I have to admit. I’ve been thinking about why forgiveness is necessary. The values and benefits of forgiveness can extend into any realm of relationships. Most importantly, forgiveness helps to maintain balanced relationships with other individuals. Let me explain? Please?

“the good book says”

Christ taught to forgive 70 times 7. The Lord then follows up with a parable. I love this parable! That parable is so ironic, yet profound in it’s teaching!

Paraphrased, there is a servant that owes 10,000 talents to their Lord. The Lord comes to the servant in order to reckon the debt. That servant pleads and begs with his Lord to forgive the debt. And so the Lord has mercy upon that servant and the debt is forgiven.

That same servant goes to a coworker that owes the servant a debt of 100 pence. The coworker pleads for forgiveness of the debt which the servant doesn’t grant.

Other coworkers hear what that servant did and they inform their Lord. The Lord gets angry and tells the servant that he should have forgiven the debt of 100 pence becaues the Lord forgave the servant’s debt of 10,000 talents.

It is heavily ironic that the servant did not forgive the debt of 100 pence whereas his own debt of 10,000 talents was forgiven. Those two money values are starkly different, which makes it ironic that the 100 pence debt was not forgiven.

Due to the irony, it teaches that the Jesus Christ will forgive the massive debt that an individual has with him. Because of a forgiven massive debt, Christ expects an individual to behave similarly with other people, because an individual’s debt is very insignificant to what the individual owes to Jesus Christ.

I wonder what else I can learn about forgiveness.

God’s Forgiveness

Perhaps it makes it easier if we remember that that is how He loves us. Not for any nice, attractive qualities we think we have, but just because we are the things called selves.

C.S. Lewis

God loves every single being on this Earth, and the reason why He loves every one is because they are unique individuals with their own story. God has an infinite capactiy to sit down with an individual and understand them.

Forgiving Oneself

No one is more on our side than the Savior. He allows us to take and keep retaking His exams. To become like Him will require countless second chances in our day-to-day struggles with the natural man […]

Lynn G. Robbins

Mistakes are going to happen. That is a given rule of life. But that is also not meant to bring one down! I believe that the mistakes that one does are meant to demonstrate a measure of what a person can work on. Then a person works on what they have mistaken, then they can improve to be a better person. God is perfectly willing to grant someone the opportunity to become better.

Forgiveness and the Golden Rule

The classic golden rules states something like the following. “Do unto others as you would have done to you”. Remarkably, I think this applies to forgiveness as well, with a slight spin.

If I want to be forgiven, then I better forgive others as well. This for that.

When tragedy strikes, we should not respond by seeking personal revenge but rather let justice take its course and then let go. […]The Savior has offered to all of us a precious peace through His Atonement, but this can come only as we are willing to cast out negative feelings of anger, spite, or revenge. For all of us who forgive “those who trespass against us,” […] the Atonement brings a measure of peace and comfort.

James E. Faust

In the context of forgiveness, letting something go means to not hold a fault against a person. Holding a fault against a person almost seems judgmental in a bad way. In my experience, a good indicator for if I have forgiven someone is how I still feel towards them. If I tell a story of how someone did something horrible, and I still feel bitter, then forgiveness hasn’t been applied.

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 everythng - God and our friends and ourselves included - as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.

C.S. Lewis

I believe that one shouldn’t expect to be forgiven if you have forgiven another. The only thing that really matters here is if you have forgiven another person and truly let something go. Letting something go will free oneself of that burden of anger and resentment. Anger and resentment will convince a person that “grey is black”, and those emotions will cloud the senses of what is truly bad. The true internal resolution of a conflict is to just let something go and do not hold it against them.

Nothing

What are the requirements of forgiveness? Nothing. Nothing is required. I believe there is nothing required in order to forgive someone. But because it is human nature to be so hard, it certainly seems like there are requirements behind forgiving another person.

It is only when someone feels bitter that forgiveness becames a little more hard. Forgiveness is like a mind game. It is a game to see how well you can not let something bother you. Bitterness makes forgiveness seem hard and there are requirements. But there isn’t.

End

I hope that it can be seen that forgiveness is very valuable. God is loving, so He will forgive. With God’s forgiveness, one can progress and learn in this life. Along with God’s forgiveness, one is required to forgive another, so that one sees “white as white”. I think that when one sees “white as white”, then one has a proper view point of what relationships really are.