Judgement and Forgiveness

Johnny

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Should society forgive even the most heinous of criminals if they sincerely repent their wrong,

For example, should a serial killer who spent most his life torturing and abusing his victims, be forgiven if he in all honesty see's that his actions were wrong.?

Plus, is our judgement suffice to say that this person is guilty or do we have to take in all the circumstances that might have made the offender a victim to begin with. Example, if the offender's circumstances are what caused them to be a serial killer, is it right to judge them.

Is it right to forgive a serial killer at the very last moments of his life if he regrets and repents his actions?
And are we able to judge them correctly without taking in all the circumstances that made them serial killers?
 
It depends on what you mean by forgiveness and judgment.

To me forgiveness doesn't mean you trust someone who is untrustworthy or that you allow someone who is dangerous to harm others. It means you let go of the negative emotions that poison the quality of your existence. When someone does something that harms another person emotionally or physically, that negativity propagates like ripples on a pond if the victim reacts and passes it on by harming someone else. If you can deaden the waves of negativity by forgiving, by not reacting like for like, by not reacting with negativity, you make the world a better place.

As far as judgment goes, a criminal justice system should protect people from harmful individuals and help convicts to become less harmful. At the personal level I don't think it is useful to judge others because to understand what is happening at the physical level you have to understand what is going on at the spiritual level and that is usually not possible. Some souls incarnate to teach another person a lesson and while they might seem like a bad person while alive, they might be an advanced soul making a sacrifice for the benefit of others.
 
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It depends on what you mean by forgiveness.

To me forgiveness doesn't mean you trust someone who is untrustworthy or that you allow someone who is dangerous to harm others. It means you let go of the negative emotions that poison the quality of your existence. When someone does something that harms another person emotionally or physically, that negativity propagates like ripples on a pond if the victim reacts and passes it on by harming someone else. If you can deaden the waves of negativity by forgiving, by not reacting like for like, by not reacting with negativity, you make the world a better place.



Hi Jim


Should God forgive a serial killer who spent his whole torturing and abusing his victims but right at his last moments sincerely regretted his actions and appealed to God for forgiveness?

Emphasis on the word sincerely.
 
Hi Jim


Should God forgive a serial killer who spent his whole torturing and abusing his victims but right at his last moments sincerely regretted his actions and appealed to God for forgiveness?

Emphasis on the word sincerely.

In my view forgiveness is implicit because God understands cause and effect completely and loves all unconditionally. But there is also karma. You will always experience the natural consequences of your actions and there is no escape from them. Ultimately, good actions have good consequences and bad actions have bad consequences. But karma is not reward or punishment that results from judgment. It is more like a natural law such as gravity, and it exists for the purpose of learning.
 
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In my view forgiveness is implicit because God understands cause and effect completely and loves all unconditionally. But there is also karma. You will always experience the natural consequences of your actions and there is no escape from them. Ultimately, good actions have good consequences and bad actions have bad consequences. But karma is not reward or punishment that results from judgment. It is more like a natural law such as gravity, and it exists for the purpose of learning.

I agree mostly with everything you say in this and other posts. On the other hand I would feel uneasy stating such things as facts as you appear to do. Do you have up and down days with regard to how you feel about this stuff? Or do you know it somehow? I definitely have days when I feel that I'm touching God and days when it feels like 'Am I fooling myself?'. I'm pleased to report that the latter such days are few and far between.
 
Hi Jim


Should God forgive a serial killer who spent his whole torturing and abusing his victims but right at his last moments sincerely regretted his actions and appealed to God for forgiveness?

Emphasis on the word sincerely.

Like Jim, I think that God forgives everything. If there was nothing but unconditional love there all the time, what is there to forgive? I think that we should maybe think of God being less of a separate entity than we tend to.
 
