God Does Not Comprehend Forgiveness.
The topic of who god forgives, and for what, and why, is central to christian belief. If you discuss the topic of forgiveness with a christian, they may make an opening move along the lines of declaring that god is infinitely merciful and forgiving – and then, strangely, they stop there. Forgiving whom, for what, and why?
Forgiveness is not some undifferentiated happy-field that simply wipes away blame – it’s a complex interaction between a being or beings that were wronged, a being (or beings) that are to blame for those wrongs, and it would usually seem to involve some kind of understanding being established between the parties. In fact, if that understanding does not exist, the idea of forgiving someone seems to be meaningless, because one of the things we consider when someone forgives someone else is the magnitude of that forgiveness. If someone kills my beloved dog-friend with their car, yet I forgive them because of some circumstance, my forgiveness is more important because of the magnitude of the wrong, and my willingness to forgive them. I deliberately used the example of the unfortunate dog, because it introduces another important consideration into the scenario: the victim. If someone runs over my dog, the person we should all be looking to for forgiveness is the dog. Unfortunately, for the dog, they can no longer grant that forgiveness – and I’ve known plenty of dogs that would never let go of a perfectly good grudge; they might forget but they’d never forgive.
Let’s disassemble the situation and look at the players and where forgiveness and blame comes into it. First, you have the driver of the car, who struck and killed the dog. Then, you have the dog. And lastly, you have the other involved parties, namely, the dog’s care-giver and friend and perhaps a child who witnessed the event and was traumatized. The way we figure out who can forgive whom is by figuring out who is to blame – because it makes no sense to forgive someone who was not to blame. The traumatized child-witness does not need to be forgiven in the death of the dog, because it was not their fault, in fact they suffered what might be called “collateral damage.” No, we’d ask whether the dog was in the road or whether the driver was driving recklessly. Suppose I had thrown a stick and the dog had run in front of the car. Or, suppose the driver of the car was going too fast and swung around a curve and hit the unfortunate dog when it was on the sidewalk. What if the child-witness had called to the dog, and that is why it ran into the road? In the latter case I might feel that the child-witness was more to blame than the driver. This is just an example of why it is so important to be able to establish a notion of responsibility in terms of cause/effect before we can assign blame. Once we have assigned blame, then we can forgive. As I have argued before [stderr] god appears to have problems with its moral understanding of how blame works, so we’ve already got a problem getting from one point to another.
A golden retriever: moral exemplar and all-around good dog
As we can see in the story of the fate of the dog, there might be a variety of factors that would cause us to lay blame differently, and thus, if we chose to forgive anyone, that forgiveness would also track how we laid the blame. Note that each of the people who was wronged in the situation are able to form their own judgement of responsibility and blame, and make their own decision whether to forgive or not. And, sadly, the dog is unable to be a moral actor in the scenario, at all, any more. When we humans make moral judgements, these are the kind of components that we have to deal with, and we deal with them all the time: who is to blame for global climate change? Who is responsible for the death of George Floyd? I know I am harping on this point a bit much, but what we are looking at here is the essential mechanism by which morality works; even if we are a moral nihilist who withholds judgement as to whether we can agree in our moral assessments, we would probably recognize this as a situation which has moral value for the individuals involved. Figuring this kind of scenario out is what morals do.
That’s why this is such an uncomfortable topic, when we consider god’s approach to forgiveness (and, by extension, morals in general) – god just does not seem to function like a moral being. That’s not to say that “god transcends morality” or any such highfalutin’ nonsense, no, god just flat-out does not get it.
A major premise in christianity is that god forgives people for their transgressions. But, if we are discussing human transgressions against other humans, forgiveness is not god’s to give. I assure you that, if Jesus showed up and told the driver of the car that hit my dog, “it’s OK, I forgive you” I’d be hunting for a hammer and some nails pretty quick. Christianity (which presumably reflects an understanding of god and god behaviors) says that god forgives people for pretty much anything and everything as long as you ask for that forgiveness truly. That leaves us in a quandary: either god’s forgiveness is irrelevant, or it’s really seriously messed up. Perhaps if god’s messenger came down and informed all of us, “the dog says he forgives you all and that his hips ached a lot and he’s happy to be up here chasing balls with Jesus” then, all right, the dog is forgiving but I still might not be. Nobody has the right or the power to grant my forgiveness; it’s mine, that’s what it means. Again: see what I did there? I injected more information about the situation, in a way that allows us to adjust our moral judgements. What god showing up and saying “everyone is forgiven!” does not do is exactly that: it’s not god’s forgiveness to give; there is some order of moral judgement we can make as to whose forgiveness is most desired, starting with the dog’s. Yes, a dog’s moral judgements can and should easily trump a god’s.
