This is a bit of a tangent but a weird epiphany/idea I had a couple days ago. It’s about Jesus dying on the cross and how that parallels our relationships with other humans. See Jesus willingly carried other people’s sins and died to forgive them because there is nothing a person can do to make it up to God. There’s no way for people to atone for their sins and that’s why Jesus had to carry the cross. He carried other people’s sins and while doing so was tortured, beat, and humiliated before dying on the cross, a slow and painful death.
It’s kind of the same with humans when they wrong each other. In a way, there’s nothing I can do to make it up to another person if I do something that hurts them. I’m forcing someone to carry and hold onto my baggage of sins. They have to hold onto it until they’re able to forgive me.
They’re forced into a difficult situation because they only have unpleasant choices: forgive or not. (on the path of non-forgiveness they can bottle it up and ignore it or get revenge or talk trash about them to friends etc.)
With forgiveness, I know how hard and how much energy it can take to forgive someone. Plus, the bigger the sin the more energy it takes to actually, legitimately forgive someone.
On the other hand, if they choose not to forgive, it’s a different kind of burden that slowly seeps their energy and builds, in the back of their mind, a sense of loathing or hatred that poisons their soul and can start to affect other relationships and things in life.
It sucks because it’s a burden that needs to be carried in a similar way that Jesus had to carry the cross. When I sin against someone, I force that person to carry a cross. They carry someone else’s sins, they have to process them, they have to pick out and separate what was wrong, what was unfair, and what was hurtful; in essence (when they’re willing, ready and able) a piece of them dies to forgive the sinner. After that piece of you dies, it’s liberating but to get to that point that person needs to “carry a cross” and then a piece of them dies. It’s painful when you feel like a piece of you is dying. I recognize that this process takes energy and it feels like torture but the alternative is way more insidious and harmful. It can be definitely viewed as a choice between two awful decisions.