I agree mostly with everything you say in this and other posts. On the other hand I would feel uneasy stating such things as facts as you appear to do. Do you have up and down days with regard to how you feel about this stuff? Or do you know it somehow? I definitely have days when I feel that I'm touching God and days when it feels like 'Am I fooling myself?'. I'm pleased to report that the latter such days are few and far between.

I am just repeating what I have read over and over in books written by or about evidential mediums and NDErs. I am not certain of it from my own experience or my own intuition. I am certain of it because of the empirical evidence as reported by reliable messengers. When I have down days it doesn't influence my interpretation of the data. It might influence my opinion of whether I like the system or not but it doesn't change what I consider to be the facts.
 
Should society forgive even the most heinous of criminals if they sincerely repent their wrong,

For example, should a serial killer who spent most his life torturing and abusing his victims, be forgiven if he in all honesty see's that his actions were wrong.?

Plus, is our judgement suffice to say that this person is guilty or do we have to take in all the circumstances that might have made the offender a victim to begin with. Example, if the offender's circumstances are what caused them to be a serial killer, is it right to judge them.

Is it right to forgive a serial killer at the very last moments of his life if he regrets and repents his actions?
And are we able to judge them correctly without taking in all the circumstances that made them serial killers?

I agree with Jim's bifurcation of forgiveness into personal and societal connotations. I think we should personally forgive everyone in the sense of letting go of the negative emotions towards that person, but on a societal level I don't think a person's sentence for heinous crimes should be altered based on the apparent sincerity of their repentance. If a person commits a petty crime, they should be punished in a way that also offers rehabilitation. If a person commits heinous crimes, they should be swiftly executed for the betterment of society. I believe death will provide the proper rehabilitation for their soul or be a welcome release and far more compassionate than a life in prison.
 
I agree with Jim's bifurcation of forgiveness into personal and societal connotations.
Unlike his, there is a strong thread of "do bad things to bad guys" running through your version. And reasoning that someone should murder someone is reasoning that someone should murder someone. Whether the murder is state sanctioned or not changes nothing.

And individuals are more important than societies. When that is truly understood by most people there'll be far fewer "heinous crimes."
 
Should society forgive even the most heinous of criminals if they sincerely repent their wrong,
Conceptions of right/wrong are very individual things. To an IS member, those not following their doctrine are "heinous criminals" who are to be put to death. To most of US in the West nowadays those IS members are "heinous criminals" who should be punished. And so the concept of "forgiveness" is tied to an individual's view of right/wrong.

You may then offer that societies are there to protect individuals. That too varies. There are societies where the main focus is to override the individual. That might be for elite control or because the society has a collective goal.
 
Unlike his, there is a strong thread of "do bad things to bad guys" running through your version. And reasoning that someone should murder someone is reasoning that someone should murder someone. Whether the murder is state sanctioned or not changes nothing.

And individuals are more important than societies. When that is truly understood by most people there'll be far fewer "heinous crimes."

1) I think the severity of death is exaggerated by our materialistic society. The expansion of my understanding of consciousness and life after death thanks in large part to Skeptiko has helped me to not take it so seriously. A quick and painless death is certainly not the worst punishment a person can receive and could be viewed as humane compared to many alternatives.
2) I suppose I'm somewhat of a eugenicist - though not of the statist top-down centrally controlled type who are currently wreaking havoc around the world. Improve humanity and society through termination of those who commit the most heinous crimes. If I had a kid and found someone sexually abusing my kid, I would terminate that person on the spot and humanity would be better off for it.
3) I am very individualistic myself and agree that society should protect the freedom of the individual and that includes the freedom to protect one's self and those not able to defend themselves from becoming victims to heinous crime.
 
Conceptions of right/wrong are very individual things. To an IS member, those not following their doctrine are "heinous criminals" who are to be put to death. To most of US in the West nowadays those IS members are "heinous criminals" who should be punished. And so the concept of "forgiveness" is tied to an individual's view of right/wrong.

You may then offer that societies are there to protect individuals. That too varies. There are societies where the main focus is to override the individual. That might be for elite control or because the society has a collective goal.


