But people usually mean forgiveness in a much more leap-of-faith/sheer will kind of way, I think.

I'm not sure I buy into the concept of forgiveness at all -- as an act of will or otherwise. I have been wronged by people, and to one degree or another I can tolerate that and move forward with them, or I can't. Maybe that kind of tolerance is properly described as "forgiveness." Maybe I'm describing the same relationship that you are between trust and forgiveness.

I'm not sure that I have ever been wronged so severely that it couldn't be cured by a sincere apology. People have done me damage, but nothing permanent. Not yet. That said, anyone in my life who has really screwed me over hasn't been sorry about doing so. Some people are just assholes.

I think that's consistent with my skepticism of forgiveness!

I think forgiveness has something to do with reparations -- when a transgression is forgiven, there's nothing more the wrongdoer needs to do to heal the relationship. So forgiveness can be unconditional; dependent on something like an apology, or action to remedy an injury, or an observable change in behavior; or completely unavailable if there's nothing that will fix the relationship.

But the wronged party should not do those things without updating their understanding of the other person to incorporate what has happened. The wronged party should not fight to maintain their previous understanding of the person.

One of the issues here is that a completely insane viewpoint on forgiveness is completely essential to Christianity, and that makes it hard for a highly Christian society to deal with forgiveness in a good way.

Specifically, what does it mean to heal the relationship? Does it mean that it should revert to the former relationship? Does it mean that trust should revert to its prior state?

I think the relationship is healed when the hurt person has updated their internal version of the other person, and has updated their trust of the other person to match the new evidence. They no longer feel much anger (meaning a drive to change the other person) nor much sadness (meaning they've fully adjusted their internal reality to match the external reality).

The other person can be contrite or not, and the hurt person can incorporate that into their updated internal model accordingly. The difference between empty contrition and sincere contrition is just how the future pattern of behavior unfolds.

Well, depends. There is I think some value to updating their sense of what level of transgressions aren't worth considering an injury to the relationship. I can think of some relationships where there has been significant bad behavior that I have decided is, in the context of that relationship, forgivable -- the relationship is worth it to me, where another relationship wouldn't be worth enough to tolerate the behavior. I wouldn't have thought of that as part of the ground rules before it happened, but now I know.

5: say more? I've never exactly understood how Christians think about forgiveness.

Ok, so the essential part is that if you repent of your sins than God completely forgives you, not because you've become a better person but because He swapped your record with Jesus's perfect record and punished Jesus for your sins (by killing him) and now treats you as though you lived perfectly. So far this isn't necessarily a problem, since it's just between you and God. But then you get to verses like "Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you" or "For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you" or "Then Peter came and said to Him, Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?' Jesus said to him, `I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.'" Etc. etc. etc. Basically if someone harms you, you're supposed to pretend their Jesus and forgive them the way you would forgive Jesus. This is why the Catholic Church kept forgiving priests for sexual abuse, as long as they kept repenting you're supposed to forgive them and treat them like Jesus. It's not good.

Of course you can't actually just forgive everyone all the time, so you get some kind of splitting hairs where you distinguish "forgiveness" and "reconciliation" and get to a slightly saner place, but it's still starting from a bad place that's hard to fix.

Here's a pretty typical Evangelical Christian discussion of forgiveness: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/erik-raymond/common-questions-christians-ask-forgiveness/

Got it. It's not just the confession booth which is a get-out-of-jail-free card, it's that everyone is supposed to have infinite get-out-of-jail-free cards with each other, and never update their opinion of the other person to match the facts at hand.

It's the lack of updating one's opinion that's a major problem.

I think if we were all perfectly self-actualized, we'd update our opinions without judgement. Just like you do with children: "Oh, X is not the type of child who can take fine china to the kitchen without dropping it. Great! They are good at some things and bad at others. I will protect myself by not handing them my fine china."

