Sunday Sermonette: Breaking Bad
In the cable TV drama Breaking Bad, one of the major characters emerges from rehab with a fresh understanding and acceptance of his true self. "I'm the bad man," he says. It is probably not the lesson in self-acceptance that the rehab counselor wished to impart, but that's what he took home. It's a very Christian lesson.
The most important thing to know about the Christian faith is that you are a bad person. You're bad, wicked, depraved, and perverse. You are egotistical, selfish, and disobedient. You are a sinner.
The focus on your failings varies by denomination, but your intrinsically fallen nature is central to the Christian religion. Humans are intrinsically sinful and have been from the mythical ur-ancestor parents, which apparently came as a great surprise to the supposedly all-knowing and all-powerful God, so God had no choice but to punish them with suffering and death. God worked out an elaborate shell game in which he knocked up a human woman with a child who was somehow completely human and yet completely God for the purpose of ultimately being tortured to death as a gruesome payment for humanity's sins. When Elvis died for my sins, at least he stayed dead. The god-man didn't really die, because it was claimed that he popped back up again a couple days later and returned to a mystical transcendent plane of existence where he lives forever. And if you shut your eyes and clap your hands and cry, "I do believe in fairies. I do believe in fairies" or something equally meaningless, you too will also suffer and die, and return to a life of eternal bliss in a mystical transcendent plane of existence.
Care to guess what the greatest possible sin is? No, not setting fire to an orphanage or slaughtering a bishop as he says Mass or diddling the altar boys. Those are mere peccadillos. The very worst sin, the unforgivable sin, is to deny the existence of this slipshod bloodthirsty Creator God.
But, cry the theists, without a God there can be no right and wrong, no good or evil. Without a God, it's all subjective. People can just make it up as they go along.
Yup. Just like we always have. Let me make one thing clear: evil and suffering exist. Sometimes it's intentional, sometimes it's the result of human limitations. We cannot see all ends, so we do what seems right at the time. We evolved our morality in order to live together in community and accomplish far greater things than can be done by a single individual or a small tribal group. It's been less than 10,000 years since we got together in organized agriculture (and invented beer). From crude and brutal beginnings, our morality and ethics continue to develop and improve. So does our technological ability to harm.
We certainly don't get our rules and morals from the Bible, and for that we should be thankful. I'd really have been upset if I had to stone my wife outside the city gates because she wasn't a virgin on her wedding night. (Though a couple slaves might come in handy for light housekeeping.) Seriously, our sense of justice and fairness and right behavior has been developed and passed on from generation to generation, not established once and for all by a band of wandering goat-herders thousands of years ago.
The theists raise another objection. "It's not fair!" Without a God to establish an objective morality and mete out rewards or punishment in the afterlife, what's the point of obeying the rules? A world in which Hitler meets the same end as Anne Frank is just not fair.
Yup again. What's your point? Life isn’t fair, and it wouldn’t be fair even with a heavenly scorekeeper. Do you think that only the fear of an ultimate judge keeps people in line? Do you really think you'd be out there cooking meth except for the fact that an angry God is watching?
I am imperfect. I was born that way. I try to improve not because I fear divine punishment, but because it makes the intervening years between my birth and inevitable death more enjoyable. I don't want to be found worthy by a god after I die, I want to be found worthy of my wife while I live. Life without a final judgement is not meaningless; I create meaning, and one of the ways I do that is to try and be a little better today than I was yesterday. I try to make my apologies and amends to my friends and loved ones in the here and now. There is no ultimate reward, that is reward enough.
If this is the only life we can be absolutely sure we'll have, wouldn't it be a sin to waste a moment of it in empty repentance to gods?
The most important thing to know about the Christian faith is that you are a bad person. You're bad, wicked, depraved, and perverse. You are egotistical, selfish, and disobedient. You are a sinner.
The focus on your failings varies by denomination, but your intrinsically fallen nature is central to the Christian religion. Humans are intrinsically sinful and have been from the mythical ur-ancestor parents, which apparently came as a great surprise to the supposedly all-knowing and all-powerful God, so God had no choice but to punish them with suffering and death. God worked out an elaborate shell game in which he knocked up a human woman with a child who was somehow completely human and yet completely God for the purpose of ultimately being tortured to death as a gruesome payment for humanity's sins. When Elvis died for my sins, at least he stayed dead. The god-man didn't really die, because it was claimed that he popped back up again a couple days later and returned to a mystical transcendent plane of existence where he lives forever. And if you shut your eyes and clap your hands and cry, "I do believe in fairies. I do believe in fairies" or something equally meaningless, you too will also suffer and die, and return to a life of eternal bliss in a mystical transcendent plane of existence.
Care to guess what the greatest possible sin is? No, not setting fire to an orphanage or slaughtering a bishop as he says Mass or diddling the altar boys. Those are mere peccadillos. The very worst sin, the unforgivable sin, is to deny the existence of this slipshod bloodthirsty Creator God.
But, cry the theists, without a God there can be no right and wrong, no good or evil. Without a God, it's all subjective. People can just make it up as they go along.
Yup. Just like we always have. Let me make one thing clear: evil and suffering exist. Sometimes it's intentional, sometimes it's the result of human limitations. We cannot see all ends, so we do what seems right at the time. We evolved our morality in order to live together in community and accomplish far greater things than can be done by a single individual or a small tribal group. It's been less than 10,000 years since we got together in organized agriculture (and invented beer). From crude and brutal beginnings, our morality and ethics continue to develop and improve. So does our technological ability to harm.
We certainly don't get our rules and morals from the Bible, and for that we should be thankful. I'd really have been upset if I had to stone my wife outside the city gates because she wasn't a virgin on her wedding night. (Though a couple slaves might come in handy for light housekeeping.) Seriously, our sense of justice and fairness and right behavior has been developed and passed on from generation to generation, not established once and for all by a band of wandering goat-herders thousands of years ago.
The theists raise another objection. "It's not fair!" Without a God to establish an objective morality and mete out rewards or punishment in the afterlife, what's the point of obeying the rules? A world in which Hitler meets the same end as Anne Frank is just not fair.
Yup again. What's your point? Life isn’t fair, and it wouldn’t be fair even with a heavenly scorekeeper. Do you think that only the fear of an ultimate judge keeps people in line? Do you really think you'd be out there cooking meth except for the fact that an angry God is watching?
I am imperfect. I was born that way. I try to improve not because I fear divine punishment, but because it makes the intervening years between my birth and inevitable death more enjoyable. I don't want to be found worthy by a god after I die, I want to be found worthy of my wife while I live. Life without a final judgement is not meaningless; I create meaning, and one of the ways I do that is to try and be a little better today than I was yesterday. I try to make my apologies and amends to my friends and loved ones in the here and now. There is no ultimate reward, that is reward enough.
If this is the only life we can be absolutely sure we'll have, wouldn't it be a sin to waste a moment of it in empty repentance to gods?