I think that good and evil exists objectively, by objectively, I mean, It doesn't matter what our individual opinions are, it is still good or evil regardless.
 
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If a person commits heinous crimes, they should be swiftly executed for the betterment of society. I believe death will provide the proper rehabilitation for their soul or be a welcome release and far more compassionate than a life in prison.

Are you sure they should be swiftly executed though? Sometimes it can take a little while for them to prove their innocence.
 
If a person commits heinous crimes, they should be swiftly executed for the betterment of society. I believe death will provide the proper rehabilitation for their soul or be a welcome release and far more compassionate than a life in prison.
A word of caution about this. I don't know if it's true or not, but when you read the Spiritualist literature (evidential mediums and so on), spirits in communication constantly warn that execution of violent humans does not immediately mean rehabilitation of those "souls", can actually retard their spiritual development, and also creates more darkness on earth through their post-death influence. I won't go through the books to find the exact quotes, but I've come across that over and over. It's summarized here in an article by Mark Macy:
Human Spirituality & Capital Punishment

Posted on 2010 April 6 by Mark Macy


I used to think the death penalty was a good thing. If certain vicious criminals couldn’t adapt to society, everyone would be better off if they were removed permanently. Executing them rather quickly, once proven guilty, would save the cost of keeping them in prison, remove the chance of them getting back out on the streets to cause more mayhem, and maybe discourage others from committing similar crimes.

Lately I’ve changed my tune, though. Now I’m firmly opposed to capital punishment… but not for the usual reasons. It has nothing to do with morality or expediency… more to do with recycling… in a spiritual kind of way. I’ll explain.

Through my afterlife research I know that:

1) Spirits move in and out of our world constantly. They live in countless spiritual realms that are superimposed over each other and over our world… separated not by space but by vibration… like radio signals.

2) Many of those unseen worlds and their invisible inhabitants flourish in love and light, and when those beings get close to us humans, we feel inspired and blissful. They sometimes linger close to the Earth… drawn to people who have fostered the noble side of their humanity with perpetual thoughts of good will and kindness toward others… people like saintly priests and good-hearted artists.

3) There are also dark, dismal worlds whose scruffy inhabitants are driven by fear, loathing, and malevolence… and when THEY get close to us, their attitudes put us in a foul mood. Sometimes, fascinated by the dramas of our world, they attach themselves to susceptible humans to enjoy a prolonged ride through the dark backstreets and savage subcultures of humanity. Some people with troubled spirit entities attached to them may become violent criminals… if violence is a driving force of the entity.

So, let’s see how this multi-world scenario ties into the subject of capital punishment…

What happens to an attached spirit, or troubled spiritual parasite, when its human host dies? Typically it moves on to find another host… another susceptible human being though whom it can resume its morbid fascination with terrestrial dramas.

And that’s why I’m now firmly opposed to capital punishment. Most violent criminals are under the influence of attached entities. Killing a criminal simply frees the entity to find another host… so chaos and suffering on Earth continue. Long-story-short: executing violent criminals doesn’t solve the problem.


http://macyafterlife.com/2010/04/06/capital-punishment-and-spirit/
 
A word of caution about this. I don't know if it's true or not, but when you read the Spiritualist literature (evidential mediums and so on), spirits in communication constantly warn that execution of violent humans does not immediately mean rehabilitation of those "souls", can actually retard their spiritual development, and also creates more darkness on earth through their post-death influence. I won't go through the books to find the exact quotes, but I've come across that over and over. It's summarized here in an article by Mark Macy:
Human Spirituality & Capital Punishment

Posted on 2010 April 6 by Mark Macy


I used to think the death penalty was a good thing. If certain vicious criminals couldn’t adapt to society, everyone would be better off if they were removed permanently. Executing them rather quickly, once proven guilty, would save the cost of keeping them in prison, remove the chance of them getting back out on the streets to cause more mayhem, and maybe discourage others from committing similar crimes.

