Hola amigos...it's been a long time since I rapped at ya.
(Onion fans, grin break now).
I had a wonderful after-dinner conversation with a very good friend last night about the relative goodness or badness of humanity. I don't know why dinner tends to induce good conversation, but I suspect it has something to do with the blood leaving your brain to support your bloated stomach, freeing up the brain from the burden of all those nutrients, and readying it for brash opining over tiramisu.
The conversation began with a discussion about drinking, as I recall. Which was odd, because neither of us were. In fact, now that I think about, that very fact probably made the discussion so topical. My friend is not a drinker...she will have an occasional drink here and there...but she's not a drinker like I'm a drinker and my father's a drinker and the men of Omega-Delta-Chi are drinkers. She samples, she sips, she moves on. She drinks to taste. I drink to drink for the most part, and I drink to get dull and happy.
My friend is very, very smart; so I tend to listen to her pretty carefully. She said that she doesn't drink much because she wants to live a healthy, natural life, and that getting buzzed or drunk doesn't seem natural to her. I told her that when I drink, I usually drink in order to feel more natural. I am an anxious person by the combined efforts of nature and nurture (with a healthy tip of the scales toward the latter), and I spend a great deal of my time worrying and fretting about one thing or another. I have a hard time letting go of what concerns me, and tension leaks out of me the same way gold bricks leak out of Fort Knox. So, when I drink, I drink to help me let go, settle down, and smile more. I don't know if it's a good policy or a bad policy, but I drink with relative modesty, so I'm not too worried about it.
What really interested me about the conversation is that she kept saying, for me. "Drinking is unnatural for me." "Being drunk is unhealthy for me." "It's a bad idea to get drunk to make yourself feel better...for me, anyways." She's like that...it's one of my favorite things about her...she refuses to exercise judgement against others as being good or bad in any real sense, which works out great when you're a solid mixture of both and you hang out with someone as excellent as her.
The trouble is, something being bad solely for me is a pretty foreign concept to me. I tend to believe that most things that are bad are bad, and most things that are good are good. I think it's the Catholic in me, or at least the Christian. Christianity doesn't have a lot of tolerance for moral relativism. If the Bible is to be believed, then Jesus didn't have a lot of conditional morality to share with the world. Nor did the God of the Old Testament. There are a lot of hard lines in the Bible, and less grey area than I think I'd like. At least, that's the case as I see it at first glance...
..but if you look a little deeper...
In Exodus 20, God says "Thou shalt not kill." (Thank heavens God speaks fluent King's English, or I'd have a hell of a time understanding him). But, then he orders the Jews to slaughter the Philistines. He says, "Thou shalt not bear false witness" [or, "lie" in modern translations], but then in I Kings 22 it says "The Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets, and the Lord hath spoken evil concerning thee." God says, "Thou shalt not steal," but also orders His people to "...spoil [steal from] the Egyptians" in Exodus 13.
So, if you think the King James translation is somewhat accurate, it seems you have a couple of options:
1. The Bible isn't accurately reflecting God's words to man.
2. The Bible is accurately reflecting God's words to man, and God is unintentionally contradicting Himself.
3. The Bible is accurately reflecting God's words to man, and God is intentionally contradicting Himself.
Or...of course...
4. Justin, it's wrong to question God and the Bible. Just have faith, or go to Hell.
If you believe #1, which I'm still trying to make up my mind about, then this conversation can probably wrap up here, because what's the point of worrying about something somebody made up a long time ago?
If you believe #2, then you don't believe in the same God I do, because my God tends to remember stuff.
If you believe #4, then enjoy this video, I'll pay you back for the time with a prompt money order to your place of residence.
But if you believe #3, which I ostensibly do, then you have to ask why God would do such a thing? Is it possible that morality can't simply be spelled out with hard rules? Is it possible that it's OK to kill some people some times, and not OK to other people other times? If that's the case...are there any hard rules? Is it ever OK to have sex with children? To eat your parents? To abort a baby? To lie?
And...if it can't be said that there are absolute lines of good and bad...how can it be said that a person is either? For the pedophile who was molested as a child, and who knew nothing in his life other than pain and suffering, and for whom the desire to understand his pain drove him to molest another...can we call him "bad?" If so, can we call him "worse" than he who steals two dollars from the register on his way out of work at Starbucks...providing the man at Starbucks knows it's wrong and has the ability to control his impulses?
