I cannot forgive you unless you’re culpable — if you’re not culpable then there’s nothing to forgive.

But if you’re culpable, then what is the point of forgiving you? Either way, my forgiveness seems senseless.

Theologian Miroslav Volf writes, “Forgiveness … at its heart is both saying that justice has been violated and not letting that violation count against the offender.” And Jacques Derrida writes, “Forgiveness is thus mad. It must plunge, but lucidly, into the night of the unintelligible.”