Why forgiveness can be a powerful force for good in politics and business: Bird Lovegod

This would have given Iran an unchallengeable moral high ground, greatly unsettled Israel's allies, and been a far more impressive statement to deliver. We forgive you. Three words would have created greater impact than 300 drones and missiles.

Forgiveness, when you really consider it, is an anomaly, a phenomenon, the most under rated, under utilised, misunderstood, and rarest of elements in society.

Something within us rebels against the very notion of forgiveness. It’s to do with power, and pride, and possibly fairness, and justice.

The power to forgive, and it is a power, is divine in origin. It overrides anger, hatred, injustice, and everything else. It’s an extraordinary event to release into the world or into a personal situation.

Within individuals, how much trauma, how much pain and suffering could be ended with forgiveness? Counsellors and psychiatrists would be out of business the following week.

The ability to forgive is a superpower, transforming self and situations. We don’t inherently have that power, but praying for the power to forgive is a serious prayer that will not go unanswered.

In a true Christian business, debts should be written off readily and easily. If the debt is causing distress, write it off. Which is more important, the money, or the fact that it is a cause of suffering?

If debt is a cause of suffering, forgive it. Imagine if the businesses and corporations and economies of the world operated under those ethical margins. Valuing human wellbeing above money. As it stands, debt keeps entire countries in poverty and causes relentless suffering of multitudes of millions.

In business, there often comes a time when it’s necessary to forgive debts. Typically this is done when they are uncollectible, or the cost of collecting them is in excess of their worth.

Christianised economics would eradicate debt, continuously and periodically, removing the crushing burden that keeps entire peoples on their knees.

We are now in the stage of our economic evolution whereby the mutated system we devised is of a considerably lower morality than ourselves.

We have inadvertently created a monster which becomes less human every day, and we increasingly struggle to live under its authority. The economic system is no longer made in our image, and the terrible danger, already happening, is that it now shapes people into its own distorted self.

Forgiveness of debt will have to happen at some point. It absolutely will. But I don’t think the existing system will allow it. Humanity is entering very interesting times.

Bird Lovegod is a business consultant and Christian commentator