Is Christianity too Forgiving?

Do you ever wonder if the Christian God is just a little bit too forgiving, kind of like the middle school teacher that can be talked around with a few sincere-sounding apologies? Do you ever wonder if the gods of the pagans have been replaced by a milksop, and if our whole civilization is suffering because of it? Nietzsche didn’t think much of God’s forgiveness. Neither does Richard Dawkins. Let’s look at the facts.

Where is Justice?

If a serial rapist and killer repented and accepted Jesus on his deathbed, would he go to Heaven?

Provided this change of heart was sincere, Christianity’s answer is a resounding yes.

But where is the justice in that? If God is really holy and just and righteous, if he is really the moral authority qualified to judge all actions, how could he possibly accept such a miserable creature into his presence and still maintain his credibility? If you can be that bad and still get into Heaven, how can there be any standard at all?

This is, in fact, getting it backwards and upside-down. Though it may not seem like it, such an objection to God’s grace actually underestimates the enormity of the crime that has been committed. It takes into account the crime only from my perspective, from a human on-the-ground perspective, as an impartial moral judgement.

What is Justice?

But where God is concerned, there is no impartial judgment of wrongdoing. Why? Because there is no such thing as a victimless crime. Every wrong act, even every wrong thought, is a sin against God, a rebellion, a breaking of trust. And every sin against an infinite God is an infinite sin.

Richard Dawkins says that whenever he does something wrong, he doesn’t ask for forgiveness; instead, he makes it right. But how can you make right an infinite sin? You cannot. No mortal can. What could the serial murderer and rapist do to satisfy justice? Nothing would ever be enough.

Maybe he will die for his crime, but that hardly balances the scale, especially against infinity. What if God did insist on putting him in Hell? What of it? The criminal would never have suffered infinitely; no matter how much time passed, infinite time would be left before he could repay this infinite debt. Justice would forever be left unsatisfied; it is simply not enough.

We are all in the same boat. I may not have raped and murdered, but every day my dossier is growing with little acts of pettiness and selfishness, thoughts of vanity and pride, indulgence of laziness and gluttony. All sins are not equal – that’s bad theology – but no sin is small in God’s eyes. I will say it again: every sin against an infinite God is an infinite sin. Even if I rotted in Hell forever, I could never make it up, and it is only ludicrous pride that wants to do penance, that wants to earn my way back – as if I could make up infinity.

Paying the Price

The wages of sin is death – infinite death. There are only two ways to pay those wages. One, a finite person can suffer an infinite death – as we’ve seen, this will never lead to justice being satisfied. Two, an infinite person can suffer a finite death. This will, in a moment, satisfy the debt. And this is what happened on the cross when Christ called out, “It is paid in full!”

Is Christianity too forgiving? No! Christianity says that no penance, no suffering, no penalty, no punishment, no torture, could ever, ever, ever make up the grievous evil that has been done in this world. Your wrongdoing is so bad that not you, not me, not everyone on this planet together working for eternity could ever make it up.

It took more than the death of the whole universe put together to satisfy justice. It took the death of God himself. It took the physical blood of God poured out on the ground. It took infinite love to overwhelmingly satisfy infinite justice. But that is the love God has for his creation.

That creation includes the serial rapist and murderer. And it includes you, too.

 “Forgive” by Chad Kainz is licensed under CC BY 2.0