If those who are driven by madness, revenge, or a crippled past (or a tasty cocktail of the three) to perform horrendous acts against humanity were truly oppressed by their disturbances, can we call them "bad?" Can we rightfully punish them? Shouldn't the child who has everything be punished more severely for a small transgression than the child with nothing who commits a large one?
Can a person ever be called "good?" Can a person ever be called "bad?" If not...can we call God either of these?
It was a good conversation, and it was a troubling conversation. I've thought about it all day...which is probably best. I don't want my fear of what would happen if there were no moral plumb lines to drive me to presume that there is one.
Peace,
Justin
8 comments:
This is such a great post. I had a similar conversation last night as well. . .a gay friend of mine was asking why it is so offensive to some folks for a gay couple to be holding hands in front of them. The argument was made by another friend and colleague who was trying to impart understanding (not necessarily represent his moral view)that this is unnerving to people who believe in moral plumblines because accepting it as okay represents a relaxation of the plumbline. And then it's a slippery slope, and then, say the plumbliners, we have to start accepting anyone having sex with anything. To which the first friend, with a certain amount of pain and anger in his voice, said, "yes, dogs. That's the one I hear the most. 'Well then if you accept that, then you have to accept that it's just as okay to have sex with dogs."
It pains me and makes me sad to write that.
I understand and have championed the value of objective moral plumblines. But I have to ask myself, what am I so afraid of? Is my own id so powerful, am I so terrified of the drooling, barking, fornicating beast inside myself that if I can't give a whip and a cage to myself in the name of a deity who doesn't need it, that I'll dissolve into my destructive appetites raping, eating, killing until I die of an STD or a ruptured stomach? Is that what I think of the true nature of a creation of God? That sounds suspiciously like my problem, not someone else's, and it strikes me as a heinous thing to write policy on.
To react equally strongly in opposition to your demons is to be just as much a prisoner to them as to follow them. Either way, you substitute your issues for God's truth.
I spent many years as an agnostic following laws, curbing my desires, living peacefully. Maybe it's my nature to be as such, and do I do a disservice to my own God-given essence, denying it by needing a work of man to justify it?
I am scarred. I will never eat Sauerkraut with weiners again.
black17,
Holy mother of all good comments....that was fantastic.
Thanks for taking the time to write such a thoughtful and honest response. I would love to reply now, but I'd first love to read any other responses that come in in the next couple of days. I look forward to meeting you further here in blogland. Do you keep a blog as well?
Peace,
Justin
So much of this is wrapped up in #1, though.
And I am being honest when I say I have begun questioning all the things that have been taught to me since early grade school (not because of your post, mind you ... but because of my own learnings and queries).
For too many reasons to state here and now while I write this at work, the days of reading the Bible and accepting every word as the infallible Word of God ... are essentially done. Why is that? How much of man has played into each interpretation? How much of man has eeked into each word ... and some words ... albeit a single word ... can be of utmost importance in communicating the very meaning - the depth - the whole of God's intention.
So ... now I'm questioning things ... not everything mind you ... which maybe means I'm still holding on for my dear life.
Here's a simple example of how this is playing out in my life ...
Since childhood, I've been taught and I've understood and I've accepted into my personal beliefs that suicide is wrong. It is. At it's very core, it's selfish, it's cheap, it's an easy way out. Therefore, I believed what most believe, Catholic and Christian alike, that all people who commit suicide are bound for hell. No questions asked. Do not pass go.
On Saturday, January 10, 1983, my mother successfully committed suicide. It wasn't until after her good friend sat me down, two days later, that I found out about my mother and her past ... details I never knew - I had been shielded from all these years. As a young girl, my mother was sexually abused by her uncle. After years of getting away with it, he invited his wife and eventually his own son, to join in. The abuse lasted 7 years. My mother developed a coping mechanism ... one that lasted well into her adulthood. My mother developed Multiple Personality Disorder. At her last session with her therapist, they had numbered the personalities in the twenties.
