Forgiveness Is Earned

You often hear, “You’ve got to forgive so-and-so. Time to let it go. Don’t hold grudges. We’re supposed to just automatically forgive people.” This is coming from sentimental people who are rapidly losing their civilization.

The fact of the matter is that forgiveness, which is to grant pardon to a person, is earned. All too often these feel-goodisms around forgiveness amount to excusing bad behavior without any moral improvement in the perpetrator. As a society, we’re far past the fool me once fool me twice territory and into the rarified air of “fool me literally 100 million times”.

Forgiveness comes out of understanding. A person has to understand:
-why what they did was wrong (ethics + self-knowledge)
-what an accurate restitution amounts to (and to begin paying it)
-how they are committed to being better in the future

Forgiveness isn’t for fools to simply dole out like candy. Yet this is the situation the world finds itself in today. There has been far too much acquiescence in the name of “tolerance” or “fellowship”.

You may not believe in evil but evil certainly believes in you. Those who present themselves like lambs to the slaughter in the name of kindness will find themselves slaughtered. Those who are tough with evil and only recognize true moral rehabilitation as the path to forgiveness will have a civilizational leg to stand on.