Forgiving can redeem oneself. The author of the article referred to Christ. Gandhi said something showing greater insight.

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” Mahatma Gandhi, All Men are Brothers: Autobiographical Reflections

Since the Roman Empire adopted Christianity, Christianity has dominated Europe. Since the Age of Imperialism Christianity has dominated the world.

In dominating the world Christian missionaries have accompanied gunboats and have forced their religion on the subject peoples much as the Roman state forced Christianity on its subjects after the adoption of Christianity as its official religion. Yet the author writes: "How is this possible? It’s possible because, with Christ, human beings are offered a new identity. This identity is about belonging to group that has forgiveness, and not exclusion of the enemy, as its constitution. It is full of ‘others’."

Can the author not see that living in peace with other peoples is not pushing your religion on them? Can Christianity forgive itself for missionising?

For the life of me, I can't figure out why anyone is impressed by a deity that requires someone to be nailed to a post until they are dead.

Great!

<<… with Christ, human beings are offered a new identity. This identity is about belonging to [a] group that has forgiveness, and not exclusion of the enemy, as its constitution. It is full of ‘others’.>>

Now, when you can provide me with some reliable evidence for the existence of this god, I’ll be right there beside you.

Of course, there are some details that will require some explaining, such as why did this god need to sacrifice himself to himself to create a loophole for rules that he’s in charge of; and how does a bad weekend, in which you get to be God at the end of it, constitute a "sacrifice"? But...

Oh, details! We'll worry about those later.

Never mind that Christians have been self-righteously slaughtering each other, and everyone who gets in the way of their imperialist expansion for over 1700 years.
Never mind too that there are now more Christians on the planet than ever before, both in total numbers and as a percentage of the human population.
Which is to say that there is no historical evidence showing that Christians have ever practiced cooperation, tolerance or peace, so why/how in the scheme of things are they going to practice these virtues now.
Furthermore back-to-the-past right wing Christian "traditionalists" are responsible for much of the troubles now being dramatized all over the planet.

I've recently picked up the book, "Believers: Does Australian
Catholicism Have a future?" by Dr Paul Collins.

In it there's relevant paragraphs to this discussion
that I'd like to quote:

"The most radical aspect of the teaching of Jesus goes
beyond even the commandment of love is His insistence
on forgiveness, even of enemies. In contrast to
Christianity, the other monotheistic religions, Judaism
and Islam, believe in 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a
tooth'. There are many non-violent Jews and Muslims who are
committed to peace, but Jesus is the first person in history
to say that the vendetta and the desire for revenge are
totally inappropriate responses for his followers."

"As the Jewish literary critic George Steiner says in his
wonderful intellectual autobiography "Errata" the most
scandalous thing about Christianity is that it believes in
forgiveness, even of its enemy. "Christ's ordinance of
total love, of self-offering to the assailant is, in any
strict sense, an enormity. The victim is to love his
butcher. A monstrous proposition. But one shedding fathomless
light."

How are mortal men and women to fulfill it? Here is the real
core of Jesus' moral teaching. Everything else is secondary.

Dr Collins goes on to say that "Nevertheless forgiveness can
seem like weakness, especially within an extreme terrorist
context where the "lex talionis" is seen as justified and
even exalted by some Muslims as an aspect of "Jihad". This
confronts the Christian with the question of how we should
respond to outrages like the 9/11 terrorist attacks on
New York, and the Bali, Madrid and London bombings.
Should we turn the other cheek? What would that achieve?
Personally, I think it would achieve a lot more than the
so-called 'war on terror'. Only a truly superior statesperson
would have shamed and isolated the terrorists by saying
'I forgive you'. This would have had to have been
accompanied by intelligent and astute diplomatic and
political work to isolate the terrorists and by appealing to
the vast majority of sensible, civilised and peaceful
Muslims. Sadly we are not governed by such intelligent
political leaders."

Dear Foxy,

You wrote, "In contrast to Christianity, the other monotheistic religions, Judaism and Islam, believe in 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth'. There are many non-violent Jews and Muslims who are committed to peace, but Jesus is the first person in history to say that the vendetta and the desire for revenge are totally inappropriate responses for his followers."

The lex talionis (eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth) was a great advance and is the basis for law all over the world.

The Bible states: Exodus 21:24 “Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,“

However, if one reads on in the Bible it is apparent that it was not a literal eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. The Bible prescribes penalties appropriate to the offense. This was a great advance over the feud or vendetta. In a vendetta there is no end. An act of revenge follows another act of revenge ad infinitum. With the lex talionis a penalty is paid, and the matter is settled. That is far better than an unending vendetta. The lex talionis ends the vendetta.

A few years ago I was in Lubeck, Germany during the Christmas season. The town was in a festive mood. There were booths on the street with goodies for eye and belly. In Lubeck there are twin towers connected with a passageway on top. They may get pictured on boxes of marzipan. At the bottom of one of the towers is a torture museum. I went in and looked at the exhibit. There were thumb screws, rack, iron maiden and other instruments by which humans inflicted pain and suffering on other humans. While I was looking at the exhibit the strains of Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht (Silent Night, Holy Night) came into the room. How Christian! These instruments of torture along with burning at the stake were the reality of much Christian practice.

Is burning at the stake an appropriate penalty for doubting the Trinity? Christianity might adopt the lex talionis.

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