In this thread :
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=113688
Hi sorry, I’m pretty new to the board so forgive me if i bungle up this one…
I’m not Christian, not did I have a Christian upbringing, so there are many things about that faith which I remain oblivious to. However, something about this rubs me the wrong way. Not the content of this specific post (that was actually quite refreshing), but the seeming implications for the general structure of Christianity. Specificly the notion of Churches and bibles. These two things seem to have at least one thing in common, and that is giving people an idea of what they are supposed to fear.
As I understand it, a Christian believes that sin is “bad”. “Bad” here defined as anything which seperates you from God (which I’m given to understand is the general description in Christianity for “Evil”).
Now forgive me from drawing conclusions here, however it would seem that ones own Ego boundries (ie: ones internal sense of identity -what is “me” as I use the term) would pose a threat to ones connection to God as they tend to be used to seperate oneself out from other things (that does seem to be their function anyway). This could very well include God and likely does if you’re talking about “God” as an abstact principle which is somehow seperate from the rest of nature or even removed from nature entirely.
Now since either of those principles don’t seem very useful as they would seem to result in anything with an Ego boundry as being inherently Evil (and thus making a connection with god a fight against ones very own nature- which seems to be an odd thing to do an ultimately if you are successfull some how, very self defeating because your motivation would be drawn from self loathing rather than love…takes a breath which would then mean that since God is love (or so i here) you would end up even more disconected from him by trying to gain some connection…)
Anyway, point of that rambling paragraph is that God as an abstract and seperate or “supernatural” force doesn’t seem to make sense in other than a dead-end sort of way so i’m going to go out on a limb here and make the assumption that God is an inherant and natural force of phenomenon, non-distinct from the componant parts of the natural universe (though as a whole may have an awareness, form of overall pattern which may be “more than the sum of it’s parts”).
So with that assumption in place, one can then see that a reasonable sequence to gain a connection with God and further that in the worl would be something as follows:
-
If God is Love, then the first step to gaining internal and personal contact with God is by identifying oneself as “Godly”. Not in the sense of ego-mania but simply through acts of self acceptance and self-love (seeing the value of what one is as being a good thing because “good” in this context is connection with God, which as an inherant force exist internally and can be found both in the act of finding oneself “Love-worthy” and through Loving and appreciating simply what one is.).
-
Now understanding that “communication occurs on common ground” (one of my favorite catch phrases), one can see the “Love-worthiness” in all things one observes and by loving them feel connected through that love (love within to love within all things). And since God is love, you are fact both connectied to and interacting with the world through God.
Now here come the problem with fear. Fear, as an isolating force has the capacity to cause one to refect something and thus lose contact with the “Godness of it” as loving an object of fear is a tricky matter indeed. In this context i can certainly understand why sin might be defined as fear.
However as I’ve pointed out, isolating behaviors don’t have to result in this form of disconnection unless, you are viewing the subject of that fear as outside the realm of God (which is the natural world as far as I can tell, and yes this would imply that souls and the rest of that mess are inherently parts of the natural world whether or not they exist in the quantified potrtions of it or not ) and thus supernatural.
Now it seems unlikely that a “supernatural” object would be capable of interacting in any manner direct enough to be sensed with the natural world. Why? Because as soon as it had done so it would have entered the realm of the natural or Godlike and thus be a natural of Godlike item itself. Something truely seperate from our world does not likely enter our world enough to be sensed let alone reacted to.
So now it would seem to me that the only sin (or as clos to a sin as you can get) is that of viewing something as unatural and seperate from God (nature, which must be Godlike as he is in it) and trying to spread that view to others (and thus promoting a sense of unlove for that object as it is seperate from what we can reasonably identify with the love we feel inside our selves (which is God).
That being said, doesn’t that make bibles, churches and every other item that makes an organized( or disorganized in many cases) attempt to dissminate knowledge of what is “sinfull” or desirable to be seperate from, the most “Evil” or fear inducing item set in the natural world?
At the very least it would seem that those things as I understand it are the most likely to cause a sense of seperation from God both internally in the form of outright rejection of aspects of ones self and externally by rejecting thing in others or in the world at large. (As seperate from first accepting them so that one can act from WITHIN the context of their existance as part of the larger whole we in case call God, and identify as love. )