To forgive or not to forgive is the question. Most people who go through traumatic events like the Holocaust executed by other people would not forgive them. Families with children that have been killed by drunk drivers is a good example. They have such a hard time trying to forgive the drivers because they took their only child. Forgiveness is one if the key aspects of life in order to move on with your life. If you don’t forgive someone and live in the past you will dwell on the event that happened.
As the essay from Robert McAfee Brown states “For if we forget, a time will come when even the worst atrocities will be committed against Jews, and any others whom those with power wish to destroy. That we must never forgive would seem to follow from the same stern logic for if we forgive, it would be a sign to those in the future that they can act without fear of punishment…”
In the excerpt from Robert’s essay, he says that to never forgive would follow logic. Sometimes logic is not the best way to approach certain things such as forgiveness such as saying “He hurt me so it’s only fair to hurt him back.” This just makes you just as bad as the other person. I understand that we are not going to kill 6 million people to get back at the Nazi party but we can still forgive them. On earth there are different levels of punishment for different crimes but no matter what it is, a sin is a sin no matter how big of difference between the two are. To some people this might see to be injustice to the Jews because of what happened to them but we should still forgive them of their wrong doings.
By forgiving the Nazis does not mean we are forgetting what they did to us or letting it go by others thinking they can get away with it also. We are just recognizing that they have done wrong and forgiving them of their sin. By no means am I saying that there should not be accountability of the Nazis of their action but just forgiveness. They need to know that we have forgiven them of their crime and still know that there will be punishment if it ever happens again.
Dennis Prager states in his essay, “God Himself does not forgive a person who has sinned against a human being unless that human being has been forgiven by his victim. Therefore, people can never forgive murder, since the one person who forgive is gone, forever.” Then he goes on saying “God can presumably forgive a murder, but as far as people are concerned, murder is unforgivable. Even parents cannot forgive murder of their child (to assume the parents can forgive their child’s murderer is to render children property rather than autonomous human beings). (Dennis)
As 1st Corinthians says in chapter 16 verse 9, “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own” (Biblica, 2011) I believe that we are the property of God because he created us himself. In the verse it says that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit so we also have the power of God in us (For those of us who ask for it). If we ask God for forgiveness we shall receive it weather or not that individual who was the victim is still alive or not. If we are created in the image of God and He is living in us, we should portray His image as best as we can. We should forgive.