[mrguyorama]

Accept that sometimes when you do a bad thing that permanently harms someone else you don't deserve forgiveness (not everyone is christian FFS) and it's not wrong for that to follow you around forever. If that makes you uncomfortable, too fucking bad, don't irreversibly blind someone.

[cayblood]

One of the profound contributions of Christianity, corroborated in other wisdom traditions, is the assertion that every single one of us ignorantly does irreparable harm to others in the course of our lifetimes. Recognizing this is the beginning of wisdom, and figuring out how to live life in light of this reality has been the driving force behind many different philosophies and religious traditions passed down over the ages. Pretending other people are the problem is the problem. Of course, that doesn't justify gross negligence, but the human ego is very good at dismissing selfish, entropy-increasing behavior as harmless. May I humbly submit that the approach you suggest here is incomplete.

[kelnos]

> One of the profound contributions of Christianity, corroborated in other wisdom traditions, is the assertion that every single one of us ignorantly does irreparable harm to others in the course of our lifetimes.

The problem, though, with Christianity's take on it (or at least what some Christians take from it), is that they push the idea that all you need to do to achieve salvation is to believe in Jesus as savior, and all is fine and dandy. Doesn't matter what sins you've committed, or if you're even truly repentant. Just believe Jesus died for your sins, and you're good.

On one hand I agree that this could promote acceptance that we are all flawed beings, and will all end up doing bad things here and there, and that it's pretty much unavoidable. But I worry that this also can promote a sense of invulnerability and unaccountability. "Doesn't matter what I do, Jesus will take care of me."

[macksd]

> or at least what some Christians take from it > Doesn't matter what I do, Jesus will take care of me

Well yes let's be clear that only a very selective reading of the New Testament allows you to conclude Jesus doesn't think it matters what you do. It's the same kind of logic that leads one to preach the "prosperity gospel". It's very clear that loving Jesus goes hand in hand with loving others and living his commandments as best you can.

[batch12]

Yeah, thats true. There are several verses that back you up here I think. James 2:17-26 and Matthew 7:21-23 come to mind.

Also of course Matthew 22:36-40.

[Loughla]

I genuinely don't get the prosperity gospel. Can someone please explain how it could at all be a legitimate interpretation of Christianity? Or is it just a flat out scam the entire way down?

[physicles]

It’s not a scam — well, not all prosperity gospel preachers are scammers, but a few likely are. (Source: back in 2007/08 I was a true believer of a more mainstream Christianity and looked into this stuff in detail) The most charitable interpretation: some Christian traditions really hate wealth, and some see it as a blessing. You can find support for both in the Bible: Jesus is pretty anti-wealth, but then in Revelation 21 you have the New Jerusalem descending down from heaven, and God took the bling and turned it up to 11, and it’s the best thing ever.

Prosperity gospel churches are usually Pentecostal, which means they have a few special ways they like to interpret the Bible:

- They tend to take single Bible verses, often out of context, and use them as a foundation for entire novel lines of teaching. (This is opposed to reading and digesting whole stories)

- Those favorite Bible verses are emphasized, and passages that contradict them are downplayed. Once you decide that the Bible is pro-wealth, it can’t tell you it isn’t. (All Bible-believing Christians do this, whether they realize it or not. It’s called choosing a hermeneutic)

- There’s a culture that it’s common for the individual, especially the preacher, to hear directly from God. It’s pretty hard to argue with someone who claims the Holy Spirit told them something was true. (I always saw this as obviously problematic for a bunch of reasons)

When you put these together, you tend to get weird novel theologies. Other examples in the Pentecostal church include the personal prayer language (aka speaking in tongues) and faith healing.

[krapp]

I don't think the guy who assaulted the moneychangers in the temple, said it would be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter Heaven, and more than once told his followers to give everything they owned to the poor would be down with the prosperity gospel. Jesus would probably recite the parable of the talents, and tell you that if God gives you riches, it's to benefit the community and the poor, not for you to hoard as if you could take any of it with you.

But then again, one could argue that any interpretation of Christianity is legitimate, just as any interpretation of art or literature is legitimate. Prosperity gospel is no more out there than Gnosticism was, and only politics and culture determines what is and isn't canon. It isn't surprising that the prosperity gospel is a product of the capitalist and materialist US.

