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Are Christians morally obligated to forgive someone if God has forgiven them? Like, let's say this woman appears to convert to Christianity and repent meaningfully and by all appearances it seems 100% genuine. Am I supposed to treat her like she's a completely fresh, clean bowl of cheerios? Would it be wrong of me to refuse to marry/date her because of her past?
No. But it also wouldn't be wrong for you to choose to marry her. You wouldn't be sinning in marrying her. Which is already an important distinction, and an important advancement over most other views of morality historically and presently.
My own personal view, is that deal breakers, while tempting, are bad to have too many of, and really bad to try to enforce on others. Because finding a good partner is hard enough as it is. I know good Christian girls who married their sweetheart from Liberty University, or married a girl they only courted with chaperones, who wound up in miserable, failed, dangerous, or otherwise terrible marriages. Given the importance of finding a good spouse, and the difficulty of doing so, it would seem foolish to throw someone away if you genuinely thought they'd make you happy over one thing.
This, of course, is all big talk on my part, as I already married the perfect woman.
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What would I forgive her for? She has done me no wrong. She may have sinned against God and her own body; she can forgive her own conscience and God can forgive her sins. I cannot forgive her sins even if I wanted to.
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Yes, Christian’s are obligated to forgive this woman. No, Christian’s are not obligated to be willing to marry this woman post conversion.
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Would you marry/date a bowl of corn flakes? Or fruit loops, I don't mean to assume.
It would be wrong of you, according to the Christianity I was raised with, to insist upon that decision even in the face of genuine remorse. If you got to know this woman and had long deeply spiritual conversations with her and came to the conclusion that she was genuinely sorry for it and still refused to date her for that reason, that would not be Christian.
But like @urquan says, only God can truly judge you, because only God and you know what is truly in your heart. On top of that, no one will be judged before judgement day and no one knows when that will be. In our predicament we can only evaluate the evidence - has she stopped doing it, does she visibly feel bad about it, and so on. It would be acceptable if you didn't believe she was truly sorry after getting to know her, although it would still be necessary to be polite to her.
To roll in what @mrvanillasky asked about the guy nuking the planet and then repenting, yes God would forgive that guy, because he would know that guy was legit, because he can see his thoughts and because it was part of his plan. The idea of nuking the planet and then being truly remorseful about it seems strictly impossible to me though - how do you even conceptualise the death and suffering of 10 billion people?
Repentance is not the same as healing. If she's so psychologically scarred that she'll never be able to function as a wife there's no reason I'd consider marrying her in the first place, whether she's 'really' sorry or not. We're not expected to marry a woman unless she occurs to us as good to marry. There are many reasons that someone with her history is less likely to be a good wife.
Can I ask what you mean by quoting really there? Because I'll tell you what I assume - you don't believe she's really sorry* and there actually isn't anything short of the clouds opening up and a ray of sunshine beaming "no dude she is totes for real" into your head that would change your mind. It is that thought pattern that is unchristian as I understand the faith. I didn't say you were expected to marry her, I said if you maintained the belief that she was a soiled bowl of cheerios you point blank refuse to date after getting to know her and embracing the concept of forgiveness you would be in the wrong.
One of the first steps in embracing the concept of forgiveness is accepting how much of a fuck up you are. It changes your worldview, as does getting to know someone, especially on a spiritual level. Still, only God can judge, if after all those deep and meaningfuls and tears and sleepless nights you still believed she wasn't really remorseful, it would be acceptable to refuse to date her. (But I would bet some people in your community would believe you didn't 'really' forgive her.)
Deciding up front that a woman is a roastie who could never truly accept Jesus because she's banged too many dudes you see, is a similar sin to banging a hundred dudes then saying sorry because then you have to be forgiven. You are trying to put one over on God. God doesn't expect you to get everything right, or even anything right, but he expects you to try and to think it through.
*For clarity, I don't think this Lily is genuinely remorseful, it sounds like she's getting ready to bang another thousand guys? She would have a very high bar to vault to convince me she was sincere. I would talk to her and give her a chance to change my mind though.
