I was passing a church the other day that had a sign on it that said something along the lines of "Since God has forgiven you, you need to forgive yourself". It made me cringe for a few reasons. First off, a church sign is public and everyone see it, Christian and non-Christian. God has not forgiven everyone. John 3:36 says that "whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him." Having God's wrath on someone is not compatible with having God's forgiveness. Forgiveness is conditional on faith, true faith that involves repentance and surrender. This sign is harmful because it allows non-Christians to continue to self-delude themselves into believing that they are forgiven and that the wrath of God does not remain on them.
The second thing about this sign that bothered me was the encouragement to forgive oneself. This is terrible advise for a Christian or a non-Christian. We can not forgive ourselves. The truth is that we are awful. Everyone of us. Apart from the grace and mercy of God his wrath justly remains on us just as it should. Encouraging people to forgive themselves encourages them to bypass their need for the cross. Trying to forgiving ourselves is an attempt to escape the conviction of the Holy Spirit. This said, I do need to mention that Christians are freed from sin and death and should live in gratitude to God. Their sin is no longer holding them back and should not be depressing them. This is not the same as self-forgiveness. It is simply acknowledging and appreciating our position before God.
Another thing that I found frustrating is that these words are so similar to Christ's words about our need to forgive others. I think that that could potentially mislead people to think that this is actually a biblical principle. It does sound like something that you might find in the bible so people that don't know the bible very well might think that this as a command to be followed. This criticism on it's own would be insignificant but when coupled with the fact that the saying is not a biblical principle I think that it is dangerous. I'm sure that the creator didn't try to intentionally deceive people but I think that we need to be more careful to analyze sayings and expressions that we're fed by the church.
Posted by rose at April 20, 2006 08:02 PM