I like Thich Nhat Hanh's writings about this-- both his books on anger and on how to love are I think quite good. The advice he gives si less detail-oriented about personality details.
Compassion for others, even flawed family members, is a starting point basically. That can mean a much more distant relationship than one might hope for if open and honest communication doesn't work.

Here's an easy reader start.
https://plumvillage.org/articles/dealing-with-difficult-relationships/

I think forgiveness has something to do with reparations -- when a transgression is forgiven, there's nothing more the wrongdoer needs to do to heal the relationship.

Yes. Or, at least, contrition. If you get grumpy with your partner over something petty, and later apologise sincerely to them, they will (normally) forgive you - there isn't any updating of their model of you that needs to happen, because "getting pointlessly grumpy and then regretting it" is just part of the human condition. They knew you were like that already.

I do think compassion is important, and it's something I struggle with (particularly with acquaintances and strangers, which is not really the topic here, since we haven't extended much trust to them.)

I would say that compassion is much easier if you can accept the person as they really are, without judgement.

13: In your example, is there an expectation that the petty violation will be repeated to all eternity (like my socks on the floor) or that it will be significantly diminished over time (like how I learned to wipe up the kitchen counter after the coffee mug leaves a ring of coffee)?

Somehow you have to update your opinions even while you infinitely forgive them, but the Bible is way less clear on what that updating means than it is on the infinite get out of jail free cards.

And then one impossible situation is when the transgressor has structural power over you. In that case, it's easy to update your opinion of them, but it may be impossible to protect yourself very well. That's a whole 'nother thing where "forgiveness" is irrelevant because it's more a matter of how to get out of the situation.

5: I'm not great at forgiveness. I remember a really lovely priest (who was born in NJ and had to grow up in West Virginia as a gay kid, so he knew a lot about forgiveness in an applied way) talk about how once you forgave someone the wrongdoing could not hurt you anymore. I don't think he was talking about world-class atrocities. You might choose not to see that person again but forgiving them meant that the thing that happened between you both no longer had the power to tie you up in knots.

I think we have to clarify wrongdoing which violates someone's trust vs wrongdoing which does not violate anyone's trust. To be clear, I'm only talking about the former. There are obviously things like rape and assault and theft which are wrong, regardless of whether or not you trusted the person, and those don't fit this paradigm.

You are not required to say, "Oh! They were a rapey-person! I think I'll keep my distance in the future!"

9: I think it's more an illustration of an organization trying to protect insiders and avoid scandal than Christian theology. If someone in the Church is stealing from the poor box, they would forgive them (assuming repentance) but they'd never be let around other people's money again. And they may or may not press charges. Which is exactly the response taken to priests who committed sexual crimes after the covering up wasn't viable.

Right now I am learning that my trust of my students' ability to do integration by parts twice was misplaced.

19: I'm not following this distinction at all -- not saying it's not valid, just that from what you said I'm not getting it. I would generally think of, e.g., theft even by a stranger as a violation of trust -- I trust strangers generally not to hurt me or steal from me, and usually that trust is valid.

22: The trust you extend to strangers is based on societal expectations and how we imagine most people were raised, loosely speaking. It's not based on a pattern of evidence specific to that person. So I was just saying that within my narrow OP definition of trust, any stranger on the street is more-or-less a blank slate.

I agree with 22. Thee are some types of trust which are context dependent. Like, I can trust Tim not to do X, because he knows it will hurt me based on my personal idiosyncratic history and preferences, and if he does X, he has hurt me and broken my trust. In the case of rape, we can make a general statement that everyone who is raped will feel violated, so you don't need special knowledge of an individual person's preferences to violate their trust.

I suppose we can extend trust in that way! I just didn't have strangers in mind when I was thinking through the OP thoughts.

The other problem is with "updating your opinion of the person". If a stranger commits a crime against you, should you update your opinion of all strangers?

I suppose the answer is that you should have less opinions of strangers. They're not all rapists or thieves, but they're all unknowable.

Now I'm back to my idea that they're blank slates, and this framework doesn't apply.

