When forgiveness turns toxic

[Jones]

Was listening to the following Disaffected Podcast yesterday. Josh introduces with a monologue on forgiveness where he addresses Erika Kirks forgiveness of Charlies assassin and another incident where a father forgives the boy who stabbed his son to death. Josh also talks about his posts on SM about the abuse he suffered at the hands of his mother and how replies come telling him to forgive her. He has tried to get those that who reply to define what they mean by that. He also interviews Harrison Koehli, editor of Political Ponerology they talk about the subject through the lense of the study of pathology.

During the podcast, Josh mentions the writings of Paul Dohse who addresses what he refers to 'Carte Blanche Forgiveness' on his blog 'Pauls Passing Thoughts'. Dohse has written six articles on the subject with the basic premise that many current teachings or social expectations about forgiveness are false, manipulative and lead to spiritual tyranny. He addresses the illogical presuppositions that the false practices of forgiveness rely on.

A two-part series by Dohse:

Why Church is the Perfect Storm of Evil: Carte Blanche Forgiveness, Part 1

“With all of the hoopla about anger over being wronged turning to ‘bitterness,’ and thus destroying us, where is the same angst about people being destroyed by guilt? Yes friends, that …

paulspassingthoughts.com

Why Church is the Perfect Storm of Evil: Carte Blanche Forgiveness, Part 2

“However, the quality of the judge, or conscience, is determined by how it is informed. The law determines the judge. Therefore, how does carte blanche forgiveness inform the collective conscience …

paulspassingthoughts.com

 

[nicklebleu]

Thanks for posting, @Jones - much food for thought.

 

[Kika]

The proposed texts refer to the Protestant form of Christianity, I am not familiar with it.

I grew up in a Catholic environment.
I think that we could be in a more favorable situation in this regard, because of the "Seven Holy Sacraments" of which; 4. Sacrament of Reconciliation - Confession - Penance

Of course, the emphasis is on the church and priests and that forgiveness is sought from God, but what I consider important is that the exact prescribed way in which forgiveness is sought/received is prescribed.

1.Confession
The person seeking forgiveness should know their sins (in thought, word, deed, omission), they should meaningfully state/confess them.

2.Repentance
One should express remorse for the actions they have committed that they consider to be sins, express hatred/disapproval of such actions, and make a firm decision to improve and not sin again.

Only after that comes the act of 3. Forgiveness.

So there is no forgiveness for someone who;
- does not ask for forgiveness,
- does not know or does not believe that he has done anything wrong,
- does not repent for the actions he has committed and therefore has no intention of changing

I think these are quite good guidelines in everyday interaction with people.

Now the part about the sin of unforgiveness.

On the list of the “Seven Deadly Sins”, something that would be closest is point 6. Anger.

If we equate unforgiveness with obsessive anger, then we can “squeeze” it into the list of deadly sins, but unforgiveness of another’s sin is not explicitly on the list.

But there is one particular sin; “Sin against the Holy Spirit”
It is defined as a grave offense against the Holy Spirit (the third person of the Holy Trinity). A person commits it when he persists in sin, refusing to repent.

 

[Moine]

People, among every other form of life, will act and behave according to their own nature -- collectively as a species, and individually within humanity as is according to each person's constitution, be that constitution a blank piece of paper, or an elegant and thought-through spiritual polemic.

The whole, idk... feature?, of guilt, sin, redemption (you all know it within your denominations), was supposed to be a reflective exercise:

1) Meditate upon your past actions and internal mechanisms and thoughts,
2) Determine a possibility to improve upon those historical actions or tendencies into some sort of habitual inclination for the future,
3) Confer with another to verify the substance of your discoveries,
4) Do some meditative contemplation to assist in the formation of the recommended advice, and
5) Continue until this sort of remedial process becomes a natural feature within your being, not dwelling on the past, but being in the moment....

However a whole procedural and mechanistic performance has been devised for something which people do naturally when they're in confidence with another. Behavioral programming, this does make.

...

So now, stupid breeds stupidity. And this whole fetish of internalizing some sort of charismatic and ecstatic process, which by the way was to be conducted spiritually, as spiritual and revealed understanding, as per the transitive definition of (to) forgive -- (to look past, to look beyond), into a vicarious experience of spiritual union with the via some tertiary proxy of characterized substantiation --- yeah I'm not sold on the performance.

In the realm of jurisprudence, for a third party to assume a state of guilt, which is something that is only conferred upon a purported defendant via magisterial or juridical decision within contention, is a form of spectator's sport, if not neuroticism itself.

Now if you get to come around to understanding why any crime or offense was conducted by a defendant, well then maybe you'll have an opportunity to "step into their shoes" and thus come into a different perspective of the offense itself. But the determination of judgment is something that you're not supposed to do anyways, because you don't hold that office of responsibility.

When you're far removed from any genuine example of religious activity and thus you have no individual experience to base your spirituality off of, you sort of tend to be drawn towards more socially determined methods of validation, and status seeking. With such, if everyone else is on the exact same page as you, I'd suppose that no one is being spiritually genuine, and as such, this whole phenomenon, as contrived as it is, is so fake that it's touted and esteemed into a social/cultural convention -- a form of branding, if you will.

To top it off, this sort of ecstatic display of public forgiveness, could be just a permutation of hysteria which would have likely been recognized by many not 150 years ago. Jean-Martin Charcot's linkage of hysteria with hypnosis/mesmerism as being a hereditary condition, only fit's too well with Freud's trauma-based neurosis, and Lobaczewski's Political Ponerology, if albeit in a round-about way. If the institutions of man are insufficient to generate a cornucopia of evil, well then I suppose that you might as well breed it into the entire population to generate entire constellations of it, within the mental environment of humanity -- all to be upheld as a new state of normalcy and not be questioned. You need not display the mark of the "Beast" superficially to be dominated by the system, when in fact all of the little lines of bar code are inherent within the genetic strains of your bodily cells.