here we are too harsh.

Or there are evils which are forgivable to us when they are unforgiveable.  Here we are too soft.

Either way we are doing what the beast of evil wants.  We are letting it into ourselves. To see it where it is not present grants it power and it will be sure to appear.  You are projecting an evil that is already in yourself on to something.  To water evil down is befriending it.

In both cases, we fail to discern the evil correctly.  You cannot truly forgive unless you see all evil as unforgiveable.  You cannot pick one evil to slam as unforgivable while calling another one forgiveable. Bad diagnoses lead to problems.

Nobody if anybody gets it right.  Real forgiveness is a rarity...or does it ever exist?

If you have to forgive for God that is harder than forgiving for man even if in principle sin is unforgiveable. So God is a hindrance and a toxin. And if sin is unforgiveable only God knows if you are forgiven and it could be that hardly anybody gets forgiven.

What is the point of arguing that God's spirit moves and helps the world to a place of peace and reconciliation if the mountain is too hard to climb?

FORGIVENESS, ESPECIALLY GOD'S, IS NOT ABOUT ANY PURPOSE

If you forgive the unforgiveable it does not change anything. It is like painting a pink wall pink.  It would be the same for a God.

God’s forgiving does NOTHING anyway. All that happens is that he changes his attitude to you and even that is a metaphor for religion says that God always has a good attitude to us no matter what we do. No wonder we want his cheap forgiveness!

Forgiving changes nothing – acting on it makes the changes. A person can forgive and fail to act on it. They might not be able to.  Maybe the rapist has gone to Siberia. 

If God forgives and then works on you then the forgiveness did nothing. Yet this forgiveness is what is put first by believers. They prefer to be forgiven by God than to have him fix the damage. If there is a choice they will choose forgiveness and not reform if it has to be one or the other.

A forgiveness like that looks very like condoning when we forgive. Bringing God into it, saying it is his power you are forgiving with, makes sure of that. Forgiveness is far more condoning then!

ARE ALL EVILS EQUALLY BAD, EQUALLY UNFORGIVEABLE? 

It is said, "Evil A being unforgiveable and Evil B being unforgiveable does not mean they are equally unforgiveable. While an act is either forgiveable or it is not, unforgivable murder is not on the same level as unforgivable words."

But unforgiveable means it is black and white. It means an evil so intolerable that it cannot be pardoned. Intolerable is just intolerable there are no grades. This makes the child stealing a lollypop as bad as the world's most ruthless bankrobber.

Evil is just evil.  You may see the tip of an iceberg. Evil hides so you will not see very much.  You may see the crack and in time the whole water dam crumbles and the village it protects is drowned.

We may argue that life cannot function if we live all that out.  But that does not prove it is wrong.  The asteriod that is going to wipe out all life, is not going to vanish for we think life cannot function.  Truth is not about us.

And a God certainly can live it out for he is not living among us.

SIN

Sin is a religious interpretation of evil. It is trying to create evil and thus like trying to murder God for God and evil are incompatible. 

Evils are not made equal by being totally intolerable and totally unforgivable. Every evil in itself is totally unforgiveable.  But that does not mean that religion or something cannot make another evil to put along side it.  Now you can have two evils, one as unforgiveable and abhorrent as the other.

What about sin then?

Religion says it is evil to hit a baby for fun.  But as God made the baby with love it is an additional evil, this time against him, to hurt.  If evil is necessarily unforgiveable then religion is worsening the problem. It proclaims it unforgiveable to disrespect and insult God. So instead of one evil you have two. You have two unforgivables instead of one.

Commonsense sense that one evil is enough.  If we could prove God as much as we can prove the baby suffers it would be different but we cannot.  We have enough to deal with without religion compounding things.  It is going to lead to people not having the energy to forgive their neighbours.

Imagine if sins were not all equally evil.

Sin A being unforgiveable and Sin B being unforgiveable does not mean they are equally unforgiveable. While a sin is either forgiveable or it is not, unforgivable blasphemy is not on the same level as unforgivable murder against a person.  This forces you to worry more about God than anything.  It is going to lead to fanaticism.

An evil being unpardonable means it is just unpardonable.  Simple.  But in our psychology we need a process.  We have to get from the 10% or whatever unpardonable in our heads to the 100% unpardonable.

Faith in God is no help.  It makes actions unforgiveable when they hurt nobody and are only wrong in a religion’s head.

Unforgivable sin makes forgiving a last resort. It bans trivialising forgiveness. These ideas show how abhorrent religious doctrine and devotion actually is for religion flippantly tells you to say sorry to God and all is forgiven.

GOD FORGETS

The problems with religious forgiveness are bad. God forgives when you simply say sorry. Even worse the sorry supposedly makes God FORGET the sin. God does not bury the hatchet and mark where it is laid in this case!

The evil was not really unforgiveable or evil then if it can be just forgotten!

FINALLY

To say that forgiveness is a gift and may be one that only you are aware of definitely does tell us what loving an evil person means.  It exposes the hypocrisy of society, religion and the toxic self-serving underlay of faith in God.

No Copyright