We can consider moral decisions to be transactions, one form of the transaction being “X wrongs Y” (in some unspecified way) and god only has fairly limited standing to get involved in the transaction. I think most of us might grant god’s interest in the dog situation if god’s messenger came down and said, “god is particularly fond of golden retrievers and you collectively really messed that one up. You’d better sort this situation out among yourselves, because that’s what I gave you morals to be able to do. You’ve got some fast talking ahead of you if you want to stay off of his ‘shit list’ OK?” So saith the lord. Again: more information is injected into the situation in a way that allows the involved parties to make an informed moral judgement.
But god doesn’t do any of that. Instead, he just mindlessly hands out forgiveness like it’s candy. Which is, dare I say, not a moral action at all. In fact, it amounts to nothing less than interference with the moral judgements of others. A moral being, god or not, would not do that. That’s why the title of this piece is, deliberately, a bit ambiguous: god may just not understand how morals work, and that’s OK, but we should not look to god as a source of moral lessons as a result.
A christian might defend god’s position here by saying (as they often do) “it’s a metaphor!” God is just trying to encourage people to be forgiving, and not to be spiteful and hold grudges. (“Do as I say, not as I do,” being the name of the lord) God is not saying, literally, that he forgives the guy who killed the dog on our behalf – he’s just saying that we should all be a bit more understanding that circumstances are complicated and besides, the dog is happy now, etc. That’s an argument, of sorts but it still deliberately and coldly reduces our moral agency. If we consider the “forgiveness” angle as metaphor, then the person encouraging us to do so is either trashing our moral agency, or god’s. I.e.: “god would want you to forgive in this situation, but… whatever.” None of that holds a drop of water when you consider that, allegedly, god also judges the quick and the dead and perhaps maintains a private torture chamber of eternal punishment for people who are not nice to golden retrievers. That radically shifts our perspective on this matter because god is not only assigning and forgiving blame on other people’s behalf, he’s punishing people on his own behalf, based on his own score-card that he keeps. In other words, all that human moral thinking isn’t worth shit in the first place – it’s only god’s judgement that matters, so you may as well not bother, at all.
To be a christian, the notion of divine forgiveness is something that you must accept and rationalize. To be a moral christian, you have to be able to square this particularly nonsensical mess. And, if you cannot, or have not made the effort, you cannot claim to have any kind of grasp on morality that is not already purely human. Personally, I’m OK with a christian claiming that they understand none of this, and follow their own moral judgements – that would be honest, at least.* But if some christian wants to claim that they have learned something of moral behavior from god, they’ve got a lot of… forgiveness to beg.
For the record: no dogs were harmed in the production of this posting; the unfortunate golden retriever is not dead, it’s fictional (I suppose that’s a form of being dead?)
I introduced the golden retriever because I believe they’re a better example of forgiving, moral, kind behavior than god.
* I often refer to christians that assert un-examined belief in divine morality as “moral nihilists” they also do not have any beliefs or moral system, they are just in denial of it. This is a theme I may re-visit later, but, as a place-holder: can an un-examined moral system actually be a moral system? Doesn’t the claim that a person is a moral being imply that they have a system of beliefs that they have judged and accepted, and that they act upon? If this is the case, then the entire idea of accepting our morals from god is in question.
The picture of the golden retriever was brought by google image search; source is [here]
Serendipitously, Andreas just did a posting about our responsibility toward other people’s dogs, [Don’t touch other people’s dogs without the owner’s permission.]
Good post. If you wanted to expand the point you might also look at the interrelationship between forgiveness and its sibling, guilt.
