Are some crimes so horrible that they cannot be forgiven?

Answer 1

No. The choice to forgive is that of the person who feels he has been wronged. Sadly, many people in society who are not directly affected by a particular crime take it upon themselves to speak for the whole of society. These are a vocal and warped minority.

Take for instance the situation of the shooting that occurred at West Nickle Mines School in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania on October 2, 2006. The shooter Carl Roberts took the lives of five young girls before shooting himself. The Amish community of Nickle Mines, to which the girls were a part, made a very public point of expressing their grief over the act and their forgiveness for Roberts' actions. These gentle people were judged harshly by the media and groups across the country for this Christian and humane act. This act of kindness and humanity went a long way toward helping the community and all the victims to process their shared grief, as is the purpose of forgiveness.

Continued hate and belligerence does nothing to correct the evil or harm of past actions. It serves only to keep the wounds open, to spread hate and anger. Forgiveness has nothing (or very little) to do with the wrong-doer. It has everything to do with the emotional, spiritual, and psychological health of those who forgive. Those who are nothing more than bystanders, to hold on to the blame and rage, could then by definition be considered mentally and/or emotionally imbalanced. Perhaps more so than the original offender.

Answer

Yes. Some people kill because they are mentally unbalanced or emotionally distraught, or because they were brought up without any moral guidance from the adults in their lives.

Others kill because they just like to kill. There are some people who take pleasure in inflicting fear and pain onto others. Hurting others brings them joy. Most commonly called "sociopaths" or "sadists," these people truly have no regard for the feelings of others. They believe that only their wants and needs matter, and they view other people as sort of puppets that move and speak but do not think or feel the way they themselves do.

People like this do not want forgiveness, nor do they deserve it, in my opinion. I see no value whatsoever in a person who rapes a 10 year-old girl orally, vaginally and anally, then deliberately beats her ALMOST to death before leaving her, so that she will suffer for an even longer period of time before she dies. And then feels no remorse, and actually makes jokes and brags about his crime.

Nor do I see any value in gang members who saw off a snitch's hands and feet (with a dull blade, so it will be even more painful), and then cauterize the wounds so that the victim will survive and have to live the rest of his life without hands and feet. Or who beat people to death so brutally that the victims can only be identified by a DNA test. Or who chop off a prison guard's head and then gleefully play soccer with the severed head.

Nor do I see any value in a man who beats, rapes and tortures a mother and her two young daughters, in front of each other, because he enjoys making people watch their loved ones getting tortured/beaten/raped. And then ties concrete blocks to their feet and throws them into the ocean alive, without blindfolds over their eyes, because he enjoys seeing the fear in their eyes right before they go overboard.

These are not troubled, disadvantaged, unbalanced or insane people who should be pitied. These are people who torture and kill just because they like it. They enjoy violence and they enjoy inflicting pain and fear onto others. They don't want forgiveness, nor do they deserve it, in my opinion.

Refusing to forgive does not necessarily equate to continued hate and anger. It just means that you see no reason to forgive. True, not forgiving someone is often accompanied by feelings of anger and hate. But not always. Often it is an emotionless act. It just means that you see no value in the person, and believe that expending any kind of emotion on them -- positive or negative -- is a waste.

Forgiving someone, I believe, means that, even though you despise the person's actions, you still see value in them as a human being. You recognize that there is still humanity/goodness in them, despite what they've done.

Forgiving people like this doesn't do anybody any good. It is a travesty. It's like forgiving a brick for coming loose from a building and falling on your head. It's a brick, not a human being, so there's no point in forgiving it. To forgive a sadist/sociopath is to attribute humanity to a person who has none. You are pretending to see something that just isn't there. It's a complete waste of emotional energy.

Forgiveness is what you grant to humans who have done wrong. These people aren't quite human, so forgiving them is pointless. In fact, if you forgive them, they will typically mock you and express disdain for you, because they believe that any kind of positive emotion equates to weakness.

Forgiving them won't help or cure them. And it won't help or cure YOU, either. In my opinion, it is psychologically unhealthy to pretend to see humanity in someone who has none. You are deluding yourself, which is never healthy.