Zen Flow — Pope John Paul II forgives attempted assassin same day in May 1981, visits assassin Christmas time 1983
- Thread starter Multicolored Lemur
- Start date
This is where Christian forgiveness is active, not passive.
I think Buddhism has its own style of forgiveness, with potentially interesting tweaks in viewpoints, skills, maybe even a fallback position, etc, etc. I hope so, and might like to learn more.
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Joel Osteen was talking about hard cases of forgiveness, and he lost me —
He mentioned atrocities of war.
And he mentioned sexual abuse in a family which goes on for years. But what he didn’t mention was that often the mother knows or strongly suspects, and doesn’t act to prevent.
Maybe the mother doesn’t have a job and is scared to death of being alone in the world. Maybe she doesn’t want to be bothered by all the steps in reporting it ? ?
And often it’s the small reasons which are harder to forgive. And I’ve read that often the adult daughter has a harder time forgiving her own mother than the male relative who abused her.
This whole episode convinced me that Joel is just not that sophisticated a person. He’s not very good. He hasn’t read widely. And/or long personal conversations in which he’s really listened. Or not enough of them.
He mentioned atrocities of war.
And he mentioned sexual abuse in a family which goes on for years. But what he didn’t mention was that often the mother knows or strongly suspects, and doesn’t act to prevent.
Maybe the mother doesn’t have a job and is scared to death of being alone in the world. Maybe she doesn’t want to be bothered by all the steps in reporting it ? ?
And often it’s the small reasons which are harder to forgive. And I’ve read that often the adult daughter has a harder time forgiving her own mother than the male relative who abused her.
This whole episode convinced me that Joel is just not that sophisticated a person. He’s not very good. He hasn’t read widely. And/or long personal conversations in which he’s really listened. Or not enough of them.
AgnosticBoy
Open-minded Skeptic
As nice and as positive as Joel Osteen tends to be, I would hope that his type of forgiveness would also go with justice. Sure, forgive the abuser, but don't remove the consequences. Unfortunate, it may take going through the consequences to get people to really repent and think twice next time.
I celebrate all the parts, including the human parts.
But I don’t want to put power in the hands of people who have shown they are stupid, anger-driven, crazy a 3rd of the time, etc. Which we kind of do when we set pre-conditions.