Does self forgiveness figure in Christianity?

[Ingesw]

...I was brought up in a Christian family and tbh/ sadly it didn't go well for me. Things that I am now discovering are the act of self love, a healthy selfishness (fill up your own up so that you have enough left to actually give to others) and forgiveness of self. These things never figured when I was growing up, I mentioned self forgiveness in a family discussion and it was treated as though it was an excuse for bad behaviour. I don't mind, and I will ignore what I think is an unhealthy attitude...but, I am curious to know what the wider thinking is here. Being told I had Gods forgiveness was ok, but until I had forgiven myself I didn't find it so helpful.

Different Christian traditions can have different theological understanding of forgiveness. What was the Christian background of your family that you grew up with?

Yes, it does vary. There's a modern strain of Christianity which is heavily influenced by a lot of modern psychology and would definitely accommodate ideas of forgiving yourself.

From my, Catholic perspective, one of the most powerful things I discovered on becoming a Catholic was the enormous relief of hearing the priest, as a physical representative of God, say the absolution. I had spent years as a fundamentalist evangelical, tying myself up in knots, wondering if I had truly repented and if God could forgive me, and the actual words spoken to me, from a disembodied voice on the other side of the screen, lifted burdens I had carried for years.

I think I'd got myself in a place where I thought God couldn't possibly forgive me, but eventually you come to realize that's a kind of pride, that my sins are extra special and too big for God, which is nonsense, and not forgiving yourself is kind of related to that. I remember a friend saying "If God has forgiven you, why are you pretending that you are more of am authority than God?"

In any case, the last time I went to confession, a few weeks ago, the priest told me it was important I forgive myself, because I was quite cut up about something and he reminded me that the sacrament is a reconciliation - God offering grace and me receiving it, which I suppose could be another way of saying 'forgive yourself'.

Anyway, enough waffle from me.

It is strange that your family would criticize you for forgiving yourself.

Two things come to mind when talking about forgiveness. When sincerely ask for forgiveness God always forgives us but we may struggle with accepting that forgiveness.

1. We have been forgiven but our memory hasn’t been erased, so our memories of the past may haunt us. One important part of forgiveness is repairing any harm we may have caused such as: returning stolen goods, restoring the reputation of someone slandered, paying compensation for injuries etc., that is simple justice. “Absolution from God takes away our sin but it does not remedy all the disorders sin has caused” - so if we have been unkind we need to ask for grace to help us learn to be kinder. We are a work in progress and we need to constantly chose to be loving and grow in virtue. Forgiveness and conversion of our heart is a daily path. So in that case the lack of forgiveness in ourselves may be because we know we need to do more to restore a relationship.

2. We may feel unworthy of mercy and we may just not see ourselves as lovable and as someone who should be shown mercy. If we have low self-esteem or have been judged harshly in the past and only known a lack of mercy than we should pray to accept ourselves as a beautiful child of God and ask God to show us how much he truly loves us.

I have a very good friend who has always struggled in her relationship with her mum. She doesn’t feel accepted for who she is by her mum and therefore has a tendency to blame herself and find it hard to forgive herself. This is because she grew up with someone who was constantly pointing the finger at her in accusation and blame and so she feels shame about her inadequacies and judges herself harshly. In her case she needed help from a counselor to help her know she was worthy of love and to relearn the messages in her brain that had been learnt from a damaging relationship.

I think my family were mostly traditional Baptist. I do remember anything too ‘Pentecostal’ was always sort of frowned upon.

I can see now how and why a priest at confessional would be helpful with this, it’s not something I had thought of before so I’m glad that you posted FloraBunting.

Praying to accept oneself as a beautiful child of God is not a concept I have heard of either (in my old life seeing oneself as beautiful = vanity). Healthy self love is something I’ve only really discovered now that I have moved away from church or Christian things, I think I grew up with words like unworthy and sinner sticking in my mind. It’s interesting that there is a different take on things, what sort of church do you belong to IdaBWells?

Never be a prisoner of your past. It was just a lesson. Not a life sentence.

Ingesw, I'm familiar with the unworthy sinner stuff - before I was a Catholic I was part of Reformed Christianity, and that kind of scorn for any notion of self esteem is very much part of that. It seems to me that it's a kind of twisting of genuine humility.

Jesus said to "love your neighbour as yourself". Not instead of yourself or in spite of yourself, but AS yourself. You cannot love others if you don't love yourself!

