Being 'socially inacceptable'...

[MrsSeanBean]

I just wanted to say that it's great to be able to chat about this topic (Philosophy / religion / spirituality ) on MN.

I find it so much more diffuclt to talk about religion / faith / spiritual things in RL.

I find assume that no-one in RL will think in a remotely similar way to me, or share any of my beliefs, and will think I am some kind of religious nutter.

Do you think it's just the case that people are more reluctant to talk about these things in RL?

Do you think it would be worthwhile / beneficial to instigate more RL conversations on this subject?

I heard the other day that to say you believe in God is almost 'socially inacceptable' now, which is rather sad.

Honestly? I get challenged by people who hold to other beliefs all the time. SGB is not backward in coming forward to pour scorn on my friendly Great pumpkin, and from her perspective, I totally respect that.

If you believe that the great mass of humanity are being duped by a delusion, and you can see that it's making people unneccessarily restricted, and is teaching them to try and restrict others, then I can really see why you'd want to puncture that delusion.

Now, this is not to say I think people should be overly obnoxious (although I confess to finding acerbic humour rather winning, which is one of the reasons I like SGB so much) - and the Penn and Teller guy (I think it was Penn) made it clear the fellow who spoke to him was respectful of him.

But not every person has the gift to communicate clearly and respectfully, yet they may still hold to their beliefs in sincerity, and I'd usually think it best for them to go with that sincerity (except if they suddenly believed they should shoot lots of people to send them to heaven, because we call that illegal, and rightly so).

I find Richard Dawkins rather aggressive and his arguments don't particularly impress me. But I don't for a minute doubt his sincerity, and thus his right, in a free society to express his disdain for my beliefs.

I've been quite forcefully challenged by a very traditional muslim to accept that Christ was merely a prophet of Allah, and not God the son. I've been accosted on the street by a snarky mormon missionary who was really quite rude about my belief that the bible being the finished revelation of God. I don't mind a bit.

There comes a point when natural common sense tells you the conversation has come to an end, and we're not all blessed with the same amount of common sense. I do agree that there is a balance to be struck.

But if someone genuinely believes in a Great Pumpkin who showers the world with cheese, and who, if they don't accept it, will bury them upside down in custard, and that person feels compelled to stand on a street corner and beg passers by to eat cheese, then I'm ok with it.

Heck, I think scientology is clearly a scam, but if Tom Cruise wants to make an arse of himself over it, I fully support his freedom to do so.

It's a lot about time and place, really. Picketing funerals is never, ever going to be a way to convince anyone that what you're saying is reasonable. Making use of Hyde Park Corner has a lot better chance.

Do you think that a person who is saintly in every way, decent, honest, compassionate, selfless and lacking in vanity and greed will go to heaven whether or not he is acknowledges and embraces Christ? If he were a strident atheist? If he were a muslim or a jew? Or is it a private club for fully paid up members only - like the first class passengers who got to bag a seat in the lifeboats of the titanic?

And when you are done with that one could someone tell me how to edit my posts please?!!!! Can't bear reading them back once sent and seeing them full of typos in case I'm mistaken for someone who can't spell or punctuate! I know it will be staring me in the face somewhere on the screen but I can't see it. Thanks awfully.

Hi - if you click on Preview instead of Post, you'll see it formatted how it will appear. Then you can edit anything you want before actually posting it. It's very useful for links and emoticons too!

TiggyR - I know, really frustrating, a fancy-schmancy upgrade and still no edit facility. Best way is to use the preview button, but I always forget, and usually only spot typos when I've already pressed post, when it's too late...

In answer to the first post, it's not a private club. It's open to all. But no, I don't believe just being absolutely perfectly good will get you there... because tbh, that would be a private club (and I wouldn't be in it).

As an evangelical Christian, I put a lot of store in a concept called 'grace', which is usually short-handed to 'undeserved kindness and mercy'. It essentially means that salvation is something independent of our behaviour, so that we can't have earned it (and thus be patting ourselves on the back for how good we are, or how much wiser than everyone else for making the right choice, blah blah blah) Doesn't mean we get to live a life of selfish tosspottery, and in fact, it should underscore that none of us is any better than anyone else, and prompt us to live better lives for the right reasons, rather than self-serving ones.

From my perspective, salvation is simple, but it's not simplistic, and it's free, but it's not cheap, because of what it came out of (a painful, torturous death, with the weight of all sin on Jesus' shoulders).

Why did God need to torture his son before he felt able to forgive us?

I don't mean that question in a hostile way. The story of Christ and his suffering is beautiful and inspiring. But I never understand why God needed to extract that price. Especially when the emphasis elsewhere is on grace, on forgiveness freely given.

No, it's a perfectly sensible question. My understanding of it (and I don't speak for all flavours of Christian on this, just trad evangelicals, to be clear) is that it's all about the 'big picture' of God's character.

