thread: 2006-09-08 : Salvation, damnation, justification, a la Sydney
On 2006-09-12, Sydney Freedberg wrote:
Twila: Thank you for speaking out. I can't say much more than "I know how you feel," and, "God bless you."
Joshua: I don't want to be a better person.
You don't?
If we were having this conversation face to face, now would be the awkward pause where my eyes dilate and I splutter incoherently for a few minutes.
Joshua, I want to believe we are speaking the same words without understanding each other's meaning at all, because what you've written implies a level of self-satisfaction that I find appalling. There can't be literally nothing you want to do better in your life, surely? You said "If I do something hurtful, I'll try to change my behavior"—do you have no hurtful behaviors you are still struggling to change? You have no positive behaviors you'd like to do more often and more effectively?
It's not like you can grow to a certain point and then say, "Okay, I'm done," either. As with a lot of other aspects of biological development (and let me set aside all the spiritual stuff for a moment), psychological and ethical maturation do not reach a steady-state: As soon as you stop growing, you start decaying.
I get the impression that a lot of people think that "being a better person" and "being a saint" and "being saved" all have to do with holding specific, slightly weird intellectual positions and performing certain ritualized actions, and have nothing to do with trying to be happy and make the people around you happy. BULLSHIT. Sainthood starts with trying to be decent to the people you see every day.
