You Are Not Forgiven

What the hell is forgiveness? My mom and I were listening to NPR (shamefully, that's code for watching Oprah), and there were guests on the show who were good examples of forgiveness in action: a woman who was shot in the head for pretty much no reason, rendering her unable to think, speak or walk like the normal person she was previously; and a survivor of the London Underground terrorist attacks who'd had both her legs amputated. Both women said they forgave their attackers.

Bullshit.

I'll say it right now: I don't believe in forgiveness. There is no such thing. Dictionary definitions of forgiveness tend to be unhelpful: "to grant pardon for or remission of; to absolve." The idea behind these definitions is: "It is okay. Whatever you did, it's okay." But short of changing your moral system, there is absolutely no way for that to be true. Either what someone did was wrong or it was not (putting aside for a moment the very real gray areas of morality and ethics). Forgiving someone cannot entail being okay with what they've done. If such a thing exists, it exists in the following sentiment: What you did was wrong, but in order to be a happy person, I have to move past my resentment towards you.

Even Christians can't get around this one: either the God-given moral laws are true or they are not, and there is no way in which even God could say of some evil you commit, It's okay. They do try to get around this by moving into the other definition of forgiveness, that of forgiving debts. Accordingly, because I halfway agree with that notion, here is the other way in which forgiveness exists: What you did was wrong, but I'm not going to kill you or maim you because that really wouldn't make me feel any better and it's probably wrong anyway, so I'm letting you off the hook.

What the hell is forgiveness? Can you guys make sense of this word? I sure can't, and I'm okay with that. Who am I to absolve someone of their deeds?