I guess here's how I would put it:

I don't have any way to know if I should trust the stranger at the train station not to rape me. I will still put myself in that situation because I'm aware that we have a loss of control in many parts of our lives, just like I continue to drive on the highway. To curb my freedom and avoid these risks would be worse for me.

I'm not going to assume they're a rapist and be fearful of them, but the likelihood that they are is the same as the likelihood of the general population. Trust doesn't figure into it at all.

If I were a young woman at a club, I would not leave my drink uncovered when I went to the bathroom. Trust doesn't figure into it. I have no evidence whatsoever about the trustworthiness of the people around me, and in that situation, I would curb my freedom.

(And of course, we fight for a more just and safe world, but we're not there right now, obviously.)

Opinion of others (and others' opinions of you) are definitely tricky. It is easy to get attached to ones' own thoughts (Ok, this person has bad impulse control/ doesn't think ahead/ whatever), especially where being uncompassionate is useful for getting things done.

If I get raped in either situation, I'm hurt, because the act itself is violent and horrible.

I guess here's a good thought experiment that one of you should pose to me: Ok, Heebie, if you're so smart. Suppose you're on that train station late at night, and you have a dummy wallet, and it gets stolen. Your real wallet is safe. Do you experience a violation of your trust? Is everything hunky-dory since no actual crime took place?

I suppose my answer is that it makes me confront the reality that a minor portion of people will in fact steal my wallet, and that's distressing. I have to adjust my internal reality which had been drifting towards overly-rosy to account for this minor portion of people.

If you are a overly suspicious hyper-vigilant person, and someone steals your dummy wallet, then you feel triumphant and validated. No one violated your trust because you already thought they were all thieves.

I don't buy 28.4.

You have to steal 28.4.

We don't even have trains stations.

Maybe a better example is someone you let into your house stealing $100 from you while in your house vs someone you don't know stealing $100 from you by pickpocketing you on the street vs someone mugging you with a gun and taking $100.

But the mugging can't take place in a train station, but I can't get my head around scenarios that happen in an abundance of public transportation.

If I met a stranger on a train and discussed how much I want to be rid of my philandering wife and marry this beautiful daughter of a US senator and the strange proposed that if I would just off his hated pop and in return he'd take care of the wife why shouldn't I trust him? I mean what could possibly go wrong?

Basically if someone harms you, you're supposed to pretend their Jesus and forgive them the way you would forgive Jesus.

Importantly, this is very different from the Jewish attitude toward forgiveness, which is why people in Gospels keep asking Jesus about it and being surprised by his answers. In Judaism God can forgive sins against God, provided you do enough penitence, prayer, and good deeds to convince Him, but sins against another person can only be forgiven by that person, and they are under no obligation to do so. In contrast to that traditional attitude, still standard in modern Judaism, Jesus is saying no, actually, you do have an obligation to forgive them, no matter how bad they do you wrong or how many times, because [mumble mumble]. Later the Church builds up a whole theological justification for it based on Jesus's sacrifice etc. None of it has ever really made much sense or been a useful practical attitude to take.

"Nonsensical and impractical" actually describes a lot of the stuff Jesus says in the Gospels. It's even one of the criteria some people use for determining if things go back to the historical Jesus.

God isn't supposed to be practical or comprehensible in Christianity.

Yeah, I agree that this is one of the big points where Jesus had things really wrong (the other really big one is the whole "sin in your heart is just as bad" thing).

That said, do you know whether the rabbinic conception of forgiveness you're describing in 35 definitely goes back to the second temple period? Like are people reacting that way because it's specifically against their conception of Judaism or just because it's dumb? (I don't feel like I have a great sense of how to quickly figure out which parts of Rabbinic Judaism were new and which ones weren't, because of course everyone in every religion is always like "no, of course the one true version of this religion has always agreed with what I say now.")

Yeah, though this particular insanity is just as clear in Paul as it is in the gospels, so it's pretty clear that this is very early and central to Christianity.

