Stop ‘Forgiving’ People Who Aren’t Sorry, by David Gordon

Few Christian concepts are more widely misunderstood than forgiveness. Modern man, who is outwardly pacifistic but inwardly vicious, simply cannot understand the necessity of righteous anger — especially long-term righteous anger. But the hard fact is this: There’s no forgiving a person who isn’t sorry. God doesn’t do it, and man shouldn’t either.

Spare me the shrieks of outrage. What I’m saying is both scriptural and intuitive, and it’s corroborated by the Doctors of the Church and the Magisterium. The belief in unilateral forgiveness, that we somehow must “forgive” those who neither want forgiveness nor have any remorse for their sins, is a preposterous novelty of 20th-century pop-Kristianity. It’s pagan utilitarianism that’s been dressed in Christian garb by well-meaning sentimentalists. In the words of apologist Jimmy Akin, “This attitude of hyper-forgiveness seeks to cloak itself in the teachings of Christ; in reality, it goes far beyond what Christ asks us to do and even what God himself does.” We need to bury the concept forever. …

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