Forgiveness

During today’s discussion, we talked about people’s different conception on forgiveness; what it means and whether once a person forgives that this is done and things are forgiven.
Which implies that this is a one time and leaves the consequences vague and ambivalent about feelings and the reality of human interaction when offences happen to one another. This negates the awareness that feelings and emotions do not follow a specific time and one could not determine when certain things can crop up as different situations might elicit them…I disagree that forgiveness is a one time event (this does not diminish the act that forgiveness took place) and I do think that sometimes it is a process that one goes through since there are certain things that come up even when the initial forgiveness has taken place, which then requires a continual forgiveness for consequences that we become conscious and aware of after the act.

I think that there are certain areas in our lives that require constant forgiving and that there are times that behaviors are remembered, not necessarily in the context of necessitating forgiveness, but as a boundary and essential thing to rebuild a new relationship that would prevent recurrence of the same past offences. Recalling of the past might at times be necessary and required as part of the healing process to adjust and renegotiate the relationship and help rebuild a more wholesome interaction, but this does not necessarly mean that forgiveness did not or is not taking place. It might encourage a more wholesome interaction as the past is recognized and despite that fact, a new relationship could be rebuild out of the love for one another’s well being and willingness to encourage one another.

Maybe we dichotomize too much. It might be that forgiveness and healing are happening at the same time as we live it out with each other. Do we at times demand too much of what forgiveness ought to look like or feel like at a certain moment in time when it might not be appropriate to expect those things due to the nature of the relationship. Or maybe, we might not even fully realize the fullness of this forgivenss at this present time on earth.

“for though I may be able to make a retrospective judgment that “I have forgiven” the others, forgiveness cannot be confined to a moment-even a moment at the conclusion of a long, timeful process. For we must continue to embody that forgiveness into the future. “to forgive for the moment is not difficult” Lewis rite to Malcolm, “but to go on forgiving, to forgive the same offence again every time it recurs to the memory- there’s the real tussle”…the craft of forgiveness requires an ongoing process of renarrating the past so that we can remember it truthfully and well; and as such, we need not to “forget” but to cultivate a timeful embodiment that enables us to remember the past in the context of a liberating new life oriented to God’s eschatological future”. Gregory Jones, 237 (Embofying Forgiveness)

Its common among Christian theology to believe to "forgive and forget", and that Jesus "ignores" our sins as a way of understanding forgiveness...but maybe it might not be good to forget because it can be a cause to repeat the same sin and facilitate a cycle of sinfulness (i think that this can also minimize the gravity of sin by just making it seem inconsequential), and that Jesus remembers and fully knows the extent of our sinfulness, and despite all those, that He came and sacrificed himself in order to allow us to re-engage in a right relationship with Him.