re: Immorality and Salvation, or Redeeming the Immoral
I got myself in a heap of trouble, once upon a time, when I asserted, here at Exosci, that redemptive Christianity seemed to be a license to abuse people. Over time, I've gotten away with the argument more and more as I manage to choke out what I mean by that, but I'm going to throw my hat in with Rambler on this one, at least long enough to offer some speculations, considerations, and musings.
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Ransom Theory
Ransom theory espoused that the Devil had seized dominion over human souls and affairs. Medieval Christian philosophers worked hard to wrap their skulls and souls around that. Elaborate plays were written, casting humanity as the stake in a massive lawsuit, with either Jesus or Mary arguing for Good, and the Devil arguing for the forces of evil. In the end, no resolution was possible that did not invest too much power in the Devil for the philosophers' comfort. With Ransom Theory, you have the Devil, created by God, allowed to subjugate the people, so that they might appeal to God to save them. Jesus, by this notion, was the ransom, with the trials a philosophical exploration of the principles involved. The biggest problem with Ransom is that Jesus' mission is thus completed at his death, and, having ransomed humanity from Evil's clutches, no longer has any compelling reason to involve himself in human affairs.
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Salvation Theory
So goes the idea that the Devil and God are eternally at war for the Universe, one of the driving thematic departures of the Christian gospels from their Judaic heritage. Modern Christians are most familiar with Salvation Theory. I, personally, have never met a living Ransomist.
There are a few problems with Salvation Theory, most of them actually quite blatant, though the soothing balm of faith makes them seem much more subtle--perhaps, even, less important--than they truly are.
The first question, of course, is "Who is saved?" In this sense, there's a number of considerations to be had. Jews? Jewish converts to Christianity? All converts to Christianity? All people?
It would seem, though, especially in the modern sense, that all those who convert to Christianity are eligible for Salvation. Now the moral questions begin.
--What of those who have
never heard of Jesus Christ? We might find this notion odd in the modern day, but there are a few corners of the world left that have not endured the coming-of-age that sets on when encountering the force of Christianization. Better context? Imagine the year after Jesus died. How many people on the face of the earth knew who he was? How many of them would be eligible to be saved? How many would be condemned to Hell for the mere crime of being born in a certain place on the face of the Earth?
--Infant baptisms are designed to initiate a member into the body of Christ before that aspirant has a clue what to what they aspire, much less that they aspire at all. I consider infant baptism to be immoral, especially when Christians can't agree on its necessity. (I had a Lutheran lay-teacher who was stunned that some of the 12 year-olds in her confirmation classes hadn't been baptized as infants. She was actually morally offended that the parents would "endanger their souls".
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--The most part of modern salvation doctrine fails to address what
must be done in order to achieve salvation. What this creates is a situation in which the faithful aspirants undercut each others' efforts as they feel their souls imperiled both by their own questions of faith, as well as their failure to "save" their fellow Christian aspirants who are so unfortunate as to be misguided. (Seventh-Day Adventists, for instance, seem to follow a general trend describing the Pope as Satan, and Catholics as the Devil's minions.)
The whole of the Salvation Club reminds me of my parents' admonitions about smoking, drugs, or other nefarious challenges of youth. That those doing wrong want others to do wrong with them so that the wrongdoers might assuage their own guilt by the illusion of solidarity and acceptance.
I knew children to be frightened for their lives and souls because their parents taught them that they had to be in order to be saved. I knew children who tried their damnedest to frighten everyone else, threatening that God will strike us all down, because their parents taught them that they had to in order to be saved.
We see widespread espousal of conditions describing the most miserable bastards in the world deciding to believe in Jesus at the last second of their lives, and being redeemed simply because they "asked the savior into their hearts."
A dumbass "Community Church" preacher in Sumner, Washington, upon the death of a friend of mine, lied about a 15 year-old girl, painted the abuse of her home as a cosmic struggle between God and the Devil, so that he might, when they laid to rest, do so with the comfort that her sacrifice had moved us to ask
Jee-zuhs into our hearts.
Encomienda, the Spaniard attempt to enslave indigenous American tribes, finds its justification in Salvation Theory. (Incidentally, I think
encomienda would have been easier to justify under Ransom Theory, but that's a matter of timing.) So were the "Prayer Towns" of the Anglo-American colonies. (Ever read Conrad Richter,
A Light in the Forest?)
Having mentioned prayer towns and encomienda, I feel compelled to drag an Australian jackass back up out of the mire, but merely to mention that when an MP disparaged recompense for dislocation/relocation of Aboriginies, it was the God of salvationist ideas he was referring to when he called the Aboriginal Australian "The lowest colour of evolution on God's creation."
He was not referring to the Heaviside Layer (the deity of Jellicle cats). That is, Salvation Theory is the justification; you are, in your relocations/dislocations, attempting to raise the filthy aboriginies out of their subpar evolutionary condition.
Salvation is much like the American dollar: it is a form of moral currency which only matters when compared to the next person.
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Immorality of Salvation
Salvation which comes from a process of sin, abasement, confession, repentence, forgiveness, and deliverance is an immoral means to a moral-seeming end. Salvation Theory fosters the notion that, whatever mistakes we can make, we can atone for simply by praising Jesus. That a wrong-minded Christian directly fostered this or that tragedy in the past is not so much an offense to those of us watching the Salvation farce as would be, oh, the idea that modern Christians still haven't bothered to learn the lessons of past sins. Imagine that we sit here, condemning a past tragedy, arguing over its moral implications, attempting to dismiss it, when, all the while, we're simply avoiding the fact that we need to actively prevent our ongoing reenactment of the original tragedy.
We can, by some extant Salvation Theories, continue our course of sin, hurting as many people as we can, and then deciding in the midnight our of our existence, that as the darkness closes, we need something more hopeful than the cold of the grave. Thus, we see Jesus, and are redeemed, are saved. Our salvation comes from where we put our faith, not in how that faith manifests itself in our acts. In 1992 a Christian threw a firebomb through the front window of a house in Salem, Oregon, and killed two people for the crime of being gay. Modern salvation theory says that the bomber's going to heaven, and the victims aren't. Tell me what's moral. It's like telling me what's in the Billboard Top 10. Salvation morality is at least as contrived as Brittany Spears.
There's that guy over at the World Church, who, upon learning of the suicide of a church member, who killed multiple persons for the crime of being born, mourned that a good soldier had to die that way, alongside Kikes and Gooks, and assured his congregation that their fellow fighter was now rejoicing at the right hand of God. Anyone can be saved. Being smart enough to not beg for it seems to be the real trick.
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Classism of Salvation
I'm saved, you're not. It is my "moral duty" to save you. Thus I shall destroy your ugly, pagan culture and install my own austere, judgemental institutions. I am better than you, because God says so. I will show you and guide you, and make a tidy profit in the meantime.
Any questions about that one?
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Out of breath ....
I'm going to stop now for a couple of reasons.
Oxygen and
Rambler: sorry to butt in on the conversation, but between the two of you, it suddenly hit me that I have a bit to get off my chest about this. Perhaps, if we need, I'll take it to its own thread.
Weaver: Sorry to digress so far. Should we be too far out on a tangent, I'm happy to return the thread to its regularly-scheduled program.
thanx all (very much, at that)
Tiassa
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Whether God exists or does not exist, He has come to rank among the most sublime and useless truths.--Denis Diderot
