Actress Keira Knightley has earned adulation for the great movies she’s done since coming to fame in 2002 with Bend It Like Beckham. But do her thoughts on atheism and faith reflect reality?
I’m sure some folks agree with her. But for those who follow Jesus of Nazareth (who many people believe is the Son of God), forgiveness and guilt simply don’t work that way.
For Jesus followers, life isn’t a game where you do whatever you want, then sleepwalk through a hollow ritual of asking for forgiveness and assume God is a kindly, but dimwitted dolt who can’t see through your deception.
Consider these words from an ancient writer:
You [God] know when I sit down and when I get up. You know my thoughts from far away. You know where I go and where I lie down. You know everything I do. Lord, you know what I want to say, even before the words leave my mouth.
Does this sound like a creator Keira Knightley or anyone else can trick?
Forgiveness is available to everyone who accepts the gift God offers the world: Jesus. Primary source documents about His life indicate that Jesus died to make up for the wrong things we’ve done and the right things we’ve failed to do.
What Jesus did is a big deal. And those who truly accept that gift and make Him their lord and savior understand that. So they don’t treat it with contempt. In fact, a guy named Paul, who helped spread the good news about Jesus through the Mediterranean, addressed this very notion in one of his letters:
So, do you think we should continue sinning so that God will give us even more forgiveness? No! We died to our old sinful lives, so how can we continue living with sin?
Now, what about Keira’s assertion of living with guilt? If you’re still with me, you may have figured out by now that forgiveness is real and important and all-encompassing. In fact, for some people, it’s a life-changer and you can read one example here: http://wp.me/p2wzRb-6K
Forgiveness also means you’re no longer guilty. If you follow Jesus and sincerely ask for forgiveness, you’ll get it and the wrong you’ve done is wiped from the books. So there’s no need to “live with guilt”, as Keira puts it.
Does this make sense? Yes or no, post your comments below and let’s have a conversation.
Frank's Cottage 
The whole Bible is nothing less that the testimony of God giving, us screwing it up, and God forgiving.
In fact, the Bible is a collection of testimonials to that story and we are invited to add our own testimonials by our very lives.
As Fr. Richard Rohr said many years ago, “When, at last, we stand before God at the final judgement, He will be far less interested in how much of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John we have memorized than in the Good News according to Frank or Ross or Jim or Suzie we have written on our hearts.
Excellent thoughts, Ross. Thanks for weighing in! 🙂
Once we accept Jesus as Lord and Savior, we no longer desire to “get away with anything.” We are on a new path, the straight and narrow one, and we long for a greater relationship with this God who loved us enough to die for our sins.
Sure, we will make mistakes. We will have our moments. We will have to continue to turn to Jesus for forgiveness. But, we don’t take it for granted! We understand the price which was paid, and we do our best to honor that every day of our lives.
Blessings, Frank!
Clearly articulated, Martha. Thanks for reading and commenting. 🙂
If the bible is a collection of testimonials, why are there so many contradictions and versions which simply don’t add up, unless you are one of these people who try and make them add up.
You are guilty until innocent and living in a type of North Korean state where your thoughts are punishable by death, yet you can be forgiven, and only man speaks on behalf of his god because it’s a testimony.
Strikes me as a personal interpretation of how people want see things with too many ‘get out’ clauses.
Thanks for reading and contributing. There are all kinds of books and websites dealing with what some say are “contradictions” in the Bible. And your thoughts about guilty until innocent and North Korea – well, aren’t those a personal interpretation?
I think Knightley is more-so referring to the attitude most faux Christians take.
The simultaneously act of committing a wrong deed with full knowledge that it is wrong WHEN you’re doing it–COUNTING-ON and taking advantage of a god’s forgiving nature.
Like a person on a diet. They commit to a weight-loss diet, the get weak, eat the pint of Hagen-Dåz with the justification that they will exercise harder to “pray” for this moment of weakness.
This is futile, destructive, unproductive behavior–and I witness many so-called believers practice this counterproductive behavior on a regular basis..
I’m not sure you’re right about Keira, but you’re giving her the benefit of the doubt and I appreciate that. 🙂
And I definitely agree with you about the counterproductive behaviour of some believers.
Thanks, as always, for reading and commenting. I appreciate your point of view and mature attitude! 🙂
Remorse should precede forgiveness or one shouldn’t ask to be forgiven. People who seek growth and/or who have morals or seek acceptance from God or themselves/others. The quote is kind of silly, indeed.Only sociopaths don’t care about the effects of their actions.
Good thoughts, Sandie. But sometimes, the wronged person has to forgive even when the perpetrator doesn’t ask for forgiveness – or even admits he/she did wrong. Sometimes it has to happen just so the victim can begin the process of becoming free of anger and resentment.
The notion of guilt and forgiveness by God depends of course whether you can hold the disparate aspects of this narrative together without resorting to the “God is too spooky and superior for us to understand” ruse.
