Sin, Free Will, Forgiveness, and Reconciliation

I am replying to a FB post about God being furious about free will. 

If God destroyed sin wouldn’t he also be destroying free will in the process, which would in turn make everything meaningless? If that is true (and I think it is) then having sin be something we can choose would be part of God’s plan and not something to destroy or get rid of. If that were true I don’t think God would be furious about it although I do think God would be sad since it separates Him from something He loves, us.

If God is “furious” why shouldn’t we also be furious? And anyone who is furious (probably including God) wants retribution, don’t they?

Any transgression (sin) puts distance between us and God because it blocks us from the part of ourselves that experiences God because that part of us knows everyone and everything deserves dignity and to the extent we act contrary to it we move away from being able to experience God. The path back to God then is to realize how we strayed and the pain this caused and then do whatever we might be able to do to correct our wrong and the pain caused.

All the work is ours and as soon as we have reconnected to our spirit by the above process God is always waiting with open arms, and actually He was calling, guiding and rooting for us through the whole process.

When someone else is trying to correct their own wrong against us, we ought to try to follow this same paradigm, rooting for them to succeed and being ready to embrace them to the extent they are successful. Of course most people (including myself most of the time) are looking for a free pass for our past transgression that we call forgiveness but is really just enabling us to not reconcile with our own spirit and God. And we are correct to intuitively reject this because it is simply not how reconciliation and forgiveness occurs, whether that is between a person and God or between people or groups of people.

Generally, our own spirit can tell what the other intends and their sincerity and is quick to act correctly if we let it. At the same time wisdom (learning from our own and other peoples’ experience) cautions that we ought to be cautious and allow reconciliation to proceed slowly, even though we do not like the prolonged uncertainty and time spent where souls meet. If we try to rush it though we often short circuit this reconciliation and forgiveness process and set everyone up to fail.

Continuing

I figured we mostly agreed. And I definitely agree about Him being relentless and ultimately it being Grace. My point that I did not make well was that this Grace is always available with Its hand outstretched to us for the very instant we decide to go through the process of reconciliation. So when I said all the work is ours I meant the decision and process never fail and as soon as we get desperate enough to fully commit to it, we will know union with our Creator.

And even before I saw your reply I was thinking I needed to correct another error of mine. Our Creator’s forgiveness, as ours ideally ought to be, should always be present and require nothing because it is only due to any one of us being in some degree of hell (separated from our spirit that is the only part of us that can experience God) that we act in objectable ways and we are generally blind to this – “forgive them for they know not what they do.” And to the extent we are with our own spirit and communing with God, we know this.

At the same time what I previously said about forgiveness and reconciliation is true for reconciliation, and trying to give ourselves or another a free pass for our misdeeds turns out to be anything but generous because it blocks the very path to experiencing and thus knowing wholeness with our Creator (and fellows).

So we ought to forgive quickly and then be cautious and deliberate about reconciliation, not to punish, but because that is actually the generous/loving path. And we ought to be rooting for them (us) and yearning for them (us) to dig deep enough and be courageous enough to succeed on that path, while also having faith that they (we) can follow that path if they (we) choose.