https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=NdVTTm3FO5Y
All right, so Champ Jans for 7 like says, what is forgiveness and why should we do it? My soul definitely needs to know. I feel so angry, resentful, vengeful and scrupulous. Forgiveness was painted arbitrarily to me in evangelicalism, which I know you can relate to. What comes to mind is how Christ forgave our sins so long ago. We call God unjust because he forgives his enemies. Did I pay for my sins and the sins of others or not? All right, so a good way to understand this is to understand that forgiveness is a way by which reality actually exists. That is, or you can understand compassion, right? Compassion is a way by which reality actually exists. And this is a technical term, first of all, which is that you have to do this all the time, by the way, but you have to forgive all the time, constantly, because people are always not according to the standard that you wish they were. They’re not according to their own standard. They’re not they’re not acting according to what we think, like, say, the standard of the perfect relationship, which we have in our, you know, in our in our mind. And because of that, we are we are constantly called to forgive in order for for things to be to continue to exist. Right. So you have to let go of the discrepancies of something to a certain extent, or else or else the world can’t incarnate. Like you can’t actually have a relationship if you hold to such a high standard of a relationship that you never let anything go, that relationship won’t be able to exist. Now, that’s true of a relationship, but it’s also true of anything that exists. Right. The pure form of something has to relinquish some of its perfection in order for it to be able to actually be embodied in the world. It has to be capable of of letting go, let’s say, of its of its ideal form. So that’s one. And so when we forgive, we are acting like God. It’s not just that God tells us to forgive us and Christ forgave us. It’s like when you forgive, you are acting like God. You are letting you are participating in the creation of the world when you forgive things. You are you are letting go of the fact that things aren’t God. Right. Maybe that’s a good way to understand it. You are letting that go. And in letting that go, you are making it possible for things to be constantly alive and restored and capable of existing. And so when we’re asked to forgive, right, it’s like we’re we are asked to participate in the life of God. We say, God, forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sinned against us. That’s not just a moral injunction. That’s not just God wagging his finger and saying, if you don’t do this, I won’t do it for you. It’s that that’s how it works. It’s like as you forgive others and God forgives you and God forgives others through you and all of this is happening. That is how, you know, the world is existing and continuing to move towards towards love. So that’s a few reasons. And the final reason is a more selfish reason in the sense that ultimately you don’t you don’t forgive others for them. You forgive others for yourself because when you have resentment and anger towards someone, that is them ruling you. That is you making yourself a slave to them. And when you forgive them, you’re freed from that slavery. You know that that joke when it says living rent free in your mind, you know, like that’s that’s what it is. That when you don’t forgive people, they basically are you are making them your tyrant by holding a grudge against them. And especially when like sometimes, you know, someone has done something and honestly, they don’t even feel guilty about it. That makes you even more angry and more vengeful and more resentful. That makes them even more powerful over you because it’s like they don’t they don’t even know and despite that you’re the one who’s obsessed with them. They’re not even thinking about you. They don’t even they’re not it’s not part of it’s not even like it doesn’t cross their mind that this is that that you’re obsessed with them or that you’re thinking about them. And so you’re making yourself a slave to someone who doesn’t even want to be your tyrant, who doesn’t even want to rule over you. So you forgive in order to be free, you know. But I know it’s not easy. Like I think it’s important to say that it’s it’s difficult, you know, I. Everybody has has had that experience, especially in long relationships, you know, with family that you have things that are difficult to forgive. But without that, the world halts, you know, it’s like the relationship is on pause unless you forgive. So.