The philosopher Myisha Cherry is working on a book on forgiveness in which she's working to expand the concept beyond the Christian "must forgive and forget" which gets weaponized in all kinds of ways. (E.g., it's nearly always on the wronged person to suck it up and repair the relationship.)

That said, do you know whether the rabbinic conception of forgiveness you're describing in 35 definitely goes back to the second temple period?

Not offhand, and I admit I'm extrapolating a bit because it's both dumb and inconsistent with modern rabbinic Judaism. That said, a lot of the stuff in the Gospels where Jesus offends the Pharisees relates specifically to Jewish ritual practices and theological understandings that have continued to this day, so I think this probably falls into the same pattern. The place to look would be the Talmud, which dates to somewhat later in its current form but preserves a lot of material from only very slightly later than Jesus's time.

39: Yes. It's not later theology.

40: The usual work around is to forgive, because that's a duty you owe to God, but not read the requirement as requiring you to forget (e.g. continue a relationship at the same level).

Here we go. Tractate Yoma 87a, translation here (p.266):

FOR TRANSGRESSIONS COMMITTED BY MAN AGAINST THE OMNIPRESENT. R. Joseph b. Helbe pointed out to R. Abbahu the following contradiction: [We learned]:15 FOR TRANSGRESSIONS COMMITTED BY MAN AGAINST HIS FELLOWMAN THE DAY OF ATONEMENT PROCURES NO ATONEMENT, but it is written: If one man sin against his fellow-man, God [Elohim] will pacify him?16 'Elohim' here means 'the Judge'. But how then is the second half of the clause to be understood, 'But if a man sin against the Lord, who shall entreat for him'? -- This is what he means to say: 'If a man sins against his fellow-man, the judge will judge him, he [his fellow] will forgive him';17 'but if a man sins against the Lord God, who shall entreat for him'? Only repentance and good deeds.

It goes on to give several examples of this "pacification" process between two people. It's pretty clear from the stories that the wronged is not obligated to forgive.

Rabbi Joseph bar Helbe seems to be pretty obscure and known mainly for this passage, but Abbahu is better known and lived in the late third and early fourth centuries.

The passage in the Mishnah that they're commenting on would be somewhat earlier. It was redacted at the beginning of the third century but the traditions in it are earlier and many do date to the Second Temple period.

So yeah, I think it's pretty likely that this understanding would have been common at least among Pharisees in Jesus's day.

Here's the Mishnah passage (p. 259 of the PDF in 44):

FOR TRANSGRESSIONS AS BETWEEN MAN AND THE OMNIPRESENT THE DAY OF ATONEMENT PROCURES ATONEMENT, BUT FOR TRANSGRESSIONS AS BETWEEN MAN AND HIS FELLOW THE DAY OF ATONEMENT DOES NOT PROCURE ANY ATONEMENT, UNTIL HE HAS PACIFIED HIS FELLOW. THIS WAS EXPOUNDED BY R. ELEAZAR B. ALARIAH: FROM ALL YOUR SINS BEFORE THE LORD SHALL YE BE CLEAN,13 I.E., FOR TRANSGRESSIONS AS BETWEEN MAN AND THE OMNIPRESENT THE DAY OF ATONEMENT PROCURES ATONEMENT, BUT FOR TRANSGRESSIONS AS BETWEEN MAN AND HIS FELLOW THE DAY OF ATONEMENT DOES NOT PROCURE ATONEMENT UNTIL HE HAS PACIFIED HIS FELLOW.14

"Alariah" doesn't seem to be a real Hebrew name so that's probably a mistake for "Azariah." Eleazar ben Azariah was a prominent rabbi in the first century.

Looking closer, that Wikipedia entry does attribute this passage to him.

Why is his grave so very blue?

I spent a summer reading about forgiveness a decade or more ago and have largely forgotten it all. My interpretation of Christian forgiveness was that it is an extension of the grace that Jesus's death brought into the world. So, like, if you need to draw on some grace to get to forgiveness, you can because Jesus' grace is available to you. My next reaction was, well, I don't believe in that so it isn't available to me and I crossed that method off my list.

