God's a monster

[polyfrog]

Sort of where I'm going with this is the idea that your religion is your business, and not anyone else's.

If you are concerned with what religion I am or with making sure I know what religion you are, then you are in the wrong. You should not care what faith I do or do not follow at all and to whatever extent you are even curious about it or are

Comments

[tlunquist]

True as far as it goes, but again, much depends on context.

If you and I are getting to know each other, for the purpose of becoming friends, lovers, or whatever "close" relationship, and my spiritual orientation is as much a part of me as my cultural heritage, gender/expression, skin color, language, etc., I'm going to want to share that information with you. Doubly so in a potentially intimate relationship, because it may affect that relationship in material ways (whether it's about food, clothes, social activities, political priorities, schedule constraints or sexual practices). It's part of the process of figuring out if you and I can be members of the same tribe, and no amount of front-brain enlightenment is ever going to transcend our lizard-brain tribalism. All we can do is redefine our tribes until everybody fits in them, and it's unlikely we'll ever quite get there. (When you are ready to invite Ann Coulter to dinner, feel free to tell me I'm wrong. :) )

As for interactions with co-workers, strangers, or passersby, you are absolutely correct that your spiritual orientation is no more their business than is your biological sex, political leaning, or any other not-readily-visible trait; nor is their orientation your business. AND, you can't prevent them from telling you, any more than you can ban people from handing out tracts on street corners. You can certainly ignore the information and thus not reinforce the behavior, and if pressed, you can state that you do not feel religion is salient to the conversation. If that doesn't work, you can walk away, just as you can turn off the TV or the radio if opinions being expressed in those media do not suit you.

So with all of that being said, I mostly agree with you, and I'm not sure where you're going with this.

[polyfrog]

The thought in my head is not yet fully articulated even to me, so articulating it to you is going to be difficult.

But to start with, I really did mean "public." Several of the counterexamples you and others have raised are really not public. If we're intimate, either in the current meaning or the more traditional "close friends" meaning, then we would discuss these things. But not in public.

The thing I'm aiming at is sort of...
A hell of a lot of things people do to each other, they blame on their relationship with their God. Which we as a society let them do, even at the same time we're telling them that their God doesn't agree with their actions. My feeling is that we should not be allowing each other to blame anything we do on God.

Shoot a bunch of brown people because they're brown? That's on you. Period.

Feed a bunch of hungry people? That's also on you. Period.

People do things. And they should accept all responsibility for the things they do, good and bad.

The question in the previous post was trying to get some outside perspective to see if I'm missing some actual good thing that blaming one's actions on God provides.

[polyfrog]

That would be lovely. How might that happen?

[tlunquist]

My hope and desire is to help you fully form the thought, on the assumption that that is your goal. So I hope you do not interpret my comments as adversarial. I don't think you have or will, but as in all text-based conversations it seems worth making that explicit.

So having clarified that we're talking about "public" conversations....

1) I absolutely agree that it is not appropriate, ever, to justify one's individual actions by taking them in someone else's name. All forms of "the devil made me do it", whether "it" is good or bad, whether the "devil" is a god or a monster, nobody "made you" do dick. We have free will. Full stop.

2) Taking full credit for doing good stuff is a pretty big leap for a lot of Christians because of how they are enculturated. They have been taught to "deflect praise up." And when someone does a good thing, or lives a good life, and is thanked or praised for that, and "deflects that praise up" (by saying "I did this thing or lived this life to serve God"), I don't agree, but I also don't think there's any harm in that. There is a subtle line, though -- if that person CHOSE to do that good stuff and CHOOSES to credit Grace for the fact that they are a good person, I think that's OK. If the person is asserting that they are enslaved to God and compelled to do good because of direct orders, that, to me, is no different from "obeying the voices in my head" that most modern people would call mental illness.

3) I suspect the other thing that has bearing on this issue is the corollary problem frequently cited by angry atheists and agnostics. If people need the constant threat of an omniscient authority figure in order to behave themselves, what hope do we have for civilization? The subtext of "I did this because God" is "I would be a knuckle-dragging savage if God hadn't told me not to." And obviously that is not acceptable.

[polyfrog]

I think the crux of it for me is that I do not agree that there is no harm in "Giving God the glory" for your own actions. I feel like there are a lot of good people doing good things and feeling not good about themselves because they are not allowed by their culture to feel good about the things they do because anything good comes from god working through them. They can feel good about themselves for being a worthy vessel, but that's not the same as feeling good about yourself for doing good things yourself.

Your point 3 is outside the scope of my current thought on this, but is certainly related. But the more I think about this the more this thought is about doing good things and giving credit to God, rather than not doing bad things.

[tlunquist]

OK, well, sounds like we're making progress toward the goal of honing in on your thought.

And I certainly see your point, that the cultural standard that says "you are flawed, sinful, etc." is going to lead good people to feel like they are bad people, and that shit is fucked up. And it even may beg the question whether that premise becomes the reason people think it's OK to do bad stuff -- "I am flawed and sinful anyway, and God says this thing or that thing is wrong, so I might as well take it on myself to punish the other sinners and save God some trouble."

Either way, for the good people or the bad people, it's a tough nut to crack. Pride is a deadly sin, and in that kind of cultural construct you're going to have a hell of a time convincing somebody that there's a difference between appropriate self-esteem and pride.

AND, it plays out differently for different people. The handful of genuinely good-hearted and decent Christians I know are not lacking genuine self-esteem, well-being or happiness. I don't believe that, for example, Nancy (you remember Nancy, don't you?) or my friend Mark whom you don't know, or Bill Higgins, are secretly trembling in dark corners at night loathing themselves and seeing God as their only redemption. So the trick may be to figure out a way to partition the psychology from the religion -- to identify what is going on in someone's head as a distinct phenomenon from whatever religious attitude they are espousing.

And that's way too deep a dive for a public conversation or a stranger, obviously.

So coming back around to the core thought, I would still assert that in a public interaction with a stranger, religion is indeed outside the scope and not appropriate to the conversation. AND if someone is doing good stuff and chooses to give credit for that to God, we as strangers in that public conversation have no real choice but to assume that is harmless enough, because if we assume otherwise, it involves exactly the sort of personal invasion we previously established was not appropriate to the public interaction with the stranger.

Turns out to be a rather chewy subject, this thought of yours. No wonder it's taking time to form fully!