Lately I’ve changed my tune, though. Now I’m firmly opposed to capital punishment… but not for the usual reasons. It has nothing to do with morality or expediency… more to do with recycling… in a spiritual kind of way. I’ll explain.

Through my afterlife research I know that:

1) Spirits move in and out of our world constantly. They live in countless spiritual realms that are superimposed over each other and over our world… separated not by space but by vibration… like radio signals.

2) Many of those unseen worlds and their invisible inhabitants flourish in love and light, and when those beings get close to us humans, we feel inspired and blissful. They sometimes linger close to the Earth… drawn to people who have fostered the noble side of their humanity with perpetual thoughts of good will and kindness toward others… people like saintly priests and good-hearted artists.

3) There are also dark, dismal worlds whose scruffy inhabitants are driven by fear, loathing, and malevolence… and when THEY get close to us, their attitudes put us in a foul mood. Sometimes, fascinated by the dramas of our world, they attach themselves to susceptible humans to enjoy a prolonged ride through the dark backstreets and savage subcultures of humanity. Some people with troubled spirit entities attached to them may become violent criminals… if violence is a driving force of the entity.

So, let’s see how this multi-world scenario ties into the subject of capital punishment…

What happens to an attached spirit, or troubled spiritual parasite, when its human host dies? Typically it moves on to find another host… another susceptible human being though whom it can resume its morbid fascination with terrestrial dramas.

And that’s why I’m now firmly opposed to capital punishment. Most violent criminals are under the influence of attached entities. Killing a criminal simply frees the entity to find another host… so chaos and suffering on Earth continue. Long-story-short: executing violent criminals doesn’t solve the problem.


http://macyafterlife.com/2010/04/06/capital-punishment-and-spirit/


I agree. It's mentioned by some Leslie Flint's ostensible communicators (two of whom were apparently very senior judges before their deaths). Also in the teachings of Silver Birch. The work of Carl Wickland is also perhaps relevant.
 
I agree. It's mentioned by some Leslie Flint's ostensible communicators (two of whom were apparently very senior judges before their deaths). Also in the teachings of Silver Birch. The work of Carl Wickland is also perhaps relevant.
Also Stainton Moses' Spirit Teachings:

If you could read the story of the world with the spirit-sight, you would see that there have always been periodic battles between the evil and the good. There have recurred seasons when undeveloped intelligences have had predominance. Especially are such seasons consequent on great wars among you. Many spirits are prematurely withdrawn from the body. They then pass before they are fit; and at the moment of departure they are in evil state, angry, bloodthirsty, filled with evil passion. They do mischief great and long in the after-life.

Nothing is more dangerous than for souls to be rudely severed from their bodily habitation, and to be launched into spirit-life, with angry passions stirred, and revengeful feelings dominant. It is bad that any should be dismissed from earth-life suddenly, and before the bond is naturally severed. It is for this reason that all destruction of bodily flesh is foolish and rude: rude, as betokening a barbarous ignorance of the conditions of life and progress hereafter; foolish, as releasing an undeveloped angry spirit from its trammels, and enduing it with extended capacity for mischief. You are blind and ignorant in your dealings with those who have offended against your laws and the regulations, moral and restrictive, by which you govern intercourse amongst yourselves. You find a low and debased intelligence offending against morality, or against constituted law. Straightway you take the readiest means of aggravating his capacity for mischief. Instead of separating such one from evil influence, removing him from association with sin, and isolating him under the educating influence of true purity and spirituality, where the more refined intelligences may gradually operate and counteract the baleful power of evil and evil manifestations, you place him in the midst of evil associations, in company with offenders like himself, where the very atmosphere is heavy with evil, where the hordes of the undeveloped and unprogressed spirits most do congregate, and where, both from human associates and spirit influence, the whole tendency is evil. (...)