The personalities had been a great way to escape during the abuse. Then when the abuse ended, the personalities were not needed and they slipped deep into her mind. Gone but not forever. For some reason, her therapist couldn't understand why, these personalities were beginning to resurface ... and make themselves known. Mom began to "lose time," which means that one of the personalities would surface, push Laura (my mom), to the back, and do whatever they wanted. There were times that my mother would wake up in the morning on the floor in the living room, surrounded by crayon drawings, coloring books full ... one of the little girl personalities had stayed up all night coloring. Other times mom would "come to" while driving ... sometimes hours away from home or anywhere else - once in another state. There was a little girl, an artist, a shy boy, a bossy old man, a professional woman, a silly young man, etc.
My mother was losing control. Once in a meeting with one of the Vice Presidents of AT&T, one of the personalities got up, un-announced, left the building, and began walking down the road. Once, during a deep exploratative session with her therapist, the "guardian" personality came to the front, rushed out of the office, through the waiting room (without her shoes on) and ran down the side of the road (Piedmont) until the bottoms of her feet were bleeding.
Mom's suicide note mentioned that she loved her children and loved her God, but that her life had become a nightmare from which she only occasionally awakened from. She noted that she believed in a God that knew her ... KNEW HER ... and therefore would understand.
Do I have moments when I am angry at my mom because I know her grandaughter will never get to meet her on this earth? Yes. But do I also believe in a God that knows each of us ... our lives, our pasts, our insides, our thoughts, our failings, our abuses, our hurts, etc. ... and still loves us? Yes. Does that go against what the Bible says? Yes and no. I guess I've chosen to go big picture with what God is communicating with us through the Bible. Am I fine with that? Sure. Am I being a relativist? I suppose.
I've struggled with responding to this one, partly because a lot of what I was taught about a Christian world view was really just a "modern" vs "post-modern worldview" and partly because I lose sleep over this one.
I wonder if what we need to do in terms of "judgement" is to differentiate secular judgement (ie put "bad guys in prison) and Christian judgement "We all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God."
The real answer is that we're broken, none of us are good, and being better than me means dick compared to the greatness of a big God. The law of love is bit more exacting than an operationalized set of behaviors.
On a practical side, I think that we as friends and mentors will boil down certain behavior into "This thing will hurt you and is bad." I think that's OK, but it still fits into the broader concept that there is none who's righteous except God.
The primary subject of Jesus teaching is not finite behavior, but the global condition of the heart--That the kingdom of God is at hand and we need to change the way that we everything to reflect that truth.
My point is that the silly Josh McDowell stuff we grew up with, "If nothings universally wrong why don't I punch you in the face!" missed the point.
The problem is me.
If I didn't have parents and friends and schools and churches and mentors and experiences and if I lived in Darfur how would I behave right now?
There but for the Grace of God go I.
And that's the thing.
my response to this would require a beer(s) and 2.5 hours of dialog, and even then I am not sure what my response would be. I am always intrigued by verses like 1thes 4:4 and 1Cor 10:23 & 1Cor 6:12 that seem to open slivers (granted we should look at these in context of both their chapter as well as the overall biblical trend) but seem to be slivers of support (not a ton I grant) that the mystical "line" isn't always B&W.
What I find more intriguing than that though is how the majority of the folks whom believe in strict fundamental views of the bible (would balk at the 'for me" perspective) COMPLETLY choose to ignore Matthew 5:43-48 (the fundamental church loves the usa war chip) or the end of Matt 25..... seems to be that "for me" doesn't apply when in an ivory tower/judging but it certainly applies in the living out of everyday life..... to be honest though I completely miss those scriptures as well from an individual implementing standpoint.
I'm in with Ryan and brian, and must say I love Ryans eloquent use of the word dick as a descriptor....and bryan thanks for the grammer lesson.
Love you man, ... wish I had the 7 steps to answer your question, but I am so sick and tired of christian books with numbers in the titles that trivalize the real struggles of life and doubt, so alas I say, Peace, I love you, and miss you a ton!
Keith
Completely off topic, but Hey justin, you never responded to my question posed to your former post "This is a post about epicureanism, about Jesus, an..." as to why you turned the sex down in Phily... (assuming stacy would never find out)... curious as to your reasons. strictly psyco mabojambo reasons why not, fear of stacy finding out, or deep spiritual reasons of Big Brother God watching?
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