Forgiveness

This essay expresses my (Bob’s) beliefs and follows no set belief of any religion! In a way you could look upon this as my disclaimer. The reason for the above is I feel that there are things in life that need to be said and I feel this blog is the place to say them.
This is not a banner waving foot stomping war against sin. For, all of us have sinned! As an afterthought, I have found as many definitions and degrees of sin as there are different religions and also many different interpretations of sin within those religions.
I believe that for any of us to be forgiven, our first step must be for us to forgive ourselves. Many find themselves having done something wrong, that hurt them or others, then they quickly drop to their knees and plead “forgive me Father for I have sinned”. Why don’t they say “I must forgive MYSELF for I have sinned”?
Why always pass the buck to God? God already knows that YOU messed up! How about laying some of that accountability where it belongs? Someplace down my road of life, I learned something about responsibility. Don’t always keep looking to God whenever you need to be bailed out! It was you that got your hands dirty. Shouldn’t it be you that first washes those dirty hands? Then go to your God and ask Him to help you to never do the same thing again.
I believe that one of life’s most important lessons is learning to be responsible for ourselves. We must stop expecting God to come running every time we stub our toe.
We must never feel that we are the only person that ever committed a sin. We all have! The most important part is how we handle our life after it happens! It is important to realize that whatever we did is now in that unchangeable past. Also, you can’t be forgiven for something that has yet to happen!
Lastly, let us take that past mistake and put it in the file called “learning experiences”. You or someone else was burned by that mistake. Now we’re not going to let that happen again. That is a big part of learning to forgive ourselves. It’s only a sin or a mistake if we learn nothing from it.
Being forgiven does not mean that it is completely forgotten. The next time we see that same rock ahead, on our road of life; we will now slow and find a way around it. That’s what our learning experiences are all about. We don’t have to fall over the same rock twice!
Often when we try to hand our God our entire load we find God doing His part but our part stays with us and it can get heavy!