Back when I was a Christian, I recall that God’s forgiveness was used as a selling point (including by me) by advertising that everyone was conscious of some wrongdoing towards others in their lives, and by becoming a Christian, we could assuage some of the subsequent guilt by assuring ourselves that we were forgiven by God.
Now, though, I wonder — should we? As you point out in your post, first of all, if we’ve wronged someone, it isn’t the forgiveness of some neutral third party we should be craving — it should be the forgiveness of the actual person who was wronged.
And secondly, is the idea of forgiveness assuaging guilt even a tenable one? I mean, if I were to do something awful — say I was a priest who abused minors — should it morally make any difference whether I’m forgiven or not, and by whom? If you believed in karma, you might argue that my subsequent guild is karmic retribution for my bad act. If so, then regardless of whether or not I was forgiven by God, the victim, and society, it is still right and fair that I experience that guilt as just punishment. So whether God shows up and says he forgives me or not — why should that even make any difference?
And I see that you didn’t even try to bring in Calvinistic Predestination. How can forgiveness mean anything to a person “that God appointed the eternal destiny of some to salvation by grace”? [wikipedia] It changes nothing.
brucegee1962@#1:
If you wanted to expand the point you might also look at the interrelationship between forgiveness and its sibling, guilt.
Good point. I tried to focus on blame rather than guilt, because that’s “just” self-blame. Or, I think it is.
And secondly, is the idea of forgiveness assuaging guilt even a tenable one? I mean, if I were to do something awful — say I was a priest who abused minors — should it morally make any difference whether I’m forgiven or not, and by whom?
It would seem to be that a bit of forgiveness helps. Here’s my reasoning: when someone else forgives us, it must be because they understand the situation (which is why I paid so much attention to the question of whether everyone understands what happened) and have decided that they’ve re-interpreted the degree to which we are blameworthy. I might be sitting there going, “I can never forgive myself” but the injured party could tell me, “no, it’s OK, you really couldn’t help it and besides, I understand that you feel bad and I share your pain with my own.” That might make me feel better.
In 2000, when I was moving up to the farm, I was towing a bunch of my stuff in a 4-horse stock trailer and about 4 miles south of where I live now, a young cat ran right into the road in front of me, and I squashed it. I didn’t slam on the brakes and skid because that’s a bad thing with a trailer attached, so I just went right over the cat, hoping it would miss the wheels, but it didn’t. I stopped and knocked on the house’s door where the cat appeared to have come from and an old lady answered, saw the cat, and we both sat there and were very upset for a while. She said, “I forgive you; it was not your fault.” And it made me feel better – because she had made the same assessment of the situation as I had, and I knew I would not be leaving someone behind who hated me. [The cat is buried in the treeline by my house, along with my dogs, my aunt’s dog, and a friend’s conyure] If the old woman had chosen to be angry and unforgiving, I would have understood that, too, and felt even worse about my actions because clearly someone did not share my understanding of what had happened.
So whether God shows up and says he forgives me or not — why should that even make any difference?
Well, I think we’re agreed: god’s opinion in most of these matters is not relevant. I suppose we could say, as a matter of course, that god’s tendency is to forgive and we should all favor forgiveness. When I was trying to dissect this issue, I kept coming back to the importance of achieving some kind of shared understanding of the situation. We can take god’s preference for forgiveness as a sort of amicus curiae “hey be nice” but I flatly reject the idea that someone can say “god forgives me!” if I do not.
Here’s another thought experiment: if the cop who killed George Floyd announced that god had forgiven him, so we all needed to lighten up a bit – would you? I don’t give a rat’s ass, in that situation, what god thinks – it’s George’s opinion that matters most, followed by his family and friends and everyone else who feels they have a stake in the situation. Because the cop’s killing of Floyd was a political matter it becomes an issue that the entire polis has a stake in, so our moral opinions count to some degree, as well.
ahcuah@#2:
And I see that you didn’t even try to bring in Calvinistic Predestination.
