Forgiving someone who has neither asked for it nor admitted to any violation is not possible. Forgiveness not sought is pointless. For example, by definition, you cannot give a person a gift if the gift isn’t wanted or accepted.

Forgiveness as a tool for emotional healing willl have the opposite effect, and will prove destructive; and further, it really just means the excuse of evil, or the repression of one’s justifiable anger, or both. This isn’t a remediation of the wrongdoing suffered, it is a compounding of it.  And this makes it satanic.

Some may claim that forgiveness is a way we don’t allow evil people and their actions to have power over us (whatever the fuck that means). But two things:

First, you cannot say “I will love and accept you [which is precisely what forgiveness is] no matter how evil you are or what evil you remorselessly perpetrate” without at the very least tacitly excusing the evil. And excusing evil,  empowers evil. It does not neutralize it. 

Second, evil SHOULD have the “power”–that is, the effect of making us angry; to make us hurt so that we see it and feel it for the turgid crime that it is; to spur us on to demand its redaction and to furiously demand justice.

Also, to not extend forgiveness does not necessarily mean that one wishes harm or death upon the perpetrator of the violation. It is not the desire for revenge. It is simply a rational recognition of the inability to excuse guilt until the guilty admit their failure and vow to correct it.

We must remember that real forgiveness is meant to be a contract between people, a peace between the repentant wrongdoer and the wronged. It is not an emotional coping strategy for the legitimate sufferer of evil. A better coping strategy for dealing with unrepentant perpetrators of evil is justice, and/or a termination of the relationship, or even violent defense of oneself, depending on the circumstance.

Finally, in my experience I have noticed that forgiveness-absent-contrition tends to favor the evil doer, and especially authoritarian clergy people, who often shift the focus from their wickedness and mendacity to YOUR “sin” of “bitterness” and “lack of grace”.

☘️