forgiveness is the opposite of punishment | A Text message

Introduction

While traveling recently, I found myself reflecting on the deeper roots of justice, pain, and transformation. I had been invited into a situation that required me to examine not just the law, but the consciousness behind it — how humanity’s understanding of “justice” has evolved, or perhaps devolved, from sacred principle into societal norm.

Out of that reflection, I wrote the following text to a friend. It became a meditation on punishment, forgiveness, and the vast gap between transactional justice and transformational healing.

The Text Message:

”This trip has motivated me to dive deeper into the etymology of punishment. Etymologically speaking, forgiveness is the opposite of punishment. To punish means to inflict pain as payment for wrongdoing. To have a punitive justice system means that the pain the punishment causes is proportionate (fair or just) to the harm that the wrongdoer inflicted on another. This is the principle application of Moses’ Law “an eye for an eye” Moses had set the law to limit the initial victim from inflicting disproportionate pain back onto the perpetrator. Judges are then placed into the legal system as a checks and balances to determine what is the proportionate pain that should be inflicted on the perpetrator. The ensuing principles that eventually permeate into culture and society is: “Punishment first, reformation second”

A principle the Taoist’s, nondualist, Sufi’s, Kabbalist and every other higher conscious mystics find silly, ineffective and destructive to true community. Our judicial system makes sense to me now. It’s fundamentally rooted in ancient Roman Law… the ones who killed Jesus the Jewish Essene

Jesus was a Jew trying to reform the system through elevating consciousness, who fell back into duality, which must’ve happened after the 12 Tribes of Israel had lost the understanding that their father had learned from his wrestle with God (within). Forgiveness, etymologically speaking, means “to thoroughly or completely relinquish the desire to punish”. I think this occurs because a person knows how to sit with the pain inside of them, that occurred from the harm that they incurred.

I believe they can only sit with their pain because they are not sitting alone in their pain. It seems, no one, other than the gods and the beasts can sit alone in pain without retaliating.

True Community does not allow someone to sit alone in pain and helps the injured heal without retaliation; they sacrifice together for restoration of wrongs, which then creates transformation rather than a punitive transaction that never truly restores or transforms.”

Let me know your thoughts, and if there’s something you would like me to dive a little deeper into?