thread: 2006-09-08 : Salvation, damnation, justification, a la Sydney
On 2006-09-11, joshua m. neff wrote:
Sydney, I also want to thank you for being frank and honest and open in these threads. Now, here's something you've repeatedly said (in one way or another) that I want to respond to:
Now, maybe I'm just tremendously fucked up. Maybe everyone else reading these posts is so much better at being human than I am that they can do the right thing, consistently, all the time, and never fail and fall and need a hand to reach out to them to offer forgiveness and the strength to try again.
It's not an either-or thing. I'm not a Christian. I don't believe in Original Sin or of sin of any kind. That being said, I believe some behavior is better than others, and I believe and accept that I am a flawed person. As Robert Anton Wilson and Timothy Leary would say, I'm a badly programmed robot. Not because I'm inherently flawed, but because environmental factors have led me to develop bad programs. I've grown up and accumulated baggage, and this causes me to react badly to situations. So, I'm not perfect by any stretch. I've done bad things. I've hurt myself and others. And I still do (although I'd like to think I do it less now than I used to).
That being said, I can't recall ever feeling I needed any god or messiah or who/whatever to give me the strength to make me a better person. I've never felt the need or desire to pray for that strength or will. It's always been a matter of paying attention to behavior that's harmful to myself and/or others and doing my best not to continue doing it. Some behavior is easier than others to stop. But I do my best to be the best person I can be.
This will sound horribly corny and geeky, but...the closest I come to any kind of prayer to an external being is this: sometimes, when faced with a situation where I'm not sure what to do, I ask myself, "What would Superman do?" Usually it's about something that seems just a wee bit hard or time consuming or inconvenient to do. The easier thing would be to just walk away and do nothing, but Superman wouldn't walk away, so even though it's inconvenient, I'll do what Superman would do.
My point being: you may feel that you need Christ to give you the strength to be a good person. Not everyone feels that way, even while they acknowledge that they make mistakes and act like no good shits. It doesn't mean we're better people than you. I certainly don't think I'm a better person than you.
