Forgiveness is Power by William Fergus Martin

Author:William Fergus Martin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Findhorn Press
Published: 2013-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

One day while enjoying the afternoon sunshine in a park a man came up to me and asked about my religion. Having discovered that I was not a member of his particular church, he tried to encourage me to join. He told me that he was sorry, but that I would end up in hell if I did not do so. After unsuccessfully trying for a while to convince me I noticed that he got less and less sorry that (according to his beliefs) I would be going to hell. In the end, just before he walked away, he seemed to quite like the idea!

The only value I had to this man was to be someone who he could “save”. He wanted me as part of his religious bank account! Perhaps he thinks that the more people he saves the higher up he will be in heaven. What an odd way to look at other human beings and how even odder to believe it is “right” to do so. “OK. I’ll spend a few minutes trying to save you, but if that does not work I am quite happy for you to go to hell for an eternity.” How bizarre. Granted, he is an extreme case, but unfortunately I’ve come across that same attitude in people from different religious groups.

His attitude made me wonder. What kind of mind likes the idea of other people suffering in hell? What kind of mind can conceive that it would be happy in its “heaven” knowing that others were “suffering for eternity”? Only a mind that could convince itself that “they deserve it”, could accomplish this. Whatever they say they believe, such a mind believes in punishment much more than it believes in forgiveness. Such a mind has no real experience of forgiveness, so it cannot conceive it. They literally do not know what they do. Unforgiving minds are invested in unforgiveness – whatever else they claim – because it is all they know. They cannot conceive of life, or even a heaven, which does not maintain their unforgiving stance. They cannot conceive of a heaven unless others are suffering in hell, as that, bizarrely, makes it worth their while.

In my late teens I worked with a man who was part of an obscure Christian group mostly based on the islands off the North-West of Scotland. He believed that his religion was the true one and everyone else was destined for Hell. He would get very bristly if I asked him awkward questions about what happened to Buddhist, or Islamic children who died before ever having heard of Jesus. He always returned to the stance that his particular branch of Christianity was the right one and that everyone else, including most other Christians (who in his eyes were not true Christians), were bound for hell.

Christianity is not the only religion ill-used in this way, but it is the one I am familiar with. I’m sure that many sensible modern Christians would be horrified by this man’s attitude.

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