If You Forgive Yourself - Are You Forgiven?

If you have committed a sin against somebody else and you forgive yourself - are you forgiven?

heh, i almost made this thread myself but you beat me to it

lets take away the word "sin" for a moment, as its probably only going to spark pointless religious banter somewhere down the line.

if you do something wrong - and i mean wrong by your own personal definition of the word - what else are you left to do, but forgive yourself? religious fanatics will tell you to "repent" constantly, for you are always doing wrong somehow or another. to me, repenting is simply a route to personal forgiveness.

yet i struggle. simply forgiving yourself is healthier on your immidiate psyche, but in the long run i feel more damage is done by it. my personal views coincide with the "eye for an eye..." philosophy, so if i screw up, i feel i must be punished in some way, shape or form before i am able to forgive myself.

if you do wrong, and forgive yourself soon after - with no consequences or reprecussions other than your own feeling of failure - you are much more likely to do wrong again, and more frequently than if you had some type of real, solid punishment for yourself.

without the punishment, you will probably feel less and less sadness/regret/ect for doing something wrong. ignorant and lazy people are produced this way.

People tell you to forgive yourself, people say they forgive themselves, but can you.

What we really do is convince ourselves that we didn't do anything wrong, it wasn't our fault, etc. But we don't forgive ourself.

I think some things really aren't wrong - we were just taught that they were, and those cases we can search out and find the truth and stop condemning ourself. But being careful not to convince ourself that something that is really wrong isn't wrong.

On the religious side of the house - Just going before an alter, saying a prayer and declaring God has forgiven me so you must too doesn't cut it.

I think Ghandi taught forgiveness the best when a man came to him in anguish declaring that he would surely burn in hell fire forever. Ghandi asked him what he could have possibly done so awfull. (at that time religions were at war). He had taken the baby of his enemy and smashed the babies head till it died. So Ghandi told the man to find an orphan child of your enemy and raise it as your own in your enemies religion, and you will be forgiven.

That ofcourse is extreme, the wrong doings that we may do may be on a much smaller scale.

But the solution is usually very simple in most cases you can simply apologize to the person you have offended and hope that they forgive you.

quote:

---

What we really do is convince ourselves that we didn't do anything wrong

---

exactly!

raising the enemies child, or forcing yourself to apologize is the type of "punishment" i was referring to. in doing these types of things, we actually gain and learn from the wrong doing. forgiving yourself and justifying your actions internally doesnt "cut it" either.

Humans... you can't fix the past. Accepting that you have done something wrong whole heartedly and then doing your best to go on with your life is my way of doing things. If you smash a babies head and raise another child it doesn't fix what you did. All your doing is trying to make up for your failures. It's really distressing that you try to live your lifes this way but whatever, thats just me.

quote:

---

What we really do is convince ourselves that we didn't do anything wrong

---

And where does it stop? Will this make the world better?

no. which is why some sort of act of retribution is neccessary. doing something as a kind of penance to cover the damage or pain you caused.

the use of punishment to condition oneself to conform more throughly to one's own beliefs is an interesting concept. i wonder, would one also reward ones self when one does conform admirably to the personal standard? that would strenghten the desired responces just as the punishment would weaken the undesired ones.

If you do something wrong; you'll feel guilty. If you feel guilty; punish yourself. Stick by it; the lessons learned.

If your accused of doing something wrong but you dont feel guilty. You didn't do wrong.

Systems are there for a reason; order so to achieve goals. it doesnt mean they fit you.

I can't give you anything logical, I can just tell you that the thought of punishing myself and rewarding my self just doesn't feel right, I couldn't make myself do it.

Because I do give my feelings some faith without logic, I don't think I would try it.

i dont entirely agree with the idea something being right, as long as you dont feel guilty about it. there are social requirements on the way we behave. just as there are things that are not illegal that you would feel bad about doing.

i dont neccessariyl mean punishing yourself, i mean righting the wrong, undoing what you have done. its not punishment so much as a clearup operation.

Agreed - we are responsible to care for others. Should we not care and not feel guilty - something is wrong.

But I know a few bloggers who have trouble cutting themselves - I think sometimes we feel guilty for things we should not and it leads to self destruction.

When I was a truck driver, you deal with traffic and you get impatient and you say awful things about others even though they don't hear. When you settle down for the evening and go into a truck stop, you find your exceptionally courteous to others and I would notice the drivers would act the same way and pan handlers would always panhandle at truck stops because the truckers would always help out. So I think if you do something wrong there is always opportunity to do something right to make up for that wrong, and that's what we should do.