Sometimes secular culture teaches Christian theology even without intending to.
A fantasy show on Netflix follows a monster-hunter on his many adventures. On one adventure, the main character encountered a woman that a wizard had tried to kill when she was young. But the tables had turned. The woman now had the upper hand, had cornered the wizard in a tower, and was bent on murderous revenge.
The wizard couldn’t hurt her anymore and the main character counseled her to let it go, to walk away, “and to finally live.” She could not get back from the wizard the peace he had taken from her, no matter what she did. If she continued on the path of murderous revenge, her actions would prove her to actually be the monster and she would become the enemy of the monster-hunting main character.
The monster-hunter knows what Christian forgiveness is. It means to give up on the idea that you are somehow responsible for giving someone else “what they deserve,” and to accept that revenge (even if you call it “justice”) will not make you whole again. Christian forgiveness means “to walk away and finally live.”
Does that mean letting the offender get away with it? Yes, from your point of view. But we live with a God of justice, a God who claims “It is mine to avenge, I will repay” (Deuteronomy 32:35). The offense and attendant urge to make it even is one of those things with which we are “heavy-laden” and from which Jesus can give us rest (Matthew 11:28). We will never get back from the offender what we are owed; instead, God will repay the peace that was taken from us. The debt is transferred from that offensive human to God, and we should look to him to collect.
That’s good news, because that’s how it works for each of us too. We are also offenders against other people, and every offense we commit against a person made in God’s image is an offense against God himself. We have taken away from the peace and love that belongs to God the Father, and we can never give it back to him because the past is already done. Instead, Jesus has repaid what we owe. Therefore the Father forgives us, that is, he acknowledges we will never make him whole and he instead looks to his only-begotten Son to restore his wholeness and love.
God’s forgiveness to us on account of the work of Jesus, and our forgiveness to others on account of God’s promise, is the only way that we can finally live.