when someone gives time and thought to what is offered there is not greater gift. thank you.
to further the conversation on ethics...
i do not believe that ethics can ever be imposed, set or enforced from the outside. this is counter to the authenticity of an ethic. we are in agreement. an ethic must be internal. it must be a personal compass. i wish for, however, a reality of cultural ethics --meaning that i wish the values we espouse were truly reflective of belief. as a culture, or as a collective, not even by consensus, we each would say we believe in the rights of the individual to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness -- i wish the logic of that position could be followed through, truly adhered to.
mentally i argue with politicized christianity... i am dismayed that a belief system which supposedly advances so many positions of love, tolerance, and freedom from human judgement, often falls short of the logic of these positions.
Examples:
how could a country, led as it was at the time by christians, ever go to war? much less make war based on flimsy provocations... do not cheney and bush present themselves as christians? isn't the logical christian position one of pacifism?
pro-life, anti-abortion -- wouldn't the most logical thing to do be to work to create opportunities for pregnant women... to make it easier to have a baby? wouldn't you be handing out condoms to the heathen in order to (a) keep them from conceiving unwanted children and (b) save them from diseases until you could save their souls? if not condoms, then in general wouldn't you do the work up front instead of after the fact - try to change people's thinking rather than legislate their lives?
in the case of gay marriage, wouldn't you leave it to god to sort things out? judge not least ye be judged.
and whatever happened to "my kingdom is not of this world"? wasn't there a reason early christians set themselves apart, lived outside of the worldly concerns and did not trouble themselves with the doings of non-christians except to preach? why would any christian ever involve themselves in politics?
i seek some logical follow through to the positions espoused. i'm looking for the love brother, looking for the love.
1 comment:
I too am constantly baffled by the difference in ethics between so many Christians and Christ himself. My gut tells me that the highest Republican Leaders fully realize the benefits of blurring their foul agendas with religion. Too many Christians seem like passive zombies (like children who were raised on "because I told you so" instead of parents promoting intelligence). I understand in most bible study groups, critical thinking equals crisis of faith. Maybe true ethic only crystallizes through critical intelligence. When I ask the "faithful" honest questions about their ethics, answers only exist on a shallow level, like "because the bible tells me so" could be swapped with any of the formulaic answers I may get. (As if Christ's ideas were merely dogma and not sound reasoning as even Gandhi recognized) the problem is that this mass zombie ethic , which may not be an ethic as we define it, functions as THE mass ethic (and the scary part is that those types are trained to follow without questions, no matter what. I can tell I'm heading into a doom rant so I'll pause and count to ten.
Post a Comment