9/11: Why don't Christians forgive and forget just like Jews did with holocaust?

God forgives sinners who repent but God does not - and cannot - forget anything. He knows the end from the beginning and the Bible promises that everything hidden will be revealed on the Day of Judgment. This means that absolutely everything about everyone will be known to the Judge.

However, those sinners who have repented will have no case to answer because their Advocate, Jesus, has paid their debt of sin in full, so that God will not demand payment twice. They cannot be punished because Jesus bore the punishment for them, in their stead. But those who have not repented will have everything about themselves exposed and judged.

With yourself, you are not expected to forget wrong done to you, but if you are to truly forgive, you are to become free from all the bitterness of resentment. Once you totally forgive, you will have no bitterness left. You will have been set free from the chains of a resentful attitude.

So although you must have forgiven to a degree, the evidence of bitterness means you still have further to go with forgiveness. Keep going! You are heading in the right direction!

Consider how totally Jesus forgave, even when he was being crucified, crying out, "Father, forgive them! They know not what they do!" Even though those people knew fully what they were doing, at one level, they didn't know WHO they were crucifying, otherwise they wouldn't have done it!

Find your example and your strength in Christ.

This is a very common misunderstanding in Christian circles. Forgiveness does not mean "acting like it never happened." Forgiveness does not mean "it's all OK now."

It means laying our right to our anger or hurt or negative thoughts down at the foot of the Cross and leaving them there. Forgiveness often has to be between the person hurt and God, since unfortunately users, takers and the chronically immature frequently think that when we say "I forgive you" that it means "I don't mind, it's OK to treat me this way." If when we forgive we throw caution to the winds, we are reinforcing that destructive mindset, teaching them it's OK to do the same again.

In many cases it would not be intelligent, let alone wise,to "act like it never happened." Think of a person who embezzeld money from a business; while they might deserve a second chance at a job, it would be most unwise to put them in a position where they were handling large amounts of money again. In the case of sexual abuse or incest, the victim often needs to lay down their pain and memories of suffering at Jesus' feet in order to be able to move on into healthy relationships with others, without the weight of fear and emotional baggage.

It does not mean that your forgiveness is necessarily going to "make it all better" or restore your relationship with the person who used you. You may have learned from the experience--they often do not. Life is unfortunately not like a TV movie.

Sometimes all we can do is take the situation and lay it down before the Lord. Often the person who has transgressed is completely oblivious of what they've done, or in their mind what they have done was perfectly OK.