I love nakedpastor. After recounting a story of a woman who was told by her pastor that she was fat because she didn’t submit to her husband, he says this:
The amount of subtle manipulation, judgement, criticism, condemnation and abuse that goes on in the name of religion is remarkable! And I’ll tell you why…
Anytime you have an idea the way people should behave or turn out, it results in violence against that person. If I relate to my wife the way I think she ought to be, according to my own desires and expectations, it violates who she is already. If I relate to my children according to my wishes for them, it destroys who they actually are. The church is one of the most concentrated cultures for having and imposing expectations upon people. The pastor and elder had an idea of what a woman should look like. She didn’t look like that, so they challenged her to become what she should be. She also didn’t relate to her husband the way they thought she must, so they admonished her to submit to her husband the way they think she should. That’s their biblical mandate!
They couldn’t see past their own agenda for her to behold the incredible and unconventional beauty that she possessed already. Neither could they fit her rather feisty and confident way of relating to men into their grid for wives. Instead of letting her be to blossom in her own unique way, they crushed her. But only for a while. She got out from beneath their oppressive weight of judgement and is doing fine. But I know many other people who continue to get crushed and crushed and crushed. And I’ve heard some say that there’s something virtuous in being crushed… like a rose that releases its perfume only when crushed, or a grape its wine only after being crushed. Some can tell when they are free to leave the press. Others don’t, but continue to voluntarily submit to the unjust oppression that they don’t deserve nor need to endure. Get out if you can!
That’s just one reason why I think many are leaving the church, and why many others have already left.
All I can say is… amen.
Musicguy –
I’m in the aisle, sweetie.
Normally I wouldn’t say anything about poking fun, but I’m so impressed at how well you guys have handled this conversation that I don’t want to see it degenerate into name calling as others have in the past.
“If the sight of two people of the same sex makes me unhappy, or makes a majority of people unhappy, does that then make it wrong?”
Yes, I think we as a society have decided that sex in public is wrong. If it is not in public then it is not in your sight. Again the genders of the participants do not matter.
Killing people is an act of increasing suffering and removal of free will. If you see it any other way that that, you are a far more scary person than I even thought you were and I hope you stay believing in in whatever makes you scared of committing acts of violence.
The reason that a society will not decide that stealing is fine is because they will not be successful. It breeds distrust and revenge quickly. That is why most societies, regardless of whatever made up deity they follow, have come to essentially the same set of rules. The rules that foster the advancement of humanity are those that find moral. Societies that have these rules end up being long lived.
if there is a God
Well that is the big “if” isn’t it. Considering that I think you will go on a killing spree if I convince you that he does not exist, I think I will just let it be.
If there is no God, then certainly we are all open to create whatever rules we want.
Somehow I have never been in jail, never physically hurt anyone, never done drugs, haven’t been part of a huge orgy, all the while never believing in god (of any religion). How is that possible?
We as a society are NOT actually able to make up whatever rules we want. The rules we make up have to foster coexistence, otherwise we will be unable to coexist. So if we make a society where killing is not an immoral/illegal act, we wont have a very long lived society now will we? If one society creates a set of rules that don’t allow it to live with another society, eventually one of them will cease to exist, or at least always be in conflict. This is why religion (not spirituality or even just unorganized theism) is more of a problem than a solution these days.
sadly, living in complete harmony with the environment and within the community also can lead to destruction. We learned that from the tibetan buddhists. While what the chinese did was morally wrong, part of being in a society must be the will to protect it. Its why I support a strong military, but not the willy-nilly use of that military like we have recently seen. A strong defense leads to increased free will.
Wait I read something wrong.
If the sight of two people of the same sex makes me unhappy
Seeing two people of the same sex makes you unhappy? How do you walk down the street? Can I presume that you meant the sight of two people of the same sex having sex?
Either they are being innapropriate (sex in public), and again the genders dont matter. Or you are putting your nose where it doesn’t belong (removing free will again, by butting into their privacy). Or you should just stop watching gay porn.
Its not that hard Min. The 3 morals I mentioned above are not about you, they are about your actions with respect to everyone else, long term. Not whether or not you get instant gratification for something or you are unhappy for 2 seconds because you just saw an offensive t-shirt or saw Musicguy slapping his boyfriends ass like a football player.
“I never claimed that women are inferior. In fact, I believe that it takes a great deal of character to choose to submit to another person. I also do not believe that homos are evil, I believe that all are born with a sin nature (myself included) and we all do sinful acts (homosexual sex being one of many including lying, gossiping, etc. all of which being equally detestable unto God), and that we all need a Savior.”
Although I completely disagree with your take of this, at least you attempted to answer. However, you chose to completely disregard to more imporant portion of my comment:
You are certainly entitled to that, but so is everyone else who feels that your interpretation is archaic, backwards, and blinded by dogma.
I’ll go about attempting to build a community and coexist with my ultra religious friends as best I can, and you can go on pontificating about how your way is the only way while advocating laws that will limit my freedom (as well as the religious freedoms of many people, the Metropolitan Community Church, just one congregation whose views differ quite a bit from yours).
In short, why is your interpretation and beliefs in christianity paramount to all others? Why do you get to decide what’s “right” and “wrong”? What about the religious freedom of other christians who feel that you are dead wrong??
In fact Min,
how is it that atheists tend to be happy, and altruistic people. How is it that in a few short days a small group of athists will give 20,000 to help school kids?
