Charity fund pilfered; Oregon church asks pastor to leave; pastor replies with “Will you accept my apology? Will you forgive me as Christ forgave?"

If this interests others--I’d like to know some opinions. What is your collective take when people play the Jesus card? Because this is a prime example: you’ve got a pastor who for lack of a better description, acted in an exceedingly slimy fashion. I get that we’re all broken and that our God is (in a very real sense) a God of grace and second chances. And I have benefitted (and will continue to benefit) from both.

But when does grace remove or subvert accountability? I’m not suggesting that we revert to the Scarlet Letter or anything, but it seems to me that there’s a near pandemic (immature?) abuse by persons (who I consider to be lesser minds) who seem to equate forgiveness as forgottenness--perhaps a method to absolve consequences or personal accountability.

So where does Christian forgiveness end and doormat begin? Stated differently, how do personal boundaries and (Christian) forgiveness interact? And where does shame lie in all of this?

Because this has been of some personal interest to me, relative to my inlaws, as well the consequences of stuttering in the form of social punishment and societal marginalization. And the paradigm in which I currently find myself is that forgiveness can occur, but boundaries remain stable (if not more aggressively delineated). I can surely forgive you, but you don’t get to negatively affect my life anymore. And I can forgive you, ex-pastor, but you are now run out of any type of authority position.