More Thoughts on Repentance and Forgiveness

     The worst injustice we as human beings do to God is to project our own ways of thinking onto Him, and assume that He thinks the same way we do. We assume that He holds grudges because we do. We assume that He demands retribution because we do. This was true as soon as Adam and Eve ate the fruit they weren't supposed to. Why in the world would they have hid from God because they were naked? Every animal on the planet was naked. The answer is that their minds had become so warped that they believed being naked was shameful, and so of course they believed God would see it as shameful because they did. We project a darkened, deranged, malfunctioning mind onto the One who is without error or darkness because the malfunctioning human brain cannot imagine that someone else might think differently from itself.
      This is the reason why we do not trust God to forgive just because He says it. This is the reason why we want guarantees. We instinctively do not trust because of our inherent derangement, and because we know that, deep down, we want retribution for when we ourselves are injured or offended and letting go of that is incredibly difficult.
      And there is of course the temptation, the darker desire to be able to get or do what we want without consequence to ourselves, to be able to "work the system" to our advantage. Thus in ancient times you have wealthy "religious" people breaking commandments with what they believe is impunity as long as they keep the sacrifices flowing. Thus you have men of power and influence doing what they want as long as they make regular confession and donate the right amount of money to the churches. They believe they have "guarantees" of a "do what I want and get away with it" card, not understanding that God sees it, and that's not how this works.
      When God says something, He doesn't have to back it up with a guarantee. He's going to do it. He doesn't have to take an oath. His "yes" is as good as a promise engraved in diamond. And His "no" is as immovable for a human being as a mountain of the heaviest metal. When He says He will forgive the wrongdoing of a person if that person turns away from that wrongdoing and does what is right, He will do it. Period. When He says He will choose not to remember the wrongdoing, He will do it. Period. He doesn't need a sacrifice to bind Himself to that word. He isn't the same as we are. He isn't deranged or erroneous. He doesn't harbor secret, dark things within Himself. He doesn't talk out of both sides of His mouth. What He says is what He will do. God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.
      The sacrifices were written into the Torah as a concession to our own fallen psyches. They were written in as a concession to our own malfunctioning consciences. He does not need them in any capacity, and would be just as good without them. They were written in as a mercy to our own inability to forgive ourselves or others, and as a counterpoint to projecting that inability onto Him.
      Jesus Christ died for us, but not because God needed blood to forgive us; rather, He died for us so that we wouldn't have to continue in that malfunction and inherited derangement. He died and resurrected so that we could operate from a different source of behaviors than our own malfunctioning neurology, our own erroneous flesh. All that it requires is that we shelter in place within Him, admitting and recognizing our own internal derangement, and handing ourselves over to the control of His Spirit so that He, free from that derangement and malfunction, would be the source of our actions, words, and thoughts. And the very act of turning to Jesus Christ, trusting Him and following Him, is itself turning away from the previous errors and wrongdoing. Of course God would forgive in so doing, because He said He would. Of course there is forgiveness found in Jesus Christ, because the person truly seeking to remain in Him and follow Him is a person who is repentant and has confessed and continues to confess his own errors, and so of course God is faithful and just to forgive that person's errors and wrongdoings, because He said He would forgive the repentant person to begin with, just as He justified the repentant tax collector but not the Pharisee.