To forgive is to intentionally offer goodness to the person who has not been good or has not been good to you. To forgive in order to please God contradicts what forgiveness truly is.
Those who believe that God unconditionally forgives the sinner—and that if the sinner is lost, it is because he or she refuses to accept God's forgiveness—naturally hold that we need to forgive to be like the God who made us and in His honor.
The forgiving Christian is grounded in God’s pardon. In other words, "God forgives me and forgives through me. He gives me the power to forgive. I forgive casually because God is forgiving, and I forgive motivationally because He is forgiving. God both makes my forgiving possible and inspires me to forgive." That means forgiveness is conditioned on the existence of a forgiving God! No God? Then forgiveness is an illusion. If your faith is not real—even if you think it is—then your forgiveness is fragile and will not last. Without a God to protect it, forgiveness is only as good as the next two seconds. If you worry about the amount of failing forgiveness there is, and the trouble forgiveness causes when it is not real, then worry about that risk!
Free will is a function for deciding what you will do. It is about deciding first. It is not about morality first. Giving free will a religious role is vile because it suggests, “If you do X, then you have done wrong in the eyes of God, and that is what matters.” God-based forgiving and seeking His pardon is inherently degrading. It involves a denial of what free will is all about.
The Bible has a word for free and unconditional forgiveness. The word is charizomai. It is granted even without being asked for. God, then, forgives every single sin of every single person this way. That means God is in a right relationship with you, but believers add that it does not mean you are responding or making things right from your side.
What you have to do from your side is called aphesis. It is translated as forgiveness in the Bible. This is based on you saying sorry and meaning it, taking steps if possible to fix the harm you have done, and living better in the future. 1 John 1:9 says God will forgive us if we repent, and it is said to mean this forgiveness.
The only problem is that this is not God forgiving you but you accepting it. So why does John say God forgives conditionally?
The reality is that the Bible contradicts itself. The doctrine that God forgives unconditionally and that any benefit is conditional on our response raises these issues:
If God struggles to forgive and you forgive to cooperate, but the goal of forgiveness can be reached, that means both sides grow. The struggle is about it being mature. A God obviously cannot struggle, so whatever you get from Him is not forgiveness, no matter how much it seems like it.
It is passive-aggressive to accuse sinners of having forgiveness all along and not taking it.
Forgiveness is not about treating saint and sinner the same, as their deeds do matter. Unconditional forgiveness is not really forgiveness. It is passive-aggressive against good people. It treats both evil and good people as if they cannot earn anything bad. That denies human dignity.
Personal antagonism towards the offender is the only real punishment—and punishment means nothing without it. That is why it is extremely important that we do not condemn more actions than we need to. In practice, that means trimming moral rules down to the essentials and assuming the best we can about people's motives. Banning personal ill feeling towards a bad person is a way of furthering and protecting their evil while feigning condemnation. A God who forgives unconditionally is only going to corrupt—and so will belief in Him! The believer will become immune to what others think of them, for it will be, "God does not look at me like that, and that is all that matters to me." Suppressing antagonism is unnatural and an act of violence against nature. It is meeting violence with another form of violence.
Those who demonstrate the ability to forgive are often disliked for taking the high moral ground. They want to be superior to those who do not forgive or cannot forgive. And if they forgive something major, they feel superior to those who forgive but do not have much to forgive. We can forgive those who forgive if we see how they have moved on and been an example. But that will mean they have to produce good fruit on the human level. Forgiving that is made about pleasing God, not man, will not show such fruit. Forgiving for man is wiser than forgiving for God because with man you really have to move on and do the hard work involved. Forgiving for man feels right and inspirational because it is made about man. I'd feel offended if I were forgiven just so that God could be happy. That is actually bypassing me and not forgiving at all.
If there are forgiving people, then we understandably should be skeptical of them, for most forgivers are fakes who want to be morally superior out of pride. Our skepticism should be deeper when the forgivers are all about God and doing it for Him! They want to be better than you, who forgive for the enemy's sake, your own, and for the sake of the community.
