thread: 2006-09-08 : Salvation, damnation, justification, a la Sydney
On 2006-09-09, Sydney Freedberg wrote:
Ah, blast. Hit "submit" instead of "preview." Apologies.
Ian, "the corruption of the sword" is a tremendously complicated issue, and it's also a red herring, since I can't think of any belief system, religious or secular, that has not been used, sincerely, to justify brutality and oppression.
I live in Washington, DC: Maybe I'll be blown up by a religious fanatic tomorrow, and maybe I'll be carjacked and shot in the face by some gang kid who believes that all religion is crap and each individual stands alone in an uncaring cosmos. Both of them are acting sincerely on their beliefs when they kill me. I'm dead either way.
I don't think we can choose which belief system is best by toting up body bags and finding the one whose adherents have murdered the least people in its name. There's too much historical accident involved: "One man may be so placed that his anger causes the death of thousands, and another so that he just gets laughed at."
Raven, you're reading me exactly right. I think Christianity is the best path for everyone.
Now, I suspect it would do Clinton's grandmother-in-law little good to convert now: As Clinton describes her, she has come a long way down her path towards our common goal, the Lord, and would waste a lot of time, energy, and spiritual confusion backing up.
In the abstract, I think a world entirely composed of orthodox Christians—specifically of Episcopalians, in fact—and with every other religious tradition from animism to Zoroasterianism relegated to the textbooks (but not forgotten!) would be a better place. What would be best of all is a world entirely populated by some kind of as yet unknown Christian denomination whose theologians had carefully examined every other belief system in the world and picked the best from each to enrich their own practice would be even better; in that future, I'd be happy to see my own flawed understanding of Christ be superseded and my own imperfect tradition extinguished.
But as a practical matter, turning advanced and well-versed Buddhists, Taoists, Hindus, and so on into fumbling neophyte Christians is likely to do them more spiritual harm than good. And as I've said before, I think the world's great spiritual traditions generally do a good job. I'm not worried about their sincere adherents.
The people I worry about are those who follow no tradition at all, or who patch together their own syncretisms out of multiple sources (see the companion thread), or who practice in one of the great traditions but without passion, commitment, or understanding. These people generally have a lot less ground to give up by backtracking, and I think they'd do well to embrace Christ right now—and indeed most converts start as just such spiritual wanderers.
Then there is the group of people who have been wounded by what I'd call Christian malpractice—people raised in the Christian tradition but by a congregation or family where the Word was garbled by the Christians involved out of intolerance, insecurity, inability to love one's neighbor as oneself, or simple ignorance. There's a lot of that in the world, particularly in these threads.
I understand anyone who's suffered such malpractice would be, logically, reluctant to put themselves in the hands of any Christian congregation ever again. Some of you simply can't come back, and I respect that, and regret it, and I wish you Godspeed on whatever path you find. But I'd encourage you to understand that there are ways and ways of being Christian, and one of them might be your way if you give it a chance.