Thanks floral and weegie. I Really needed to be reminded of that today.

I know you didn't ask for a different perspective but I get what you mean about needing to forgive yourself to move forward.
In Islam it is quite simple. If I commit a sin, I know from the natural instinct created within us that I will feel awful about it. Humans weren't created perfect though, except Prophets who never sinned (I understand the Bible has a different view on Prophets). If I sin, I should immediately turn to God and ask for forgiveness. I should have the intention to really try and not do that sin again and be sincere when asking for forgiveness. We don't have a middle man, we are not meant to go to an imam and say our sin etc it is purely between the person and God. For us God is one God, not Jesus who we believe is a very highly regarded messenger of God who did not die but was raised to heaven by God and will return at the end of times.

If we sin again we repeat the process. God is All-Merciful but it doesn't mean I should take liberties but God understands sometimes we falter. He is 70 times more merciful than a mother and 1 per cent of His mercy was distributed in the world and the remaining 99 per cent for the hereafter.

We are also told to not then think and think and think about that sin. We must move on. God is forgiving so why should we then keep going on and on about it to ourselves. God wants us to move on from it, try not to return to it and move forward.
The only sin that we will need a second thought on is a sin against another person. So if I backbite someone then there will be consequences in the hereafter so its better that I ask for forgiveness from them whilst alive. We don't have to say what we did or said about them but just a general please forgive me for anything said or done. Islam doesn't take backbiting and slander lightly. The concept of hurting a brother or sister is that another Muslim should feel safe from out words and actions and not the opposite of that.
Another example is a debt. If I borrow money from someone or need to pay the full amount of something then I absolutely have to do that. It is a sin not to repay or to have a debt that I have no intention of repaying. I absolutely have to fix that whilst I am alive and I can't just say to God please forgive this debt. Where another human being is concerned, even if not Muslim, it must be repaid and it is a sin not to.

However anything that's between you and God, then God is all-forgiving and overthinking it is probably from Satan as he does not want you to move forward.

I have nothing to "forgive" myself for.

I have no "sin".

I have always made the best decisions I could given the circumstances.

In hindsight I could sometimes have made better choices- but thos options were not open to me.

We should treat ourselves with compassion.

We are the goddess.

Catholics have a different understanding. “Sin is present in human history; any attempt to ignore it or to give this dark reality any other names would be futile”.

“The Gospel is the revelation in Jesus Christ of God’s mercy to sinners. (Luke 15). The angel announced to Joseph: “You shall call him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:21). To receive his mercy, we must admit our faults. “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” 1 John 8.”

The Jews believed that only God can forgive sin and that is why they were so scandalized when Jesus said he could forgive sins as he was claiming to be God.

Catholics, Jews and I believe Muslims all believe in the concept of sin.

The definition of sin for Catholics: “Sin is an offense against reason, truth and right conscience; it is a failure in genuine love for God and for neighbour”.

Sin is an offense against God: “Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done that which is evil in your sight.” (Psalm 51:4). Sin sets itself against God’s love for us and turns our hearts away from it. Like the first sin, it is a disobedience, a revolt against God through the will to become “like gods” (Genesis 3:5), knowing and determining good and evil. Sin is thus “love of oneself even to contempt of God” (St Augustine). In this proud self-exaltation, sin is diametrically opposed to the obedience of Jesus, which achieves our salvation.”

God love us and wants to be in a continual loving relationship with us, we can put barriers up between us and other people, due to a lack of love. Some sin is minor but some is very serious and can damage our relationship with God forever if we do not ask for forgiveness (because we are refusing God’s mercy and love in our lives).

However, God is always present “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Romans 5:20).

Catholics believe in one God so we do not believe we can be a god or goddess. We believe we are constantly living in God’s grace (in Him, I live and move and have my being) and that God’s life is present within us in the form of the Holy Spirit. We believe we are made in God’s image “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:27). So both women and men are made in God’s image. Our body and soul are a single nature and our soul is immortal.

Any quotes are from the Bible or the Catholic Catechism (the teaching of the church).

That was quite long! I wanted to make sure I was explaining clearly our understanding of sin but our focus is on love. God created us from love and our beautiful world shows us the wonder and beauty of God’s creative love. This beauty includes humans. “The divine image is present in every person”. Catholics believe that God told us that everything he made is good. So we are in our nature good and lovable and made in the divine image.

