it's 1AM. I fell asleep at 10:30, then my girlfriend called me, got upset at me because I was incomprehensible and rude over the phone (she had every right, though i really can't remember that conversation), she left me a text message that left me distressed, and I couldn't fall back asleep, even after apologizing. Anyways, it's nor here nor there. I need a nightcap right now. A few ounces of top shelf single malt whiskey is in order. But sadly, I don't have any of that stuff at home.
Now I'm just typing away on my computer while my folks are sleeping in the next room.
I'm not hungry, which is a good thing, because I know I would act upon that hunger at some merciless fast food joint if I were.
Anyways, I feel bad about being rude to Christine. She didn't deserve that. She doesn't deserve most of the things I do to her, but she's always good about forgiving me.
The number one thing I've learned about being in a relationship like this (meaning serious, and yes headed in that direction), is that we must forgive. And with forgiveness comes the humility to ask for forgiveness, and try your best to "repent" in a sense, and not do that thing again. Problem is, we're all fairly stupid creatures and keep messing up, over and over again. That means that we just have to keep on forgiving and forgiving.
Problem is, there seems to be a threshold on how much we can forgive. It seems that continual injustice just don't do very good for fostering trust and hope in the relationship. I need to do everything in my will to not commit the offenses I did in the past. But sooner or later, because I'm a completely imperfect being, I will commit some offense. So there's the rub. How do we continually build and mend a relationship, even with forgiveness?
Well, I think we have to know what true forgiveness is, and we have to know where true forgiveness comes from.
True forgiveness is the acceptance of someone else's offense to you, and then the forceful and intentioned choice to "not" remember that offense. It's wiping the slate clean. Of course because we've all got crappy chalk erasers, completely erasing previous offenses isn't the best thing we do, but we have to try our best to "not" remember. Notice I say "not remember" instead of forgetting. Forgetting implies a non-intentioned, and therefore almost accidental thing. When we forgive, we must choose "not to remember". In other words, we move on, and we accept and cherish that person just like before.
Of course, this is completely idealistic and rarely occurs in the real world. That's because we still feel a sense of injustice against us when an offense is committed. Well, that's where the thought of the real SOURCE of forgiveness comes into play.
I'll try my best to make this as clear as possible. If we humans have done a nearly infinite number offenses against God, a God who has set forth rules that outline things that offend him, then on the outset we have next to zero chance of ever making it out of this life alive (hence death - yes we all die). Well then, if we commit these offenses against a God, then the only solution to this problem is forgiveness. We need his forgiveness. Problem is, the things we do against him aren't just things he can forget or even "mis-remember" or choose "not" to remember. No, the severity of our offenses is quite strong, so they have to be dealt with.
I'll digress here and say what you might be wondering: what's the offense anyway? Well there's this book that's got the set of words that this God's given us, commonly called the Bible, but in Latin that just means "books" so that doesn't really explain much. In this book, it describes itself (yes it does describe its own very nature) as God's word, or his message, or revelation or whatever you want to call it. There are numerous arguments as to why that very assertion is completely false. It seems implausible on the outset, that an invisible, immaterial God would translate his message into human form (language), and give us some sort of light as to what he's like. It's poppycock, as a Brit would say. Thing is, there are a ton of things in this book that are startlingly true, unlike many of the millions, if not trillions of words ever written by humankind. This book claims, in and of itself, that it was inspired, through human writers, to be God's very own word. Still preposterous you might say, well - I invite you to read it for yourself. I've read it all and I've come to the conclusion - it's not simply "inspired" by the human mind - something else is it in that permeates Truth (with the big T). Of course, many books claim this, like the book of Mormon, even that Dianetics book that L. Ron Hubbard wrote. The thing that differentiates the Bible from those books is that the Bible has historical basis. Archeologists, historians, other sources, lay claim to the truth of many of the assertions in the Bible.
You're probably not fully convinced at this point, and I understand. It's not an easy thing to grasp all at once. Anyways, there is no other book quite like the Bible. It's thousands of years old, talks about events and occurrences in human history that have tons of other evidence, and more than anything, there is an overwhelming sense that it's really a miracle that's it's so coherent. Thing is, the truths in this book are overwhelmingly coherent despite thousands of years of separation between the dozens of writers. There are so called discrepancies but most of them are unfounded because they don't grasp the minutia that we look at today (it was 1103 people!, not 1100! people back then weren't keen on being as precise as we are, etc). Anyways, if you read this book, you'll see that there is just an incredible, uncanny STRING that ties it all together.
ANYWAYS, back to my point: this book is true, and it says that people - humans, we've all done stuff to offend God. So we need forgiveness. But our offenses can't just be un-remembered. They've got to be paid for.
Someone paid for them. In a sense, we're kind of "off" the hook now. We're not going to bear the full punishment. Well, that is, if we trust that this person who paid for those offenses...well...that it works. That it really does pay for the offenses, and that we're really...off the hook..that is...forgiven.
So...if we are forgiven for immeasurable offense against God...well, what choice do we have then to forgive each other. What right do we have to hold a grudge against another person if we ourselves have been forgiven such an extreme and incomparable amount, especially when we did not have to "pay" for that forgiveness. None.
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