I was really abused during my childhood by my mom. Before I became a believer, I was unable to forgive her in my own strength; nor did I want to. I did not love her or want anything to do with her. After I became a believer, I learned about how I am forgiven of everything that I’ve ever done and that I’m loved immensely by God, the creator. Being loved by someone who knows every good and bad thing about me is what helps me to love others who treat me wrong. What about you?
Posted: March 1st 2011
Dave Hitt www
Just like “lusting” being a sin (a thought crime) the idea of loving your enemy is goofy.
Actually loving someone who repeatedly and intentionally causes you harm would require some sort of mental illness. It would also be dangerous. Forgiving? Fine, that means that I’ve given up being obsessed with what happened. But it doesn’t mean I’m going to like, much less love, the person who caused me damage. It just means I’m going to avoid them as much as possible, and always be on guard when they’re around.
Posted: March 6th 2011
Paula Kirby www
As others have implied, this question reveals one of the very major problems with Christianity: that striving to achieve its unrealistic and unattainable requirements can too often be a source of real psychological damage to the believer.
There are good psychological reasons why we should not cling to anger or bitterness towards others longer than we can help: learning to let go of vengeful feelings releases us from negative emotions and allows us to rise above the harm that has been done to us. It’s not always easy, but we don’t need Christianity in order to understand this or achieve it.
Yet Christianity requires us to go one further and actively love the person who has so harmed us, and you seem to have just taken that requirement on board unquestioningly. But I’d invite you to question it now. Why should it be a good thing to go beyond the letting go of anger and resentment that is all that is required for our psychological and emotional well-being?
Psychologists will tell you that, while it can certainly be harmful to us to cling to negative emotions for too long, it is equally harmful to us to deny our feelings, or to suppress them. We should be aiming for a healthy balance between permitting ourselves to feel and express the rage, anger, bitterness and even desire for revenge that are the natural responses when someone – especially someone we loved and trusted – has hurt us badly, and recognising when it’s time to move on and let those feelings go.
Letting go – at the appropriate time – is an important lesson to learn in life; but so is learning from our mistakes. And if we have misjudged someone, falsely trusted in them when they were, in fact, causing us harm, then it is important to acknowledge that fact, to learn from it, and to behave differently in future so we can protect ourselves from being hurt, betrayed or abused by that person again. Contrary to what Christianity teaches you, there is no virtue in being a door-mat, or in believing that someone who has repeatedly harmed you and has expressed no sorrow or regret for that harm, and no intention of treating you better in future, will behave differently in future, or is someone you should force yourself to love.
To try to shoe-horn ourselves into synthetic emotions is wrong on so many different levels. We are being untrue to ourselves, we are making it impossible to protect ourselves from future avoidable harm, we are pretending to feel what we do not feel, denying feeling what we do feel, and furthermore, when we fail to achieve those contrived emotions – as indeed we must, if we are honest with ourselves – we then also feel guilty about it. And all this harms not just ourselves, but the very relationships that it is meant to be improving! – for a relationship based on dishonesty, on insincerity, on duty rather than genuine mutual trust and respect and regard, is not a relationship worth having. It demeans the people involved, it demeans the very concept of relationship, and it demeans the concept of love, which is a spontaneous positive response to the characteristics of the other person or it is nothing worthy of the name.
Christianity is truly screwed up. One of the things that were borne in on me in the course of my re-assessment of Christianity and my consequent escape from it, was the unmistakable recognition that my non-Christian friends and acquaintances were, on the whole, far more sane, far more balanced, far more comfortable in their own skin, and therefore far more relaxed and generous towards both themselves and others, and also far better at taking life’s ups and downs in their stride than my Christian friends and acquaintances were. It was my Christian friends, not my non-Christian ones, who tore themselves apart fretting and getting distressed and feeling guilty about simply being human, with human reactions and responses. Christianity requires its followers not to feel what, as humans, they are bound to feel; and then to feel they have failed and are unworthy because they have not been able to live up to some impossible – and psychologically undesirable – standard.