Due to our God-given natural gifts of reason, intelligence and knowledge our pride led us to reject God as the origin of all this goodness. This mystery is called “original sin” by Catholics, this sin was something in history that meant we now are inclined to be seduced into rejecting God. However our basic goodness is still intact. Catholic theology is different to some other, later Christian theologies which claim that men has no good within him without God and that we are grotesque in our essence. This is NOT Catholic theology. We recognize that without asking for forgiveness and the grace of God we cannot be saved but our very creation shows and contains the goodness of God.

So we should always as speakout says show the same loving compassion to ourselves that God does. We are made good and lovable and we can rejoice in that. Catholic theology does not contain ideas that came from theologians such as Calvin that only some people are “the elect” but that every single human is made in love and loved by God and God wants everyone to draw close to him. From our theology flows the idea that there is goodness is all humans cultures and societies because God is already present. When we “bring the gospel” we only reveal more of what is already there. There is God’s beauty, goodness and truth in all places but that Jesus reveals the fullness and completeness of the truth.

And the short answer is?!

As a reformed Christian, my understanding is that only the party who has been wronged can do the forgiving. Hence we are all in need of God’s forgiveness, and often in need of the forgiveness of those around us.
To me the feeling/action you describe is a holding on vs a letting go of guilt. If God has forgiven me, I wrong Him again by not letting go of my guilt because I’m not trusting/accepting His forgiveness. I cannot forgive it myself because it wasn’t me who was wronged.

Nighttimenope, could you not perhaps be said to have sinned against the image of God in yourself, though, perhaps? Just thinking aloud tbh and it occurred to me as I read your post.

when we pray God forgives our sin he says he will remember it no more just as if it was cast into the deepest part of the ocean,
what you are feeling is probably guilt and Christ's death dealt with all consequences of sin including guilt, we need to accept God's forgiveness otherwise it is a bit like saying you don't believe He forgave it this is hard
Like someone said above if you have sinned against someone else whether it is simple like hurt their feelings or let them down or more serious we need to try and put things right, we need to try not to sin again but like Jesus said how many times should I forgive 7 times no replied jesus but 70 x 7

often bad sinful habits are hard to break, like stopping smoking ( I'm not saying smoking is a sin in particular but using it as an example of something that is not easy to give up on the first try)

God sees you as a precious child you were bought with a price, he cares for you more than sparrows you are a son or daughter of Christ by adoption, "The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. And if we are children, then we are heirs: heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ—" Romans 8 v 16-17
we should not think too highly of ourselves (pride) but neither should we think too little of ourselves
the Bible doesn't support the martyr complex treat your neighbour as yourself not better
Jesus and Moses were described as meek but despite the carol Jesus was not mild or soft or a pushover, he was rightly angry at money changers in the temple an drove them out

colouringinpro I did get carried away....! What was the question?

Lol Ida!!

The answer is yes, we should show ourselves the same mercy that God gives us.

Ida me too x

And I totally agree. We need to be compassionate to ourselves, and others.

Cheers

@Floral- yes but I don’t think/understand that to be against ourselves.

Does god treat us all woith compassion?

I think not.

The bible is full of examples of god smiting and sending thunderbolts to people he doesn't like .
He could offer heaven to all good people, but only offers it to people who dig into the human sacrifice of jesus.

If that doesn't float your boat you are stuffed.

@speakout, your comment reminds me of another key aspect of forgiveness (as I understand it in the Bible). It needs to be wanted to be given. So neither we nor God can forgive someone who wrongs us if they don’t want to be forgiven. We humans can choose to not hold it against them any more, but it’s not quite the same thing as forgiveness. It has to be a wanted thing. If God chose to do that against the person’s will, He would no longer be Just.
The Bible uses ‘good’ as an absolute, not a general descriptor. So while we might describe each other as good meaning that we each try our best to make moral choices, the Bible uses it to describe moral perfection. Therefore it is explicit that none of us is good in our own right, as we’ve all broken God’s law to some degree or another, and for anything short of perfection to enter Heaven would go against God’s justice. Every sin, however little it might seem to us, needs dealt with. Either on the cross, or in ourselves. You might not like that or agree with it, but it’s available to all of us so we are all treated with compassion, and it’s not about His likes or dislikes. If it doesn’t float your boat it’s your choice.
Again, Reformed Christian beliefs/understandings of the Bible here.