Forgiveness
19th Feb 2008
What is forgiveness? Why do we need to practice it? What benefit do we get from forgiving others?
This is an interesting question. The underlying assumption is that someone else did something wrong, and we have the power to set it right by forgiving that person. In other words, we can judge the actions or intentions of someone else, just like God can do, because we are just like God.
Except that we assume God’s role is to judge us. What if God is too busy loving us? What if judging others is one of the first things God asked us to stay away from?
The very first commandment in the Bible is that we should not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That means we should not be tempted to decide that is right or wrong.
But, you say, we cannot have an orderly world and community without defining right and wrong?
My question is: why does right and wrong need to be defined for us? We are all images of God. God is Love, nothing else. Therefore we are Love. Surely then, anything we think, say and do are also pure, from God, and full of Love?
But we deny our own purity and Love, and we add judgement. That is where the trouble starts. No two people will define right and wrong in the same way. What is wrong for me is right for someone else, and that is a good enough reason to eat from the forbidden fruit of judging others and ourselves.
Funny that judgement, the original forbidden fruit, is the basis of most organised religions? If we are not part of a particular religious organisation, it is assumed by default that we are “against” them. Judgement is also the basis of most of our relationships, and of society in general.
And because we are so addicted to judgement and judging one another, we had to invent a counterbalance, namely forgiveness.
If we take the judgement out of our lives and just love ourselves, and love others as we love ourselves, there will be no need for forgiveness.
We will not struggle to forgive friends for what they do to us, or to understand how people can make such wrong decisions, or even why the world is in the state it is today.
All we need to do is find God’s Love inside of ourselves, and live that Love. First of all live that Love by understanding that each one of us is reflections of God’s Love, and by loving ourselves for who we are.
Then live that Love by loving every person that we have contact with, and see them as part of God’s perfection, just as we are, no matter how different from ourselves they are.
When we have Love, there is no need for judgement, and therefore there is no need for forgiveness. There is balance, and ultimately there is Love.
Love and Light
Elsabe
