the spiral of sin and salvation
"By imposing unrealistic, impossible-to-follow strictures on its followers, Christianity sets them up for failure. And when that failure inevitably happens, it produces guilt and shame among those followers, reinforcing the teaching that all human beings are incorrigible sinners and encouraging them to cling even harder to Christianity for salvation.I don't mean that these strictures are impossible to follow in the Christian sense, that human beings are hopelessly wicked creatures unable to refrain from committing evil acts. Rather, Christianity does violence to human nature by teaching people to suppress basic human instincts and motivations, calling them sins that must be battled. (Consider Matthew's teaching that a moment of sexual desire is equivalent to adultery (5:28), and that a moment of anger or frustration puts one in danger of eternal damnation (5:22)). These instincts are part of what it means to be human, and if we act responsibly and maturely, they are healthy and harmless.
If, on the other hand, we try to deny human nature and suppress these instincts altogether, pressure builds up until they explode. This is what happened to Haggard, just as it happened to many other famous fundamentalist hypocrites. But instead of taking the right lesson from this, Christianity assumes the answer is to try even harder next time. As part of this, many Christian groups attempt to take away people's access to the information they need to make responsible decisions - abstinence-only sex education being a prime example - making the likelihood of a poor outcome even greater." ... ...
posted by eline @ 1:04 AM
Comments: 0