I mean there's a solid chance she's not really sorry, yes. This is how people work. Hopefully we both understand this? Seems like you do.
But the part where you've apparently randomly concluded that I've already decided she's lying and it would be nearly impossible to change my mind is kind of crazy. No idea where you're getting that.
Yes I understand how people work. That's why, when someone angrily implies I'm being a naive simp for suggesting forgiving this woman to the point that you can view her as another person deserving of love, reads an obligation to marry her in a post that explicitly says the opposite and adds a pre-arranged excuse to get him out of viewing her as marriage material, I assume he has already made up his mind.
Maybe you just meant to signal your strong disbelief currently and you would be happy to marry her if you got to know her and discovered she wasn't too psychologically scarred? I apologise if that is the case. Where would you get married? How many kids would you have together and what would you name the first one if it was a girl?
You know, rather than respond point by point I'll just let you know that I wasn't angry in the slightest, but it's also true that I'm not interested in the conversation any more.
Fine by me bud, but I'll just let you know you can easily prove me wrong by answering those questions I asked.
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You would have to forgive her her sins. That doesn't entail pretending that her past experiences won't impact her future relationships. So the answer depends on your motives, but generally no, it's not wrong.
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One must, it is true, forgive one's enemies-- but not before they have been hanged
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Depends, are you getting straight-married or gay-married to her?
Because she seems the type to still want (or rather, need) a straight marriage, and at this point I think she’d have a hard time with both, because the betrayal in a straight marriage is not being a virgin, but the betrayal in a gay marriage is not being fucking trustworthy enough not to want to fall back into needing those straight marriage privileges for the relationship to be viable (because she can’t provide them now as well as she used to).
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There was a short thread discussing this issue while ago.
The short version is that Christians are obligated to act with charity and love to all people. However, that does not mean Christians shouldn't condemn the sins people have committed and treat them out harshly out of love (love is willing the good of the other - the good of the other may require some 'tough love'). This includes accepting there may be temporal consequences for sin (penance is built around this concept, but also consequences outside of penance). Additionally, there is a significant degree of prudential judgement Christians should excerise when it comes to determining genuine conversion or not. After all, Jesus warns against 'wolves in sheep's clothing' and false prophets more than once. False prophets easily extends to those who claim to have had an encounter with Christ (i.e. a conversion).
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For one thing, it's hard to know if God has forgiven them when all you've got is a public claim of religious conversion. But the second part is that there's nothing for you to forgive here: the sin was against herself, and against the men she involved in it, and against God, not against you.
But if someone has directly sinned against you and comes to you with deep remorse combined with restorative action, then the number of times you should forgive them is seventy times seven.
No, not at all.
Like I said, forgiveness is different from the natural consequences of your actions. If someone along these lines expresses genuine remorse and is part of, say, your local church community, while showing evidence of repentance (which involves actions as well as words), then you should treat them with the respect owed to someone in the community. That means not spreading gossip or being harsh or critical, it means loving them as you love yourself. (Some acts rise to the level of crimes, of course, and that's a different situation: Christian repentance doesn't erase the consequences of sin, like prison sentences.) But this is dependent upon true absolution and penitence, which in ancient Christianity could sometimes involve years of formal ostracization (i.e. temporary excommunication). This is a "be nice until you can coordinate meanness" situation. It's God, through the ordained ministry, that gets to make these decisions, not you or me.
But that doesn't mean you can't make a judgment about their behavior in terms of your temporal choices or choices that entangle you with them, like choosing not to marry them because you believe their particular inclinations might make them a poor spouse. You're under no obligation to marry anyone in particular, and choosing not to date/marry someone is not equivalent to social ostracization (one of my disagreements with trans activists). The natural consequence of poor sexual behavior is poor sexual prospects, and God doesn't remove those unless he has a particular plan for you -- which, of course, he might.
Christians are called to be innocent as doves but wise as serpents, to forgive and have compassion but also to be judicious and not naive.
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