Originally posted by huntingbear
Originally posted by AThousandYoung
[b]Yes, insult. You think your wife should go to Hell. She deserves eternal torment. That would be justice in your opinion. Am I wrong?
Just to verify, I posed this to my wife not t ...[text shortened]... ticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.[/b]
If I'm mischaracterizing you, I apologize. My intent was to simply show the other side of the coin; you seem to be focussing only on those aspects of your belief that sound good to you, and I was focussing on those aspects you seem to be tiptoeing around. It's entirely possible I misrepresented your views, and I'll try to understand them more clearly when I have time.
So your wife does not find your view of her insulting. OK.
Do I think your profession of love for your wife is insincere? I don't honestly know. Maybe. To tell someone they deserve something is to judge them, I believe. If I love someone, I feel they deserve only good things. In fact, I feel this way about every being that can experience pleasure or suffering. I have a basic love for all beings and so I cannot honestly feel anyone or any animal that can experience anything unpleasant deserves it. Every such being deserves all the love and happiness that is possible. Since we come from such opposite perspectives, I guess it's hard to relate to one another.
I don't see punishment and consequences as something people "deserve"; they are necessary evils which we cannot avoid because we have limited power.
I'm unsure why you think it's ok for people not to have to suffer the punishment they deserve; since you think everyone deserves misery, and yet through Christianity they don't have to experience it - isn't there something wrong with that? If someone feels a child molester deserves to go to jail or be executed or whatever, and then that person walks, it would be an injustice from the perspective of that person who feels that way. That's what "deserving punishment" means to me anyway. Do you see the word "deserve" differently?
Why don't we deserve to be with God? If being with God is so wonderful, I say we all deserve it, no matter how vile we are.
Logic necessitates that one is either with God, or without, for any third option would be a contradiction.
OK, sure; though there are many assumptions I think you're making which I don't agree with. For example, equating pleasure and happiness with being "with" a being with certain characteristics and a certain personality who allegedly did certain things and is accurately described in the Bible.
You seem to be saying there are only two possibilities; infinite bliss, and infinite torment. That is not the case. In any event, I do not agree at all with your basic premise that no one deserves eternal bliss.
The phrase "simply because she's a human" distorts my beliefs.
I am not sure that it does. All humans, according to your perspective, except for the one who had the advantage of also being God, sin. This one could not be a sinner because he was God, and God cannot be a sinner by definition (at least according to what I've heard from Christians). To me the obvious conclusion is that humans, unless they are also God and therefore cannot sin, are just sinners by nature. It's part of being human. Aren't humans sinners as soon as they are born simply because they are human? Am I making a mistake somewhere?
You have inserted a premise, assumed but unstated, that simply being human suffices to make one a sinner, a premise never stated by me, and with which I disagree whole-heartedly.
Really. I find this extremely hard to buy. The premise I did assume seems obvious. I don't see how every human being is a sinner and therefore deserves damnation the second they are conceived because their hypothetical ancestors disobeyed this being called God; and yet being human does not suffice to make one a sinner (assuming the human is not also God). How do you reconcile this?
I don't dwell on my sinfulness. I dwell on God's love and my gratitude for it, which is the life I live with all my heart, trying to do good and not evil. Humility consists not in thinking oneself filth, but in not thinking of oneself. I am far from perfect in that regard, but that is my aim.
You and I see this entirely differently. To me, it's an injustice if someone deserves something and yet does not get what they deserve, whether it's good or bad. The world in fundamentally unjust in my eyes, but that makes sense because I don't think there is an omnipotent being who can change this. It seems as though you disagree; you seem to think it's just if someone deserves something and doesn't get it. I find your perspective very confusing. To me your perspective seems impossible; self contradictory.
My motive for my stating your beliefs in the way I do has a number of facets. One is political; I don't like the influence Christians have and the way they use it in the world I live in, so I try to undermine it. I feel Christians use their power immorally, and their religious beliefs are one of the things that fuels this immoral use of power. In addition, I like to study things critically, and challenging others' beliefs often leads to either my being more confident of my own, or else leads to me questioning my own. For example, I've been led to look carefully and critically at the concept of macroevolution because of my debates with creationists. There may be other reasons that aren't coming to mind right now, but these are the most significant ones.
However, I do not intend to distort anything; I am a firm believer that honesty is very important and being deceitful and manipulative as a general rule is destructive to those things I value. Short term political gains earned through insults and distortions of others' beliefs are not what I am interested in in the slightest. Instead I want to present the true beliefs of Christians in a manner which is not sugar coated to hide the seriously creepy and dangerous nature of those beliefs. I feel Christians generally express their beliefs in such a manner as to hide and sugar coat these aspects. As you yourself say, you don't dwell on these aspects. I feel you basically ignore them and focus on that part of your belief that sounds nice. It's like how a criminal describes robbing a house to himself or his friends. He might talk about how corrupt the owner probably is, how the criminal's people deserve this money that was stolen from them, how the owner can afford it, how it's a dog eat dog world, how the police are just another gang, how everyone robs everyone else anyway...all these things sound convincing to many people, yet a policeman's description of the same event will be far different and less complimentary and not incorrect.
To me, if your wife doesn't deserve your love, there would be nothing wrong if you cheated on her, if you walked out on her and your children, insulted her, gave her AIDS, etc. It's nothing compared to what she really deserves anyway. It's wonderful that you do love her, but you could treat her like garbage and she would deserve even worse in your eyes. I don't see how that's a distortion of what you believe. Please clear it up for me.
By the way, I asked my sister how she felt about all this. She says that the fact that you think everyone deserves all these things means it's not really that bad. She feels it would be much more horrific if you said she deserved these things and other people didn't, for what that's worth. I don't really agree.