A popular definition of forgiveness is the restoration of relationship, not just wiping the slate clean. If you rebuild your relationship with your wife or parent mainly or solely for God, then it is not about building your relationship with them. Forgiveness is essentially atheist, but because it is good, it has been hijacked by believers.
Forgiveness—especially God’s forgiveness—makes no sense, and it is another reason for discarding belief in free will. Where there is no freedom, there is nothing to forgive. Mercy exposes some reasons why it is so bad to believe in free will. You can show mercy if you believe that evil is not sin but sickness.
The scary thing about Christian mercy is that it is better to give mercy to the more undeserving than to somebody who deserves it more. The worse the sin you forgive, the more praise you get from God, for it shows the most gratitude to God who has forgiven you so much. That plainly says that religious considerations should have more weight than human considerations. It says that man is made for faith, and not faith for man. Yet the inconsistent Jesus was the one who said man was not made for the Sabbath but the Sabbath for man! That translates as man not being made for prayer but prayer for man, which shows that somebody may not always have been a believer in God and was perhaps a humanist or near-humanist at times.
Religion says that God has done us the greatest favor by forgiving us, so the worse the sin we forgive, the better. We should concentrate on forgiving the worst and only take time, if it is available later, to forgive those who were not so bad.
It would be churlish to deny mercy to a good man who has committed some crime and who isn’t sorry, and to give it to somebody who has barely done a good deed in his life and who is sorry. Good has to be acknowledged. Actions must be put before virtues and attitudes. It is results we need.
The Church says that two equally evil people can come to God in confession for pardon and both will be pardoned—even though one was barely sorry and the other deeply sorry. They get the main benefit: forgiveness. So the goal is reached without much resolve to avoid evil in the future. This is condoning, not forgiveness, even by the Church’s own standards.
The Bible detests, on the authority of God, atheists, homosexuals, and heretics. If God is right to hate them, then they should receive less mercy than those God likes or likes better. The Christian faith infers that a man who kills one of these people should receive mercy in preference to somebody who has slaughtered somebody God likes better. We plainly see that no religion should be allowed to get away with condemning atheists, homosexuals, and heretics.
Christians can do you harm. Then they feel guilt and a need for forgiveness. Why do they look for forgiveness from God? As God comes first, going to Him for forgiveness matters more than going to you. They transfer their guilt for how they hurt you to God by pretending it was Him they hurt, not you. This is appalling. No wonder they soon sin again! No wonder they could still be a danger to you.
God alone matters. Jesus said we must love Him with all our hearts. God does not want us to be sorry for thumping John but for breaking His law that we must not exercise unnecessary violence. It’s about God, not John. In this scenario, we see there is no value in arguing that sin should be avoided because God is good and that God is therefore a helpful idea.
Many people like the God concept because they want to use it to exploit others. They want others to feel guilty about hurting other people because it hurts the perfectly good God who is not physically harmed but who disapproves of the sin, is justly offended by it, and can punish for it. But the truth of the matter is that it is none of God’s business what we do to each other. The reply, “Oh yes it is, because God loves us all, and whoever hurts another person hurts what is dear to Him and therefore hurts Him,” does not work. Then it is not so much that the person is hurt that matters to Him but the insult offered to Him by damaging His property.
Another is that God made us all, and to hurt another is to hurt His property. That does not work either.
Why? Sin cannot hurt God, and to say it does is only a metaphor. He does not disapprove of sin but “disapproves.” Disapproval is not pleasant, while God’s happiness cannot be marred. We might be offending God, but we have nothing to apologize to Him for. It is like saying sorry to a man who does not mind you kicking his wall because it can’t do him any harm. God would be morally bankrupt if He did mind our sins. And God says He will bring good out of the evil we have done, and He uses evil—though He is almighty—meaning He needs it. Once again, He has no business telling us to come to Him for forgiveness.
To be more concerned about an invulnerable God than a human being is a great mental sickness. It is a further insult against people who, after being hurt, need to be assured that they are loved for themselves and not for any God.