A God who invents something perfect, lets it get messed up when he was in charge and knew what would happen, excuses himself by saying it was so we could know what it is like to do the wrong thing and say sorry to him, allows himself to be killed even tho’ he can’t die and knew he would bob up again a few days later, left the world languishing for eons before he revealed himself and left the world languishing for eons more with a promise to return…and still we’re meant to treat him as father??!!?
If I had a father like that he would have gone under the wheels of my car a long time ago, with no thought of asking for forgiveness.
So Keira, besides being a talented and entertaining actor (and maybe that’s her in real life too?), seems to be talking sense, while making her jibe at the obvious hypocrisy of most religious practice. She echoes that great voice in history (Jesus Chirst) in his “woe to the scribes and Pharisees” passage of the Bible: “they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders.” (The King James Bible translation has some great poetry in this passage lost in later translations!).
I guess that Keira would recognize religion as a cultural institution that is not entirely without benefit, but that we can live without guilt if we recognize that sin and evil are part of the burdensome invention of religion. We can then focus on making the world a happier, more tolerant and more equitable place.
Thanks for your thoughts, Mike. I’m not a fan of “religious practice” as you’ll quickly find out if you read any other content on Frank’s Cottage.
I have no interest in the kind of God you describe and I feel safe in writing that most other serious Jesus followers share my viewpoint. Indeed, if God was anything like how you describe Him, I would not be a Jesus follower.
To truly repent, to turn away from your wicked ways and do them no more and be forgiven as only Jesus can forgive since he paid the price for our sin, is to no longer be held accountable of that sin.
However, for those who seek that forgiveness as a means to clear their conscience still pay the price, in my opinion. An alcoholic may be genuinely sorry each time they get drunk but it doesn’t mean they are ready to change.
The first two steps alcoholics learn is their lives have become unmanageable and that there is a greater power. We can fool others and sometimes, ourselves, but not God. He knows when we are genuinely sorry and will do something about it
God (and sometimes we) know(s) when our sorrow is real and not because we experience the embarrassment of being caught.
Unfortunately, too many live religious lives and not faith-based lives.
Great post. You are so right – God is no dimwitted dolt who doesn’t see through our deception. Sadly there are “Christians” who think they can use Christ’s redeeming work on the cross to sin more, knowing they will be forgiven.
If we have truly repented of our sins, our love for what Jesus has done will make us consider the cost of our sin and not want to anymore. What Christ did changes us from the inside out.
In my opinion, the Bible is loaded with contradictions and unproven claims, and none of it reflects reality at all. Unfortunately, it does not say whether the stories are true or not, but to me it reads like Lord of the Rings.
They’re just fictional stories, meant to be enjoyed with laughter and entertainment, not with “fear” that we might go to “hell” for being “bad.”
There are no such things as God, Satan, heaven, or hell.
It should be clear to all people that the Holy Bible is most obviously fiction, as are all holy texts.
People fight and kill one another, particularly in the Middle East, about which holy text is “true,” but none of it is true.
We have been hating and killing ourselves over nothing. The slaughter has been needlessly wasteful for thousands of years.
We can have something that more resembles peace if we simply stop being so serious, bigoted, and hateful about religion and differences in religion, and read it as it’s meant to be read.
Such texts are originally from our ancient past, from oral story tellers, before people learned how to write. Some of those stories were told to alleviate the fear of death among all people down through the generations, and they were translated and changed a great deal until they began to be written down, beginning with Gilgamesh.
Over millennia, there were many “dying and risen” gods, and their “sons,” that had many names, and there was even a “daughter of God.” Jesus Christ is simply the eighth or ninth incarnation of those “sons of God.”
It’s only an ancient, legendary myth, and none of those people in the Bible, or before, ever really existed or lived, for all of religion is nothing more than fiction, made up on the fly in our ancient past, and meant to be enjoyed with laughter, and passed down, like a Mark Twain novel.
There really isn’t any such thing as gods or devils. People do not need gods or scapegoats to praise or blame when we’re good or bad.
Treat others as you would be treated. Even the Bible says that. It’s the Golden Rule. I know. I’ve read it. Before the time you are finished reading the entire Bible, cover to cover, you should be an atheist, too. The stories are simply too zany and outlandish to be true.
Simply be good, and kind. No gods are required.
We atheists know much more about science today than people did 2,000 years ago. What Christianity literally rests upon is a supernatural “holy spirit” that got a virgin pregnant, but everyone knows that’s simply not how it works. That’s why the church asks you Christians to have faith.
All atheists can come from all religions. All of us, across the entire planet, can agree that there are no such things as gods. Otherwise, I fear that the human race may very well not survive the Third Millennium.
The clergy themselves are unable to prove something that simply cannot be true. Many of your own clergy are coming to comprehend and understand that, and leave the church.
Thanks for your comment. Please note that while everyone is welcome to visit and read the content of Frank’s Cottage, this website is aimed at people who are open to spirituality.
It always saddens me that by definition, that doesn’t include atheist people (as your comment strongly suggests). 😦