Yes, friend, your jails and your legalised murder, the whole tenor of your dealings with criminals, are based on error and ignorance.

Your wars and your wholesale murderings are even more fearful. You settle your differences with your neighbours, who should be your friends, by arraying against each other masses of spirits--we see not the body; we care only for the spirit temporarily clothed with those human atoms--and those spirits you excite to full pitch of rage and fury, and so you launch them, rudely severed from their earth-bodies, into spirit life. You inflame their passions, and give them full vent. Vengeful, debased, cruel, earth-bound spirits throng around your earth- sphere, and incite the debased who are still in the body to deeds of cruelty and lust and sin. And this for the satisfying of ambition, for a passing fancy, for an idle princely whim, for lack of something else to occupy a king.


http://www.meilach.com/spiritual/books/st/sect02.htm
 
A word of caution about this. I don't know if it's true or not, but when you read the Spiritualist literature (evidential mediums and so on), spirits in communication constantly warn that execution of violent humans does not immediately mean rehabilitation of those "souls", can actually retard their spiritual development, and also creates more darkness on earth through their post-death influence. I won't go through the books to find the exact quotes, but I've come across that over and over. It's summarized here in an article by Mark Macy:
Human Spirituality & Capital Punishment

Posted on 2010 April 6 by Mark Macy


I used to think the death penalty was a good thing. If certain vicious criminals couldn’t adapt to society, everyone would be better off if they were removed permanently. Executing them rather quickly, once proven guilty, would save the cost of keeping them in prison, remove the chance of them getting back out on the streets to cause more mayhem, and maybe discourage others from committing similar crimes.

Lately I’ve changed my tune, though. Now I’m firmly opposed to capital punishment… but not for the usual reasons. It has nothing to do with morality or expediency… more to do with recycling… in a spiritual kind of way. I’ll explain.

Through my afterlife research I know that:

1) Spirits move in and out of our world constantly. They live in countless spiritual realms that are superimposed over each other and over our world… separated not by space but by vibration… like radio signals.

2) Many of those unseen worlds and their invisible inhabitants flourish in love and light, and when those beings get close to us humans, we feel inspired and blissful. They sometimes linger close to the Earth… drawn to people who have fostered the noble side of their humanity with perpetual thoughts of good will and kindness toward others… people like saintly priests and good-hearted artists.

3) There are also dark, dismal worlds whose scruffy inhabitants are driven by fear, loathing, and malevolence… and when THEY get close to us, their attitudes put us in a foul mood. Sometimes, fascinated by the dramas of our world, they attach themselves to susceptible humans to enjoy a prolonged ride through the dark backstreets and savage subcultures of humanity. Some people with troubled spirit entities attached to them may become violent criminals… if violence is a driving force of the entity.

So, let’s see how this multi-world scenario ties into the subject of capital punishment…

What happens to an attached spirit, or troubled spiritual parasite, when its human host dies? Typically it moves on to find another host… another susceptible human being though whom it can resume its morbid fascination with terrestrial dramas.

And that’s why I’m now firmly opposed to capital punishment. Most violent criminals are under the influence of attached entities. Killing a criminal simply frees the entity to find another host… so chaos and suffering on Earth continue. Long-story-short: executing violent criminals doesn’t solve the problem.


http://macyafterlife.com/2010/04/06/capital-punishment-and-spirit/

Thanks for sharing that. :)

I've gone back and forth a few times on capital punishment and am open to switching back to being against it.

The argument above seems based upon the premise that there are a limited or fixed number of dark spirits in the world and that the only thing keeping more people from being possessed is that these spirits are currently engaged.

This raises two questions in my mind: why is the number of dark spirits in the world fixed or limited to a relatively low number? And is anyone suceptible to their influence or are some spiritually stout people impervious to their influence or possession? If the limiting factor in dark spiritual possession is not the number of spirits in operation, but rather the number of spiritually weak potential hosts, then doesn't that turn the argument back around in favor of capital punishment?
 
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