Far better to strive for integrity and honesty in your relationships, and in your expectations of yourself. By all means aim to be generous and gentle in your dealings with others; but don’t forget to be generous and gentle towards yourself too. Be realistic about other people – and about yourself. You are allowed to be human. You don’t have to put yourself through harmful psychological and emotional contortions to make amends for being what you are.
Posted: March 5th 2011
Blaise www
It seems to me like you are confusing 'love’ and 'forgiveness’. Forgiveness isn’t about creating positive feelings for someone else(love), it’s about letting go of negative emotions which torture you internally, while serving no constructive purpose. The wise know that they must learn forgiveness to be truly happy, but only fools love those who mean them harm.
Posted: March 5th 2011
brian thomson www
Like other posters, I have a problem with the concept of “forgiveness”, and not only because it works to benefit the religious organisations and clergy that preach it. Like “prayer”, it’s a way of making yourself and others feel better without actually doing anything. If you simply “forgive” someone who hurt you, how does that work to prevent you or anyone else being hurt by the same person in the future? What else did you do besides “forgive”?
If I may be so blunt: if your mom hurt you that badly, just why should you love and forgive her? Someone who hurts you does not deserve the title of “friend”, never mind “family” and yes, I have personal experience of this. Even the authors of Bible books agree it’s common sense: see Proverbs 26:11 or 2 Peter 2:22, for examples.
Posted: March 4th 2011
Eric_PK
This doctrine is really, really messed up.
First, it means that no matter what I do, if I repent, I am forgiven by god. This is messed up because it’s not god who was wronged, it’s some other person. I can’t forgive you for something that you did to a third party; only the person who is wrong can do the forgiving.
Second, loving others who treat you wrong is just stupid.
Posted: March 3rd 2011
Reed Braden www
If you repetitively and intentionally mistreat me, I will not love you—I can not love you. In fact, I will do everything in my legal power to keep you away from me at all times if you pathologically abuse me.
To love every one makes your love worthless. To give it only to those select few who deserve it makes your love priceless.
Posted: March 2nd 2011
logicel
Christians have no idea how their cheap love-bombing of a religion is repellent to people who are able to seek out secular therapy to overcome childhood abuse (which is what I have done along with many of my friends).
I am loved by my husband and close friends who know everything good and bad about me. Despite having the same thing you imagine you have with your unproven sky daddy, I have no compulsion to love everybody. Well adjusted people do not focus on loving those who abuse them, they focus instead on protecting themselves from further abuse and finding people that can love them well.
All your question does is to inform me why Christianity can be appealing—it appeals to those who do not get proper treatment for their problems. And it is a very 'expensive’ treatment as you have to suspend the very abilities that you need to heal thoroughly.
Christianity: 'solving’ ineffectively non-existent problems since time immemorial.
Posted: March 2nd 2011
Steve Zara www
Why should I love others who treat me wrong? What good does it do me, or them?
How do you get the right to declare that you are forgiven for what you do? If you do wrong, it should be for those who are wronged to forgive you – God is an irrelevant third party.
We should be responsible humans. We make our own morality, love who we want to love, and who deserves love. If we wish to make peace with someone who has wronged us, we need to do that in a way that deals with the issue on this Earth, not involving others.
Posted: March 2nd 2011
bitbutter www
I find the Christian emphasis on love and forgiveness creepy and hollow. I’m happy that I feel under no obligation to feel (or fake) love towards anyone, least of all those who mistreat me. I feel pity for people who are living under such a cruel psychic burden.
If forgiving a transgressor helps a person find peace of mind, then it has some value. But indiscriminate forgiving can also be harmful: to the forgiver because it can make them more likely to stay in situations in which they’re likely to be abused again, and to the transgressor because they have been enabled by the victim absolving them from responsibility for past transgressions.
Posted: March 2nd 2011