Actually, as a Christian, that's what I was taught God's forgiveness is like: viewing the person as never having done anything wrong in the first place.

So, while I would agree with the insight, I don't see it as going beyond the Christian view. I was always taught that forgiveness means "forgive and forget" and if you truly forget, then no wrong was ever done. If you do not forget, you have not truly forgiven. After all, the point of forgiveness is not just to make us a better person, and right with God. It is to heal the relationship between the forgiver and the forgiven as if it had never been broken in the first place.


PS. To me the idea that "we would be the better person and forgive them" suggests taking an attitude of prideful superiority which is quite inconsistent with forgiveness and is actually a way of degrading the other person in one's view. C. S. Lewis in The Screwtape Letters has some choice things to say about the temptation to take pride in one's virtues, such as being proud of how humble one has become.

From what I have been shown

We look upon ALL as the wholly sons of God

There are no Christians or Athiests or Muslims

We are ALL perfectly equal

Regardless of what Ego shows us


Bless you for your teaching

Thanks for bringing this up, Rainbow Rider! Sometimes I forget how central forgiveness is to the Course. And I love what gluadys and Tony had to say. Indeed, forgiveness is the realization that the ego "never happened" - it hasn't changed our reality or the Love of God one iota. We see in our brothers what we choose to see. When we're acting out of the ego, we see the ego in others. When we look past the ego to the love (or call to love) in someone else, we are practicing forgiveness.

Gosh, it's hard to sum up what forgiveness could do for us/the world. There's actually a booklet devoted entirely to the subject of forgiveness which was dictated by Helen after the Course was completed. It's an incredible treatise on the subject. Anyone else familiar with it, by chance?

I Havent read it myself


Well not yet