Still... it seems like a reach.

[aodonnell2536]

This is a line of thinking that really intrigues me, are there any external resources you would suggest to further read about it? Other than the Bible, of course

[macksd]

You Are Here by Thich Nhat Hanh explores this idea a lot. To the extent you consider Buddhist philosophy religious, it is still religious, but it is not the Bible. However the philisophy is similar enough that the author actually references both in harmony. That said it's also a very well received book among secular audiences so if you're intrigued by the idea and don't care much for the Bible, I think you'd like it.

[aodonnell2536]

Thank you! I’ll check it out.

[ImaCake]

I think this is common theme in eastern religions. I feel like I’ve also seen aspects of this in western philosophy. My disclaimer here is I am not well read in any of these topics!

My more general insight is that humans have put a lot of work into trying to seperate themselves from the complications of our obligate social brains. We will always feel bad, but maybe it can be ameliorated.

[tracerbulletx]

Great system for people who want to do a disproportionate amount of harm and not be held accountable in this life.

[bittercynic]

If you make a mistake like this, where you owe a debt that can never be repaid, I think we need some social mechanism where you can do your best to make amends and get some measure of closure. This probably should follow you around forever, but maybe it shouldn't dominate every moment of the rest of your life.

[brightlancer]

> I think we need some social mechanism where you can do your best to make amends and get some measure of closure.

It's called prison.

> This probably should follow you around forever, but maybe it shouldn't dominate every moment of the rest of your life.

Prison (and convictions generally) shouldn't follow folks forever because it disincentivizes rehabilitation, it incentivizes recidivism, it labels someone based upon behavior 20 years ago but not necessarily since, etc.

The victims are not morally obligated to forgive anyone. As a society, it's more beneficial to legally and morally treat offenders as having paid their sentence.

[WolfeReader]

>> I think we need some social mechanism where you can do your best to make amends and get some measure of closure. > It's called prison.

Please explain how prison enables someone to make amends and get a sense of closure.

[pcthrowaway]

> > I think we need some social mechanism where you can do your best to make amends and get some measure of closure.

> It's called prison.

No.

Prison (and the threat of it) accomplishes a few things:

It's punitive, which allows people who enjoy retribution to feel some satisfaction at their idea of justice being carried out.

The threat of prison theoretically prevents some people from inflicting some societal harms on others.

And it keeps dangerous people away from the general public.

It also has the consequence of lining the pockets of the people running for-profit prisons (this is actually really really bad for society though), and also costs taxpayers a ton of money.

And another nice benefit of adversely affecting minorities, poor people, and otherwise marginalized people disproportionately.

It largely is not successful at rehabilitating people. Maybe some people, sometimes, but in the U.S. at least, there are more people who come out of prison more broken than they were going in, and also have fewer options for living an ethical life coming out. They fall in with gangs for protection, and those networks extend back out of the prison. The money spent imprisoning people (especially for things like nonviolent, victimless crimes) could likely do much more good to society if it was used differently.

If someone theoretically did something bad, and was remorseful for their actions, and we could say with a degree of certainty that they were no more likely to commit the same act again than any random person on the street, I think it would be better to not imprison them, and spend that money on, say, social services instead.

If you're looking for models of actually allowing people to atone and work towards improvements in their future behaviour, we'd do better with a restorative justice model: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restorative_justice

[patch_cable]

I’m curious what happens in the restorative justice model of the victim doesn’t want to participate?

[lr4444lr]

It's absolutely impossible for prison to morally absolve prisoners: most do not enter there willingly (i.e., they plead not guilty) and their entire freedom to do anything, much less make amends, is stripped away. Rehabilitation does nothing for the flesh and blood victim they're in there for hurting.

[bhelkey]

> most do not enter there willingly (i.e., they plead not guilty)

The idea that most incarcerated people pled not guilty, were tried and found guilty, and are now incarcerated is not true in the US.

Many of incarcerated are still awaiting trial. The DOJ reports that a quarter of those in US jail and prison are awaiting trial [1]. I suspect most of those cannot afford bail.

In terms of after trial, npr reports, "98% of criminal cases in the federal courts end with a plea bargain" [2].

