One of my small pleasures in life is reading the signs in front of the local churches. They're usually good for a laugh now and then, either in their content or execution. My current favorite is one in downtown Charleston proclaiming "The Wages of Sin Is Death," apparently oblivious to the wages of bad grammar. But, alas, I digress.
Here's one from a church near my house that brings up something that really bugs me about our Judeo/Christian tradition.
For a lot of people, the moral weight of Christianity's commands seems to be backed up only by the fear of punishment for ignoring those commands. The unseen man in the sky tells you not to do X, and if you do X he threatens you with eternal damnation. Following such commands based on fear doesn't seem like wisdom so much as simple utilitarian CYA, ala Pascal's wager. Putting aside the question of God's existence for a second, does a God who commands his followers through fear of eternal punishment deserve to be worshiped and followed? No more so than some real-world dictator, in my book.
* With apologies to Oolon Colluphid.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Who Is This God Person, Anyway?*
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3 comments:
This reminds me of the forward to Anthony Burgess' "A Clockwork Orange" where the central theme of the book is explained as a conundrum where if you remove the ability to make a moral choice you remove the mechanism that allows the soul to choose goodness in the eyes of god (or something like that). Is there really much of a difference if you're only being moral out of a fear of getting caught or punished? How are the sheeple of a "fire and brimstone" congregation any different from the "conditioned" young Alex who knows that if he tries to rape that girl he's going to feel so sick that he won't be able to stand up or see straight and so he doesn't?
Is that too heady? If so then go read my latest post...it was so much fun to write. :-)
Fear, in this case would be better translated as Respect or (see any dictionary) Webster has it as 3. Profound reverence or Awe...It doesn't mean 'shaking in your boots cause you're gonna get hit' fear.
Ignorance is not bliss!
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