With God, you are asking for pardon as if the sin you committed was against Him and not John, which is not only evil but also stupid. The sin could not be entirely against God. The fact that John was hurt has nothing to do with God, for John is not God. The fact is that God’s handiwork was damaged, but that is a separate issue. You can’t go to God and say, “I confess that I hit John, and I want you to forgive me.” What you say is, “I confess and ask forgiveness for abusing your creation, a person You made, and thereby I disrespected Your rights and Your property.” Christians have been conditioned to go to God for relief when their consciences condemn them, but in fact, they can’t do that. It doesn’t make sense. This is really about them using religion to feel better. It is evil to apologize to God for John's suffering. Go to John. The matter is not over until you forget God and do that. Obviously, God is pompously making what is directed at John His business. So this shows the true face of the mercy of God. It is based on hatred of the rights of the person and is therefore condoning sin, not true mercy—for it is sin itself. The pardon is just used by religion as an attractant for the unwary. The only reason we get any mercy is because God wants to show off His power. To exalt the mercy of God is to declare that God should be followed and obeyed because He is powerful, not because He is good. Might is right, and if the Church is the Church of God, it will be a dictatorship. God is a substitute for apologizing to John. It is certain too that Christianity would never have succeeded if it wasn’t sending people to apologize to God instead of those whom they hurt. They even make it more important to go to God than to the offended party when it should be the other way around.
If you have sinned against God at all, then you have sinned indirectly against Him and directly against John. The emphasis is put on asking God for pardon, which could make some sense if God exists more than John. But this is incorrect because the person directly offended still comes first. God has stolen the place of John and is sticking His nose in where it should not be.
If we forgive for God, that means we forgive because God has forgiven. Many Christians say that when God forgives, He is not ceasing to have a spiteful attitude toward somebody, for He is not like that, but He is simply canceling their punishment, and He only punishes because He loves and is making peace with them to help them do better in the future when they are set free from their sins. Some say the punishment is inflicted by the sin, and so God has to prevent that. It is impossible to see how a God who is almighty could be spiteful, for He does not need anything from us. If He cancels their punishment, then we must do the same, and so we cannot put criminals in jail. God is more important than us, and if He can do it, so should we. So the view that God simply cancels the punishment is ridiculous because it wants us to encourage criminals by doing nothing about them.
The forgiveness so eulogized by the Church is really fake forgiveness because real forgiveness is supposed to be something free and not forced. The motive behind real forgiveness is supposed to be basically one of generosity. This means giving a person what you do not need to give them and what they have not earned. But Christianity, with a forgiving God, makes it a duty for you to forgive others. Jesus said that because God has forgiven you, you have to forgive others in gratitude to God. His claim that He died so that our sins might be pardoned makes it worse because if we do not forgive, we are insulting God for He got their sins paid for. What the Church believes in is not forgiving but condoning—condoning is admitting an act was wrong but choosing to reward it as if it never happened. It gives you a pat on the back for being a villain while pretending to condemn your badness! Many philosophers believe there is no difference between forgiving and condoning, full stop. The important thing about forgiveness is what it does in practice. It does seem that it is Catholic delusionalism to say that forgiving and condoning are not the same when both have the same effect and the same dangers.
If God has forgiven already and all I need to do is accept, then I cannot ask for forgiveness. I can only say, “I accept.” That is not character-forming or productive forgiving. Real forgiving is a hard process where both offended and offender have to walk together, sometimes fall along the way, and both learn and better themselves through the journey. Forgiveness that does not involve a battle between offended and offender to learn from the experience is doomed to fail—not necessarily today, but next week is another week.
Nobody but the most superficial would think that God forgives all along, even as they sin. If you take your wrongdoing seriously, you will struggle to believe that. The passive-aggressive side of such doctrines—as sweet as they seem—is that the person is being judgmentally accused of doing self-inflicted harm. In other words, they are not forgiving themselves by taking the forgiveness God has already granted. So they are ungrateful. They totally ask for any bad results. Without faith in God, we would have less to condemn them for! Look at the example they give others, for you don't see too many running to God to reconcile with Him.
Christian forgiveness is superficial. Religion urges us to be genuine about it and do it for the sake of God. That ensures that its pleas for us to forgive will not work. Those who forgive just have the personality type, the predisposition, to forgive. Religion must never be given the credit.