[1] https://www.ojp.gov/files/archives/pressreleases/2022/us-jai....

[2] https://www.npr.org/2023/02/22/1158356619/plea-bargains-crim....

[theoriginaldog]

Of course rehabilitation does nothing for the victim, its a process that is concerned about the offender.

[mrguyorama]

No, victims are not obligated to forgive you and neither is society. Sometimes people do bad things that cannot be undone and should not be forgotten. Sometimes that person doing the bad thing is you. Even if you didn't intend to harm someone, even if you did nothing wrong, even if you followed best known procedures and were fully attentive, you can still cause irreparable harm to someone else, and we shouldn't just pretend that's okay as some coping strategy.

Sometimes you hurt someone and you should feel bad about that. Deal with it. It's a part of life to be an imperfect human and this should help you keep in mind that EVERYONE IS AN IMPERFECT HUMAN.

[bittercynic]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but it seems like we're in agreement, no?

[bittercynic]

Replying to myself - I didn't understand the context of this conversation before, but I just read Mark Wahlberg's wikipedia page. Yikes. Seems like the guy was (and is?) a violent, hateful, lunatic. Something smells very off about one of his victims releasing a public statement that he has forgiven Mark.

I was not intending to argue that he should be pardoned.

[blq10]

We do that, it's called imprisoning people for a very long time.

This is generally unpopular among liberal and left leaning spaces, and is only marginally popular in right leaning ones.

[mrguyorama]

My stance says nothing about punishment, imprisonment, or retribution, and is more about recognizing that there are things humans can do to each other that are irreversibly damaging, and that is not an okay thing to do, and recognizing that you have caused someone irreparable harm that will never be "fixed" is the emotionally mature stance. I'm not even saying you should wake up every day with a weight on your shoulders for killing someone, but rather it's something you should keep in mind, and victims owe nothing to the people that harmed them, and I do not believe expecting victims to tell people doing bad things "everything is okay" is beneficial to society. Being without forgiveness from those you harmed is not equivalent in any way to being in prison for life.

[mike_hock]

I'm gonna be a bitter cynic here and say that blindness also dominates every moment of the rest of the victim's life, so why shouldn't the perpetrator suffer the same fate?

[hypertele-Xii]

Because "an eye for an eye" leaves everyone blind.

[theoriginaldog]

The only place where you find this mirror Talion punishment today are islamistic countries that implement the sharia. Do you really think they are paragons of fair justice?

[civilitty]

He’s an A-list actor who makes tens of millions of dollars per film. He can make what most of us would consider “fuck you money” in the span of a few months. By no means does it dominate his life.

I dont think he shows real contrition either. After that Times article he backpedaled on the pardon request and told an interviewer months later that he was “pushed into it.”

[stronglikedan]

Accepting those things seems like a miserable way to live. No thanks. I prefer to move on with my life, even when I was wronged.

[Jiro]

This is about if you have wronged someone else, not if you are wronged,

If you've wronged someone else, maybe you should live miserably if you can't possibly make up for the wrong.

[superb_dev]

Are some accidents truly unforgivable?

No one should be punished for the rest of their life because they wronged someone in their childhood. If they’ve grown, feel remorse and regret, then they’ve done their time and need to forgive themselves.

There no point in carrying around such a burden. Very few people deserve to be miserable.

[mrguyorama]

This post does not limit itself to true accidents. Indeed, both people involved were negligent. Preventable harm that you do not prevent through your own choices can very well be unforgivable. Pretending that everything should be forgivable is a heinous thing to do to victims, and they have every right to not forgive or forget if you have caused them irreversible harm through negligence or accident. A victim has the right to never forget how you changed their life.

You do not have a right to be free from the burden you have caused someone else.

[progmetaldev]

I can't necessarily agree with this. Some people are hurt over extremely minor offenses, which may or may not have been an accident. What if the perpetrator of the offense has grown and tried to make amends for the wrong they've done? Do they need to carry the burden of guilt forever? I think there is room for forgiveness of oneself, even if those you have burdened do not forgive you. Maybe it's not the same, but everyone is different. I would hate to think that someone in their early teen years did something selfish and stupid (like most of us do), and they were not forgiven by the victim, and they had to carry that with them to the end of their life. Society does not grow with an overwhelming sense of guilt (now, this is very different if you intentionally cause malice and are truly not sorry, and do nothing to make things right).