For two reasons:
1) it’s flat-out batshit
2) if I did, it’s too easy for a christian to dodge by saying Calvinist doctrine is not accepted as truth by all christians
Part of what I am doing in this project is trying to keep my arguments focused as tightly as I can on the core principles that make up the whole wobbly structure. I don’t want to digress into just busting on little specific bits of deniable christian stupidity. The christians need to own the full nuttiness of the disgusting beliefs they profess.
(edit)
Also, this kind of addresses Calvinistic predestination:
If god keeps his own score-card and does his own punishing based on that, our moral agency is irrelevant, or nil. If I understand Calvinism, that’s basically the position except the Calvinists wisely want to focus on the winners – the “elect” – not the losers – “everybody else.”
I’m pretty sure that’s “transgressions against god“. The whole “original sin” thing is/was a transgression against god, so god can “forgive” you for it.
I think that transgressions against other people is a more nuanced matter. I think, theololgically, it’s a transgression against both god and the other person, and god can forgive his own portion, but not necessarily the transgression against the other. And it may be that God will only forgive you after you obtain forgiveness of the other. Or maybe if your remorse and repentance were sincere enough, he would forgive you regardless? I would have to look it up to be sure, and I suspect that there is disagreement on the topic.
Some theists might posit that only god’s forgiveness actually matters — another person’s grudge against you can only have effects in this world, but god’s forgiveness will keep you out of eternal damnation.
I’ve often thought of taking the “God’s Not Dead” graphic for the film of the same name, and changing it to “God’s Not Real”.
Owlmirror beat me to it, but I’d also like to see you expand on the idea that the Christian god is forgiving “sins”, transgressions against the divine will, not mere wrongs against humans (or dogs). It’s not a good argument for Christian morality, but it is popular. You come close in mentioning a fondness for goldens as a divine stake in the game, but don’t tackle this idea directly.
And then there’s that “medium” — excuse me, the terminology has changed, “channel” — who claims that George Floyd is in the afterlife, and he’s happy, and he’s telling everyone to just chill.
That’s the whole point.
In my comment I will discuss forgiveness and punishment simultaneously, because both are tied together—punishment is attempted when somebody refuses to forgive.
Christianity was designed by the rich and powerful for the rich and powerful to keep peasants under control. It’s supposed to mess with people’s moral judgements in ways that benefit the powerful.
A king abuses a peasant. Victim gets told: “Don’t try to enact punishment; God will punish the guilty king in your stead.” This either gives a powerless peasant hope that justice will be served thus making them happy or it outright prevents an attempted rebellion.
A peasant does something a king doesn’t like. The king will punish the peasant anyway, because he can. Whatever, God’s help in dishing out some punishment isn’t needed this time.
And then there’s forgiveness.
A peasant hurts somebody powerful. They will never be forgiven in this life; after all, the powerful person has means to dish out some punishment, so why should they forgive.
A powerful person abuses some peasants. “God is infinitely merciful and forgiving, just pray for it, you will be forgiven, and then you will be able to keep on repeating the same crime again and again and get forgiven each time.” After all, we don’t actually want the wealthy losing sleep in this life due to fears that they might get punished in hell after their death. And since God is so forgiving, peasants whom you wronged must forgive you as well or else you can accuse them of being bad Christians.
The whole system is designed to prevent peasants from seeking justice and to enable kings to abuse others with impunity.
It’s also designed to bring money for the clergy. If God can either forgive or punish, then clergy, as the messengers of God, can earn some cash in the process. Remember the commercialization of Catholic indulgences during the Middle Ages? Alternatively, nowadays churches instead use people’s desire to be forgiven by God and their fear of divine punishment in order to lure believers towards the donation box.
Not just indulgences for cash. Clergy were very good at preying upon the tender consciences of the wealthy as they grew closer to their ends and their presumed maker. The very best way to escape hell or shorten your time in purgatory was to demonstrate your sincere repentance by gifting land in your will to the local bishop or monastery. How else did they end up with so much land in England by the 16th century (none of it being charged taxes) that Henry VIII saw the profit in seizing it all?
I had a friend who hit and killed a dog. No amount of any god forgiving her was relevant to the fact that she could not forgive herself. Rationally she knew she was not to blame (not speeding, not driving recklessly, dog ran out unexpectedly), but as a dog lover it still bothers her decades later.
