{Forgiveness and Repentance}[17th March 1988]

[Redbook5:81-83][19880317:2010]{Forgiveness and Repentance}[17th March 1988]

19880317.2010

This experience* of the necessity and effect of forgiveness without repentance among Individuals implies that (contrary to what I may have thought earlier)** the Love of God also means God's forgiveness with or without our repentance. It is important to try to understand what this means.

In the case of me and my parents,*** I forgive them gladly for what they have done;**** but I still know them for what they are. I guess that God's forgiveness is what enables the 'good bits' to return to God after Death, although before Death experience suggests a more all-or-nothing state for each Individual. But only repentance brings about the transformation of the whole Individual, so that he is no longer what he was. (This is creative analytical speculation.)

In psychological terms, perhaps, divine forgiveness removes the burden of his own sin from the Individual, preventing him from being dragged down wholly to destruction by it; but repentance transfers the centre of his awareness or identity from the stained to the unstained state, in mind, or perhaps in time, so that his stain is cleared. But this is a poor attempt to explain something real but [sic] extraordinarily sophisticated.

*[See [Redbook5:80][19880316:2143c]{Law and Love}[16th March 1988], &c.]

**ref III?, IV.

[But see e.g. [Redbook3:101-102][19870404:1005k]{The Righting of Wrongs}[4th April 1987]; &c.?]

***[See [Redbook5:66][19880316:1300]{Forgiveness}[16th March 1988] & fn refs; &

[Redbook5:80][19880316:2143b]{Love and Forgiveness}[16th March 1988].]

****I wrote 'if anything' on the letters because I have not been able to agree this with them.

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