[mrguyorama]

Eh, not that harshly. Not that you should be miserable but that such a large event SHOULD have a large impact on you as a person and SHOULD maybe cause changes in how you live your life. You should still be treated with dignity and basic human decency unless and until you show yourself to continually harm others for selfish or negligent reasons. One bad action doesn't make you a bad person but it is still a bad action and that should be remembered.

Actions have consequences and we shouldn't try to hand wave those away because some people seem uninterested in going to therapy and dealing with the guilt they have. You can always do better, but that doesn't invalidate the bad.

People are complex, the world is not black and white, everyone is a huge story with complex rationalizations. Reflect on why you do things, reflect on how you affect those around you.

[progmetaldev]

There is also power in discovering how to forgive yourself, especially if your wrong was unintentional, or you made a mistake that you deeply regret. It's too easy to walk around with guilt in your life, and maybe you don't ever get to speak to the one you wronged. Should you take that to your grave? Does that help anyone?

[Sammi]

That just breeds more misery and does noone any good.

If you've done something bad, then forgive yourself and be kind to yourself, because you need to do better in the future. This is a better lesson that will do everyone more good.

[femiagbabiaka]

This is basically the raison d'etre of the American justice system today. Of course, I also think it would be nice if someone who committed hate crimes was justly punished for it, but stepping back from this specific example, I think the bloodlust around what constitutes a "just punishment" goes too far in most cases.

[progmetaldev]

The American justice system seems to be based upon profit, and keeping people reoffending in order to continue keeping the justice system in place. There is no incentive to reform as the system currently stands. It is a major failure of society that recidivism is an expected consequence of being "in the system."

[femiagbabiaka]

I used to think that it was biased towards profit, but after the last 5 or so years, I think that's just a side effect. American society believes strict and long punishment for wrongdoing is the solution to crime. We had a wave of progressive AD's elected into office and they barely lasted 3 years, they're all getting booted.

[petsfed]

The profit part of it really came down to "well, just punishing them is leaving money on the table!"

Now, it might be the case that the people profiting from the string and long punishments are so cynical and greedy that they started campaigning for longer, harsher sentences specifically for their own enrichment, but the people are buying it as purification and penance through pain. The prison industrial complex only works as a business because the people already want what's being sold to them.

[mrguyorama]

My stance says nothing about punishment. Punishment has nothing to do with lack of forgiveness. Forgiveness is also not a necessity to treat other people, including those who have harmed you, as inherently flawed humans that deserve basic things like dignity.

Forgiveness is a broken concept. Just because you can be a better person later in life should not absolve you of bad things you did before. This isn't a call for everyone to carry grudges, but a call that we should stop trying to play this dumb "just keep pretending everything is always and will always be 'okay' in some way" ideology. People sometimes do bad things because they are bad people or do not care about others, and it's okay to not forgive that. People sometimes do bad things through no real fault of their own and it's okay to still not forgive that.

[femiagbabiaka]

It's an interesting idea. Law, justice systems, were all created in order to adjudicate that level of animosity and prevent it passing on to future generations. Holding on to a grudge, not even out of a sense of justice, but purely out of hate, seems like a path towards poor mental health. But I'm lucky enough to not have any hate that strong -- those I've chosen not to forgive I've instead chosen to forget, which is a privilege relative to the level of wrongs done.

[JackFr]

Well that’s the thing. No one deserves forgiveness (Christians especially should know that forgiveness is not earned with merit, but distributed with grace.) But genuine forgiveness is a powerful thing, though it’s very hard.

[NoZebra120vClip]

"Sir," the woman cried, "If he deserved it, it wouldn't be mercy. And so I ask for mercy."

https://chrismowery.blogspot.com/2016/02/a-life-lesson-from-...

[Sammi]

That just breeds more misery and does noone any good.

If you've done something bad, then forgive yourself and be kind to yourself, because you need to do better in the future. This is a better lesson that will do everyone more good.

[norir]

Judge not, lest ye be judged.

[hiatus]

As if that were the case. If only those that did not judge were spared judgement themselves.

[bandie91]

important to note that it is not an absolute command. it's qualified as it follows: "For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."