Quick thought on forgiveness.

I happen to think that forgiveness is like love. "Love" is a personal thing and not an independent substance. What I mean is that love always has a subject and object, for instance, "I love you." (Or like in the commercial a guy answers the doorbell and it's the delivery guy, and he goes something like "I love pepperoni on pizza, and I love the thick crust and I love ...." and his wife goes, "how is it that you can use love three times in one sentence for pizza and I can't get you to tell me you love me?)

People love people/things. Love is a verb to us as humans and theologically it is understood in its supreme form as God. My point is that love is not something that hangs out there in cyber or transcendental space. Rather it originates from humans to something and each act of direction of love is unique and colored by who loves and what is loved.

Forgiveness is the same way. People forgive people. Forgiveness orginiates from someone and is directed at someone for a specific item or classification of items. What forgiveness is not, is an umbrella mandate to bury situations or actions in the "sea of forgetfullness." Also God's forgiving is not the same thing as human forgiving and one should not cross-identify God's forgiving with human forgiving. Our human sitaution shapes the identity of human forgiveness and by default makes it different from God's. To forgive is not to erase pain caused, or to banish the situation from memory which is not even possible. For a Christian, it is to stand before the judge of the universe and absolve someone of offense towards you. And I mean this literally speaking, it is between you, God and the person. However, there may be things that need to be addressed, such as restitution, between you, the state (or some body), and the person.

I also think that when you have forgiven, you may still recount an offense and with anger too, these do not invalidate forgiveness. It is when you, before God, wish undeserved ill will towards that person that forgiveness has not taken root. Also, it seems to me that forgiveness calls for varying degrees and shades, as many degrees and shades are there are people and offenses. There is a threshold of forgiveness that suffices but yet has room for even deeper modes of forgiveness. Heaven will have the highest mode of forgiveness, where no offence will be kept but all forgiven and truly forgotten. however, humans, by virtue of our human situation, cannot attain to that highest mode and maybe probably should not; I say should not because these situations are learning tools for us and without them we do not have heartfelt lessons that propel us to perfection.