Yes, God is love, but He is also just and holy. He follows His own rules against sin, basically. So, it would not be a just judge who just said to the murderer 'Well, you're sorry, that'll do, off you go'. That's not the job of the judge.

So what He does is, instead of passing sentence on us, He comes Himself to fulfil the requirements of justice. The bible calls it 'blotting out' the sins of His people.

Some people still find it an obnoxious idea, and don't understand why He doesn't just 'forgive', but I find it very comforting because it underlines God's trustworthiness. If He goes back on His own rules about sin, then I can't see how I could trust Him not to go back on His promise to save me.

Thank you. That is helpful. But it does seem paradoxical that throughout the New Testament Jesus is telling us stories about how we shouldn't judge, and about how it is wrong to insist on the letter of the law, like the Pharisees. Doesn't he tell the story of some farmworkers who are annoyed because their employer pays all of them for exactly a day's work when some of them have only had to work half a day (something like that, anyway).

Those are all lessons about how forgiving we should be, and how forgiving God in fact is. But in fact God is not like that. He is like the Pharisees insisting on the letter of the law, on the precise termsof the contract.

We are told that we are made in the image of God. But we are told that in this respect what is a virtue for God is a vice in us.

Why can we accept that a human judge can rightfully mete out mercy, but that God is bound that his power is limited by his own rules about sin?

I accept that the paradox might not really matter -- paradox is perhaps part of the strength, not the weakness, of the faith.

Actually it is very instructive to hear that you are reassured by his insistence on the rules, that you find it comforting to know that some boundaries are fixed, and some prices have to be paid no matter what.

So he insists on his pound of flesh for our sake, not for his. Because we are fallible and need the comfort of rules. That makes sense.

Ah, well, that assumes that the Pharisees were actually following the law and that was what Jesus rebuked them for. When actually, I think He was rebuking them because they held to an external righteousness, but their hearts were far from right. They wanted to be seen as righteous, but they really weren't at all - tithing on their mint and cumin, but neglecting to care for the widow and the orphan.

Jesus tells the disciples that they needed to exceed the righteousness of the pharisees - the sermon on the mount actually makes the law harder to keep, because it's all about heart-attitudes. My understanding is that Christ was teaching that no-one can do it. That's the point of the law, to bring us to the place where we accept that we cannot acheive righteousness ourselves - our standards are always too lenient.

...and since none of us can get the heart-attitudes completely right, none of us is fit to judge. God can judge because he has got it right, his righteousness is perfect.

But the heart-attitudes that Christ taught would be those of mercy, forgiveness. Christ's own perfection of rightouesness is the perfection of forgiving not judging. And God's perfection of righteousness is that of a judge and sentencer. God is so different from Christ.

Anyway, thanks. Must stop smpamming the god-threads.

Well, only if you accept a division of purpose between them. If God is remote, and only judge, and Jesus is somehow separate from Him and managed to convince a reluctant God to forgive people, then yes, I can see how that would be the conclusion.

But Jesus says that He and the Father are one - that the justice and the mercy work in synchronization. That's one of the reasons I don't understand the theology that has Jesus as someone other than fully God, as well as fully man. He has to be God himself, or there is a reluctance to God's forgiveness that just isn't there if Jesus is God, come to pay the price for us Himself.

Golly, this is heavy stuff for a Monday morning

or even a Monday afternoon. [idiot]

The trinity thing does seem like something that might need to be taken in a mystic way -- as something that we shouldn't aim to understand, but which is just expressive of ambivalance or dilemma or bewilderment. I do wonder whether religion's reality might ultimatly be in the expression of puzzles and plights rather than in the communication of truth.

(I don't mean that statement to be anti-religious. The opposite. )

Link?

Oh yes, I think it's eminently fitting that there are things that we just don't 'get'. The new testament uses 'mystery' to denote a puzzle that God has slowly revealed to us, and I like that a lot. I'm happy to be sure of certain things, and leave the rest in the ether. Holding on to the faith once revealed kind of neccessitates being sure about what you can be sure of, and not over-reaching yourself with stuff you can't.

Oh, that was maddening, Justa. I vastly prefered listening to the Rabbi

I can just imagine horrible Humphrys. 'Come on Archbishop, simple question, God or no Go? Redemption how? The listeners want to know!'

You both conceive of a truth, of which God is aware. I suppose that if I came to a point where I believed in God, it would be a God who was in some sense a construct from our religious practices (not for that realson unreal -- even scientifcic facts about the material world are in some sense constructs). The God I envisage would I think be some embodiment of puzzle, plight, quandary, rather than truth. So the question mark is there in him too.

I think I agree with that in part. There are an awful lot of question marks at the end of Jesus's sentences.

It's all about looking at the concepts of absolutes, when it comes to things like truth. Terribly post-modern of us