“When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle.
Then I realized that the Lord doesn’t work that way,
so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me.”
Emo Philips
I read an excellent blog post the other day about the subject of forgiveness titled, Grappling with Forgiveness. One of my fellow bloggers wrote a comment about this post that really hit home with me. She wrote:
“You take things personally because they are personal and intended as personal. It is just that those callous hurtful people are like soul vandals, or internet virus creators. They don’t really care, they just want to hurt somebody, so they do. Empathetic people tend to see through social niceties to the person underneath, and that often is painful.
They don’t really want forgiveness, they want safety and power. Vandals, of all sorts, cause real pain and real hardship and do real damage. The only protection is to learn to recognize when it’s on purpose and when it is an honest mistake. As perceptive as you are, it won’t take you long to recognize the clues. You may have to work with such people, and interact, but you are not required to like them, or share your privacy, or voluntarily give them access to vulnerabilities, professional or personal.”
Let’s face it, there are people in this world that are vile, period. They have no moral compass, no values and no empathy. They believe that by just saying the words, “I’m sorry”, time after time that it fixes everything. Some people will never change, and their behavior is just part of who they are and their true nature.
There’s a fable I’m reminded of when I think of forgiveness, behavior and actions that are unforgivable. Some of you might be familiar with this fable:
A scorpion asks a frog to carry him over a river. The frog is afraid of being stung during the trip, but the scorpion argues that if it stung the frog, both would sink and the scorpion would drown. The frog agrees and begins carrying the scorpion, but midway across the river the scorpion does indeed sting the frog, dooming them both.
When asked why, the scorpion points out that this is its nature.
The moral is, “The greatest kindness will not bind the ungrateful.”
I realize that forgiveness is important for us to move forward with our lives. Like the old saying goes, forgive and forget. Much easier to say than to do. Some people are extremely talented at hiding their evil tendencies with their sheepish costumes. In my opinion, these people I do not allow in my life and all their “I’m sorry’s” will not allow me to give them forgiveness. Especially when the hurt is deep and leaves a crippling wound that will never heal. Call me cynical, but I believe in some instances, forgiveness is a fable.
Shine On
To err is human;to forgive is divine, and not many of us are divine.However, we can try to understand, and that is the key that leads to a kind of forgiveness if not forgetting because everyone has a reason for his/her actions. I have found that the best way to deal with hurtful individuals is to cut them out of my life, to bless them and go on my way.
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Awesome post. I’ve always thought that the people around us greatly affect who we are and how we live. Les Brown says, “OQP = Only Quality People.” Keep people around who love you, who are honest, and who will support you and you will go so much further.
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Reblogged this on partandparcel2014 and commented:
Some people may be hurting the people around him/her and it is just part of his/her nature, personality, something that can not be changed. Just stay away from them.
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I really agree with you about people who hurt others due to their nature, personality, that it is a natural part of themselves. They do not empathize or even respect others and just care about themselves. And forgiveness is a fable. I will reblog! Thank you!!!!
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Nice post. I think forgiving can be quite hard, and I agree with insanitybytes that it´s mostly about forgiving yourself for letting somebody hurt you. About Boston Marathon… I´m against death penalty because I think no human has the right to take anothers life. I would rather build some workcamps somewhere in the arctic region, where escape means death. There they would have to spend their whole lifes, doing hard work and producing something hard to produce, but necessary for society (without TV or any sparetime activities, only work and boredom). Their life would be hell, just the way they turned other peoples lifes into hell. I think so because they should get suffering for what they did, and death may be a relief – we´ll never know that…
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Thanks for your comments. I’m always kind of vague in my postings. Mostly because I’m a private person and am recently attempting to share. However, what prompted this post was the recent news about the Boston Marathon bombing outcome.
“From start to finish, it took 26 minutes for the jury to announce its verdict in the Boston Marathon bombing trial: Tsarnaev didn’t skate on a single charge. He now stands guilty of all 30 counts, 17 of which could send him to death row.”
I watched the news of one of the mothers of a victim being interviewed. This obviously distraught mother told the reporter she hopes that Tsarnaev receives the death penalty for what he has done. As a mother, and as a human being, I agreed with her. There are different levels of forgiveness like anything else. But cold-blooded killing of innocent people does not allow forgiveness in my book.
Just One Woman’s Opinion
(as a sister, daughter, mother and wife)
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Great post! Thanks for the mention! Much appreciated.
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Great post! I loved that quote about stealing a bicycle. Too funny.
The Scorpion tale is a good one. I think a big part of forgiveness is about forgiving yourself and sometimes we have to forgive ourselves for being dumb enough to expect different behavior from a proven scorpion. It happens, we all do it, and it probably beats the alternative, which is to wall yourself off and never trust anybody, ever 😉
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