[Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.”] [Brackets original.] [1]
Here, the Forgiver is God, and the forgiven are those who "know not what they do," whatever that means. [2] When God forgives, this will probably happen to the forgiven:
He replied to him, “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise. [3]
If God does not forgive, one needs to think of the worst that can happen, intensify it an infinite fold and extend it to eternity. This is not a good end to a short life.
What will actually happen after life is between God and the individual. [4]
During life, forgiving and being forgiven take place between man and his fellow man. Man is capable of assuming either the role of the forgiver or the forgiven, both of which require humility. Sometimes, it is more difficult to forgive than to ask for forgiveness. Therefore, an abundance of humility is required of the forgiver; not only that, an abundance of compassion is needed as well. Many who hold the power to forgive the trespasses of others often do not have sufficient humility and compassion to do so. While humility is the key to forgiving, compassion unlocks the door and acts on it.
Humility rests in the interior of the person who is the forgiver and it is found in whole of the mind, the heart and the spirit; compassion looks to the exterior and it is found in the circumstances (past, present and future) of the person to be forgiven. There can be countless situations in the past and present for the forgiver to consider when deciding to forgive another person's trespasses but there is only one place in the future that the forgiver needs to look at and that is the same place as the one nobody wants to go for an eternity.
It is here that one's imagination needs to be exercised. What if the person needing forgiveness from the forgiver and does not receive it, and as a result the trespasser goes to Hell for an eternity? Indeed that is a lot of power that has been placed in the hands of the forgiver in this imagined situation, but what if in some way, for even a short time (not quite an eternity), the person seeking forgiveness but who has not been forgiven would receive his punishment in Hell, and what if the punishment happens to feel like an eternity with no expectation that it would ever end or knowledge of when it would end, would anyone still want to withhold forgiveness and put in real Hell the person with whom one has shared time, air and space together on this earth, even though the relationship had for some time been good but then turned sour, or it was contentious from the beginning?
If Abel had a chance to forgive Cain before being killed [5], would he have forgiven Cain, if knowing that by not forgiving, which he had a right to do, he would send his brother to Hell for an eternity of suffering while realizing that he was favored by God over his brother Cain and realizing that he had to earn God's love in order to spend his eternity in Heaven with God Whom he loved dearly? This blogger is certain that Abel would forgive his brother, and why not when he knew that God loved him immensely? With God always by his side, loving him, what would Abel lose by forgiving his brother, and what would he gain by holding onto a grudge (perhaps even seeking vengeance had he not died)? If Abel could forgive his brother [6], so could everyone forgive everyone else since everyone is related to each other under the human race.
For those who believe in God, in God's goodness, and are not looking to go to Hell, why not forgive, and forgive repeatedly, knowing that at the end of one's short life, even if it were a thousand or a hundred thousand years long (short relative to forever), one could spend an eternity with God, with God's love overflowing in abundance in Heaven?
What if the forgiver does not forgive his fellow man so that starting from the moment of his own death he sees continuously during his eternity (without reference to time, past, present and future) his trespasser suffering without end in Hell, and is continuously conscious of the fact that the trespasses upon him in life were truly insignificant and disproportionate to an eternity of punishment in Hell that his trespasser is suffering, would he then regret not forgiving, when he only had to have a moment of humility and compassion to do so? Is not an eternity of regret also a form of punishment for those in Hell as well? Does Heaven have room for a heart so uncharitable and uncompassionate when everyone expects Heaven to be a place where forgiveness waits blamelessly and tirelessly and from which endless mercy springs forth?
Even though it is God, and only God, Who determines a soul's ultimate destination, man who has the chance to forgive in life may not want to lose that chance at the risk of having to regret consciously and continuously for an eternity in death because that, too, is Hell.
[1] http://www.usccb.org/bible/lk/23:34#50023034 at 34.
[2] There is a comment at footnote [8] in the post The Seven Last Words Of Christ dated April 6, 2017, in this blog.
[3] http://www.usccb.org/bible/lk/23:34#50023034 at 43.
[4] Some preach that God's mercy has no bounds, that everyone, no matter who, receives God's mercy but this blogger thinks that God's mercy necessarily yields to Free Will, and therefore it does not extend to one who willingly and pridefully reject God. Because God is all-powerful, God can override Free Will that has been gifted to man and impose upon man the mercy he needs forcibly, but if God's infinite mercy interferes at any time with man's infinite Free Will, then Free Will will cease to exist and man will no longer be man but a machine instead.
[5] http://www.usccb.org/bible/genesis/4
[6] Cain is deemed conventionally to be Abel's brother. However, he could be considered, controversially to an extreme, as Abel's half-brother based on this blogger's past speculation that Cain might not have come from the seed of Adam but had been born from the seed of the Serpent, in that the "speaking" Serpent had not only deceived Eve and Adam, but in changed form also had lustful and sexual relations with both in the Garden of Eden in order that its deceit could be consummated in the heat of passion. Of course, as soon as they bit into the forbidden fruit, the Serpent dumped them without so much as saying good-bye, let alone giving each a parting kiss on the cheek, since the Serpent had no interest in them whatsoever, except to ruin them, and whatever that was required to get it done, the Serpent did.
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