I just heard a quote on NPR:
"I call myself a born-again Christian. I believe that all people have a natural inclination to sin."
It made me realize pretty abruptly that I don't share that belief, which makes me wonder if I'm also opposing one of the central tenets of Christianity. Oops?
Not sure if that makes me optimistic, especially as I've also a good tendency toward cynicism. Heh.
Whatever. I've other things to do that are more interesting uses of energy.
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12 comments:
It shows you have an education and an open mind. Sin means missing the mark of human existence, but the person you quoted was likely using the meaning for sin as an act that violates a moral rule. Whose moral rule? Isn't it a "sin" to blindly follow others just because they say so because they quote from an ancient text? Doesn't the context of the moment and place matter as well?
To you I have an education and an open mind. To many I may be daring to question the unquestionable (which either shows that I'm on my way to hell or that I've been led astray or that I'm a heathen desperately needing to see the light)... after all, one is not supposed to mess with or question the Word of God, it's just bad voodoo. (To mix metaphors with aplomb.)
I guess I'm amused to find that I may not appear to agree with this particular Christian beliefs, and also find it interesting that I'm not interested writing a proof of how it's not really opposed to Christianity.
Yeah- you're most likely a heathen-
:)
I'm with ya, it seems (to me) there are much better uses of energy.
We're all at different stages, levels, whatever, and it's perfect for right where we are (otherwise we'd be at a different level or stage, wouldn't we? I don't know...but this makes sense to me.)
We're heretics since we were baptized as Christians. If we were pagan, then yes, we'd be heathens. Tis better to be a heretic and change things from the inside. Tis better to be a heathen when they decide to execute you. Heathens usually got the sword. Heretics got burned at the stake. If they were lucky, they'd be strangled first. This is what befell Tyndall who wrote the first English translation of the Bible. A French priest who translated the Bible into French was burned at the stake and they used his Bibles as fuel. Kind of glad that those days have past.
jbmoore-
I guess this makes me a
"agnos-heretical pag-heathen" then!
I think I now have a monopoly on this belief!
I'm in the camp (of one?) of seeing "sin" as judgment laden on misconception and lack of skill.
Unnecessary.
Figure it out and move on.
Tommy - "Forgive them, for they know not what they do" I suppose?
John - The times have passed, so execution methods aren't a concern, thankfully.
Greenfrog - If I read you right then I'm in your camp too. Judgment hurts everyone (even, insiduously, the judge) and helps no one. Unneccessary indeed.
Okay, I'm going to go out on a limb here, and suggest that the NPR interviewee and I aren't that far apart.
He believes that people have a natural inclination "to sin." I believe people universally are trained to develop the ego.
He likely believes that this tendency is a "bad" thing, but I consider it an essential stage of the development of the soul. Yet I do consider better to be able to move beyond that stage and want to do so myself.
Yet, focussing on the commonality, we both agree that the human spirit is typically locked within patterns that it feels helpless to break, and confuses its limited POV with Reality.
We'd have further disagreements about the remedy, at least on the level of words and concepts; yet we'd both agree that the experience or transforming knowledge of what's beyond egoic perception is desirable.
He would call it "God" or being "born again," and would probably conceptualize those terms as referring to a discrete external entity and probably considers the experience as something that "saves" the egoic mind rather than blows it away.
But I'd say I agree with him more than he probably would expect, and we have common ground.
(How could it be otherwise if the only ground is in my mind, anyway?)
"Judgment hurts everyone (even, insiduously, the judge) and helps no one."
julie,
you managed to say it more clearly than I did. But yes, I think we're in the same camp.
Jon, you pretty much covered how that conversation might go down.
So when the ground of your mind claims that not everyone's such an egoic mess, nor tends or wants to be?
That makes my mind (where you exist, of course) a pretty interesting place.
"...a natural inclination to sin." This is true when understood in the context of the figurative language of Christianity, as has already been expressed by jbmoore: "...missing the mark of human existence"; greenfrog: "judgment laden" and jon: "...universally trained to develop the ego." "Inclination to sin" or "born into a state of sin," is none other than the "samsara" of the Buddha and "Maya" of Vedic teaching. The illusory self we call the "ego" must be dealt with in order to experience reality as it was meant to be experienced. Hence, Jesus says in John 12:25: "The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life."
In being so brief I didn't exactly explain my position. Regardless of what the holy books say, I disagree with the present day position that people naturally do-bad-things-on-purpose... at the moment, I'd insist that it's out of ignorance. Any entrenched terminology is laden with baggage.
Jesus was right, of course. Risk it all, lose it all, and you gain far more... but not what you thought.
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