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/10/freethinkers_are_a_happy_and_g.php
How does this make any sense in the “moral-less atheist” model? How is this possible?
techie- atheists can’t possibly do any good! and even if they did, it’s not worth discussing since they’re going to hell along with the jews, muslims, buddhists, wiccans, and everyone else who practices a religion other than Min’s version of Christianity, since they haven’t been “saved.”
Imagine that.
Obviously I must be doing a poor job communicating because my points are being swallowed up in the details.
My previous point was that your three standards are not sufficient to guide moral policy for an entire culture since it’s undefined in practical application.
Setting aside the whole homosexual sex thing for a minute, look at your example about killing. We recently had a woman in Florida (Terri Schaivo) killed because her husband opted to cut off her feeding tube. To him, letting her starve was something that made him happy since it put her out of her existence, and yet it made her parents sad because they believed they lost their daughter.
In fact, if you look at the Declaration of Independence you’ll see the wisdom of the founders in that they said that man was free to pursue happiness, but they were not guaranteed it.
People have funny opinions about what will make them happy. Many believe that things will make them happy, only to find that the accumulation of such things tends to make them less happy.
Take for instance, stealing– or theft. You say that cultures cannot survive with the concept of community property or stealing from one another, but I know of missionaries from the jungles of the Philippines that say that this is exactly how the village operates. The people don’t necessarily like the practice, but it is part of their culture.
I will definitely agree that there’s an internal compass that makes people feel guilt over common things– like killing, stealing, etc.– and considers some things as noble– like loyalty and bravery– for obviously I believe in a Creator that put that in us in the first place. In fact, though I’m sure you’ll say that somehow these things evolved in common through multiple lines of humans, I’m not sure how it could. But that’s a rabbit trail.
I’m not quite sure, Musicguy, how my standards are somehow archaic but homosexual pairing is not. If I remember correctly, homosexuality as a right existed all the way back to the time of Sodom and Gomorrah, and regardless of how that ended up, they had a permissive style and believed that they could live however they wanted with whatever coupling they wanted.
So, dating my standards as ancient is a slight of hand at best. There’s nothing new under the Sun, and certainly there have been lands that have advocated the ability to do all kinds of sins– in fact, I believe that if we really dug into history we would see patterns emerging every time and we could guess where they lead.
tech, the whole concept of altruism doesn’t speak for or against atheism. For one thing, we don’t know the motives– are they out to just prove that “atheism can do good things too!”? And why not let evolution take its course and eliminate those kids that are weaker– survival of the fittest, ya know?
I’m thankful that they care– really, it’s nice to see someone contributing to help others. The more people we have working together to help others the better we can make this world we all share.
I don’t think that the gift proves morality, and I also don’t say that atheists don’t do good things. That’s never been my argument, and is not my argument now.
My argument, if we could stay on track, was that a woman that chose to attend a Christian church also chose to put herself under Christian morals.
Min, like most comment threads, we branch off into many different discussions. I believe that the general consensus was that the woman was treated poorly. We’ve moved on to other topics in the same thread, which reminds me that you still haven’t answered by previous question:
“In short, why is your interpretation and beliefs in christianity paramount to all others? Why do you get to decide what’s “right” and “wrong”? What about the religious freedom of other christians who feel that you are dead wrong??”
Musicguy, I appreciate the fact that comment threads can have different discussions– it’s a double-edged sword, prone to leave issues unresolved by burying the initial discussion without closure with new issues on new topics.
I could answer your question two ways–
1. It’s not “my” interpretation. My philosophy when reading the Bible is to let it do the interpretations for me. Let it comment on what it says and don’t bring to it what I believe about any given thing, but what does it say about a given thing.
Let me give an example. Personally, my wife does not wear a hat to church, and yet there are passages in the New Testament, specifically in Corinthians, where one could make a good argument that women should. I’ve debated and discussed it over at my site. Frankly, I’m not convinced that they shouldn’t, but it’s not culturally the norm right now. Which way should I treat this if I’m using the Bible as a commentary on itself? Which way do I interpret this if I bring my culture and my predisposed thoughts to it?
And that is exactly the problem that I stated early in the comments– we all tend to look at things in the Bible through our cultural glasses. We look at what we think of slavery and miss what the Bible said about it (how it was used, what it consisted of, etc.).
You bring your lifestyle to the Bible and the only way to make the two agree in any way is to denounce the teachings as archaic and unenlightened. You have to, because otherwise it condemns your lifestyle.
We also take “what we’ve always been taught” and apply that to what we read (and this is some of what I think Amanda has been trying to sort through). We are all trained in what to do, what to think, the context of things– and yet the greatest way to learn is to think through things themselves.
For the most part, I believe that a lot of what we’ve been brought up to do and believe is correct– we just don’t understand why. But there is also some things that we’ve been taught that is almost Pharisaical, in that we really do it just because of tradition.
So, my comment here is– what does the Bible say? If God is truly who He claims to be, it seems foolish to think that He would not create a work that would “keep up with the times” and if there truly is nothing new under the Sun, then why do we claim it is.
2. I also could answer that if what I say contradicts the Bible– then I’m wrong. And I’ll be fine to admit it. But that begs the question, how do you arbitrate what is right and wrong? Against what standard? Who would be the arbiter?
Christianity is a monotheistic, mutually exclusive religion. At its core is Jesus– a Man who claimed to be the only way to Heaven.
I believe that the Bible should be the arbiter– that it should decide what is right and wrong. If that’s the case, those that follow closest to it should have the correct view of it (or should change when presented something from the Scriptures).
Does that answer the question?
I’m reminded of something I learned in my 7 Habits of Highly Effective People class.
“We think we see the world as it is, when in fact we see it as we are.”
And it’s so very true.