If an attempted murder “only” causes injury, most Christians would say the attacker offended both God and the victim. But most would say the victim cannot absolve the sin against God, so forgiveness by the victim is irrelevant to God’s punishment.
But if forgiveness by the victim is irrelevant, doesn’t that invalidate court hearings that have any victim impact statements?
If the Judeo-Christian(-Islamic, -Mormon) god accepted the concept of forgiveness, He would not have required the blood sacrifice of His (purportedly only-begotten) son as any form of atonement for “sins” which inflicted no harm on Himself or His stuff beyond “look what you made Me do!”
As things allegedly turned out, He insisted on blood, agony, and death – and even then didn’t lift the omnigenerational curses He placed on His own mini-Mes.
I am not Jewish, but it was explained to me that the atonement that Yom Kippur is about asking for forgiveness from God, but that it didn’t replace getting forgiveness (or at least atoning) for offenses against other people. As I was told, if you’d harmed another person, you were supposed to make amends with them (=getting forgiveness?) before asking God for forgiveness.
It always bugs me the way in many capital-C Christian groups, getting (presumed) forgiveness from God is considered an adequate substitute for making amends for injuring someone else. And sometimes a substitute for stopping injuring them. One serious problem with the Medieval concept of forgiveness of sins was that people you could go on “sinning” (i.e., doing awful things) and it didn’t count as long as you got your sins pardoned before you died. Deathbed repentance could wipe away any amount of evil-doing, so why bother to be good during your lifetime?
A really weird consequence was that at some point in history, there was a problem with child murders. If a servant girl’s circumstances were so bad that she saw no way out but to die, she would kill a very young child and then confess. The child was too young to sin, so it would go to Heaven, and the girl would be condemned to death, confess her sins and be forgiven, and go to Heaven, too. Suicide was an unforgivable sin, so if she just killed herself, she would go to Hell.
I agree that Calvinism is bats&*&& crazy. But in the context of an omniscient, omnipotent God, it is the only logically consistent position. Plus, the Babble itself says God created evil as well as good. Omnibenevolence is not consistent with Christian theology, their protestations aside (and as exemplified in the Bible multiple times).
Another problem with the whole forgiveness game is it is used to hush up and stifle the victims of abuse. In the Amish community, I have read, powerful men have long preyed on young girls, who are told they must FORGIVE their abusers. So the abuse continues. I have read the Jehovah’s Witnesses are also a hotbed of abuse, with the added punishment of shunning for the victims who don’t go along.
Allison#13 — in the ten days between Rosh HaShanah (New Year) and Yom Kippur, lots of Jews will contact people that they think they have wronged in the past and try to reconcile with them. They also often publish open letters: “If you believe that I have mistreated you, please let me know so that I can make amends.” It’s not universal, but it’s a notable phenomenon.
@bmiller
I think that’s the point of this. By having the being in charge forgive the person it’s then expected that the people underneath them forgive them too. So it’s an authoritarian tool that fosters social unity by stopping people from holding grudges. So kind of like scapegoats.
Also bullshit that allows abusers in positions of power to continue to abuse people, but as i said it’s authoritarian.
Andreas Avester@#8:
I agree with pretty much your entire comment, though I prefer to characterize religion as “a technique of political control.”
In treating this topic, my approach is going to be to talk about the moral flaws of god, arguendo such a being exists, when I’m talking about the actual nuts and bolts of christianity. When I get around to the morals of christians themselves I intend to raise the issue the way you did – namely that they are participating in an immoral authoritarian system of political control and claiming to believe that it is actually the basis for our existence, which it clearly cannot be since there are lots of better and more factual explanations that match observable reality. I.e.: given the available evidence it is obvious to anyone who thinks about it that christianity is a lie foisted on people to control them, and anyone claiming otherwise is participating in a lie in order to maintain political advantage. I’ll note further that, as we watch how evangelicals tied cinderblocks to their ankles (i.e.: Trump) and threw them off bridges (i.e.: the 2020 elections) that ought to be fairly obvious, too. This is about power, privilege, and property, not about some pie in the sky story.