Yep. Just as often and as much as you yourself would want to be forgiven by your heavenly Father. Easier said than done, but that’s the doctrine. This is sometimes the hardest of things I need to do as continue in my lifelong conversion.Hello, I was wondering if anybody has thoughts on this? I am concerned because I am the type who forgives pretty much anything if the other person apologizes, but don’t really forgive anything if they do not. Thanks.
Forgiveness
I said in a previous chapter that chastity was the most unpopular of the Christian virtues. But I am not sure I was right. I believe there is one even more unpopular. It is laid down in the Christian rule, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’ Because in Christian morals ‘thy neighbour’ includes ‘thy enemy’, and so we come up against this terrible duty of forgiving our enemies.
Every one says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive, as we had during the war. And then, to mention the subject at all is to be greeted with howls of anger. It is not that people think this too high and difficult a virtue: it is that they think it hateful and contemptible. ‘That sort of talk makes them sick,’ they say. And half of you already want to ask me, ‘I wonder how you’d feel about forgiving the Gestapo if you were a Pole or a Jew?’
So do I. I wonder very much. Just as when Christianity tells me that I must not deny my religion even to save myself from death by torture, I wonder very much what I should do when it came to the point. I am not trying to tell you in this book what I could do - I can do precious little - I am telling you what Christianity is. I did not invent it. And there, right in the middle of it, I find ‘Forgive us our sins as we forgive those that sin against us.’ There is no slightest suggestion that we are offered forgiveness on any other terms. It is made perfectly clear that if we do not forgive we shall not be forgiven. There are no two ways about it. What are we to do?
It is going to be hard enough, anyway, but I think there are two things we can do to make it easier. When you start mathematics you do not begin with the calculus; you begin with simple addition. In the same way, if we really want (but all depends on really wanting) to learn how to forgive, perhaps we had better start with something easier than the Gestapo. One might start with forgiving one’s husband or wife, or parents or children, or nearest N.C.O., for something they have done or said in the last week. That will probably keep us busy for the moment. And secondly, we might try to understand exactly what loving you neghbour as yourself means. I have to love him as I love myself. Well, how exactly do I love myself?
Now that I come to think of it, I have not exactly got a feeling of fondness or or affection for myself, and I do not even always enjoy my own society. So apparently ‘love your neighbour’ does not mean ‘feel fond of him’ or ‘find him attractive’. I ought to have seen that before, because, of course, you cannot feel fond of a person by trying. Do I think well of myself, think myself a nice chap? Well, I am afraid I sometimes do (and those are, no doubt, my worst moments) but that is not why I love myself. In fact it is the other way round: my self-love makes me think myself nice, but thinking myself nice is not why I love myself. So loving my enemies does not apparently mean thinking them nice either. That is an enormous relief. For a good many people imagine that forgiving your enemies means making out that they are really not such bad fellows after all, when it is quite plain that they are. Go a step further. In my most clear-sighted moments not only do I not think myself a nice man, but I know that I am a very nasty one. I can look at some of the things I’ve done with horror and loathing. So apparently I am allowed to loath and hate some of the things my enemies do. Now that I come to think of it, I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate a bad man’s actions, but not hate the bad man; or, as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner.
I hope this has helped, I apologise for the length.For a long time I used to think this a silly straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? but years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life - namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact the very reason why I hated the things was because I loved the man. Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find I was the sort of man who did those things. Consequently, Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery. We ought to hate them. Not one word of what we have said about them needs to be unsaid. But it does want us to hate them in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is anyway possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere, he can be cured and made human again.
The real test is this. Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite try, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling , ‘Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,’ or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally, we shall insist on seeing everything - God and our friends and ourselves included - as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed forever in a universe of pure hatred.
Jesus on the Cross forgave his enemies without receiving any apologies from them. We must follow His example and forgive, even when we haven’t received any apologies. Remember that in the Our Father prayer you say to God, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. You should mean every word you speak to God. and you should forgive your neighbor if you wish to be forgiven by God. God bless you.Hello, I was wondering if anybody has thoughts on this? I am concerned because I am the type who forgives pretty much anything if the other person apologizes, but don’t really forgive anything if they do not. Thanks.
God infallibly does not pardon those that don’t seek pardon, and so neither should you. But, you must always have that yearning inside of you to graciously accept pardon once it is offered, and to treat them with compassion even if they do not treat you with compassion. Jesus explained to St Faustina that his mercy is like flames clamoring against him, screaming to be spent, if a sinner would just ask for it.Hello, I was wondering if anybody has thoughts on this? I am concerned because I am the type who forgives pretty much anything if the other person apologizes, but don’t really forgive anything if they do not. Thanks.