52: Zionism, probably.

Zion is the color of swimming pools?

Not traditionally, but the original formula has been lost.

If they are taking suggestions, I'd go with something darker.

it's not forgiveness exactly but i aspire to the beautiful sentiments of this fellow swimmer - https://docs.google.com/document/d/18WNzhxn8HZygKeh5vYkuKh3lzTq0spjmmdiPAR6jnnE/edit?usp=drivesdk

"In addition to being thankful to all responders, I'm very grateful to the shark as well that it was gentle and did not strike again :-) Afterall ocean is their home and we are just visitors."

I wish.

you do have an obligation to forgive them, no matter how bad they do you wrong or how many times, because [mumble mumble].

I was raised a Catholic, and therefore tend to take an uncharitable view of Catholicism and Christianity in general. Teo's insight @36 made me smile.

About Judaism and Eastern religions, on the other hand, I know nothing and I tend to treat their pronouncements as wise and mystical. Even so, today I find myself wanting to approach Christian forgiveness with the same kind of outsider's view that I apply elsewhere. I don't reckon that anybody has directly brought up "turn the other cheek," but it's just the sort of thing people are complaining about, and I wanted to present it in context:

"You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

I'd think that was pretty cool if it came from, I dunno, The Buddha or something. Jesus is taking a radical stand against "eye for an eye," which is good!

Powerless people getting beaten down is a bad thing, but there's something Stoic in Jesus's attitude here: Yes, you are going to be abused, but revenge isn't right and maybe not even possible. What you can do, though, is change your own attitude. Let go of the hate.

As Jesus himself said (or was it The Buddha?), "Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering"

Yoda?

Yes, that was the joke.

I didn't see the prequels.

Anyway, I thought it was Buddha. But now I recall that was more like "attachment leads to suffering."

60: Turning the other cheek always reminds me of an episode of the Michael Landon is a traveling angel tv show in which a guy punches Michael Landon in the face, and, of course being a good Christian angel, he turns the other cheek, and the bad guy punches that cheek, so at that point having fulfilled his Christian obligation, Michael Landon knocks him out.

Yeah, they teach that one in Sunday school.

It's up there with Mormon Soaking.

First you Mormon Soak, but then instead of Jump Humping, someone hits you on the cheek to both punish you and force you to move a la jump humping, and then you turn the other cheek and repeat.

A sex act for people who heard that sex isn't between two people it's between three because Jesus is always there, but took that knowledge in entirely the wrong direction.

I haven't read the Book of Mormon, so I don't feel comfortable with "wrong." Can we say "novel"?

49: I remembered learning about this and thinking how it was unfair because one person might do something terrible to a forgiving person, and be fine, but another person might wrong a grudgeholder in a relatively trivial way, and they would never be able to atone.

On the other hand, since Judaism (as I was taught it) doesn't have a definitive vision of the afterlife, it's not clear why it matters.

60: I was also raised Catholic and came out of it with the same priors. I think having ended up a Buddhist makes it easier to go back to the Gospels with that outsider's view, and it's all like that! Jesus the literary character is insane. Sunday school was teaching St. Paul and Augustine.

That's why they have cities in Minnesota and Florida named after them.

San Pablo, California is up the street from us, but the main thing going on there is a tribal casino.

Only English names, like in the Bible, count.

Jesus the literary character is insane.

He really is, and when you read the Gospels you can see why later Christian theology mostly ignores his actual teachings in favor of elaborate interpretations of the meaning of his life.

Maybe he thinks you're weird too.

I have no doubt.

Just like Paul.

Speaking of trust and, uh, safety forgiveness, what's left of twitter's content moderation team must be spending most of its time looking for accounts where people pretend to be twitter's owner and then suspending them for violating, uh, free speech rules against parody and satire.