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From: laura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Arguments from Silence: Golden or just Yellow?
Message-ID: <5398@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 2-Apr-85 12:41:27 EST
Article-I.D.: utzoo.5398
Posted: Tue Apr  2 12:41:27 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 2-Apr-85 12:41:27 EST
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Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
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Reply to Paul Anderson:

There are 2 things of crucial importance to remember here. The first is that
waiting for the non-Christians who call themselves Christian to get their
just deserts from God someday isn't likely to be of much use to people who
either do not believe in God, do not believe in a God who is going to give
people their just deserts, or believe that God wants them to be active in
stopping atrocities right here and now.

The other thing to recall is that historically a lot of people have drawn
conflicting ideas of ``what God wants from me'' from reading the same
source -- the Bible. For instance, you talk of ``obeying the 10 commandments''.
It is worth noting that Jews have a lot more (six hundred odd? I forget the
exact number) commandments that they think the God wants them to follow.
Other Christians have abandoned the 10 commandments and think that all
God really wants them to do is to ``love God with their whole heart and
love their neighbour as themselves''. Using this reasoning, they find
that, in general, it is not a good thing to covet their neighbour's goods,
but it is fine to covet them if you want to confiscate the wealth of
rich people in order to pay for thing for deserving poor people. For them,
loving their poor neighbours means taking thing away from their rich
neighbours.

The command ``to love'' is also frought with difficulties, as Soren Kierkegaard
repeatedly pointed out. If I meet a random stranger, and do not feel any
love for him, what then? I can, as a matter of course, treat him with
respect, or even treat him as if I loved him -- perhaps faking the emotion
well enough that he would not even know that I do not love him. But still
I might find that i do not love him. If love is a gift from God, is there
anything I can do but wait and see if I can receive this gift? if I am not
receiving it, does it mean that I am sinning in not loving my neighbours?

There are people who claim to love everyone, but whose love seems pretty
watered down to me -- compared to the love that I feel for the people I
say that I love. I actually do not think that it is possible to feel this
sort of profound love for everyone. But what sort of love dis Jesus mean?
Moreover, what sort of actions are compatible with love? Did Jesus love
the money changers he whipped out of the temple? as he was doing the
whipping? If I got out a whip and set into my neighbours I would find it
very hypocritical to call that love.

you see the difficulties? Right now, as far as i know, most people who
call themselves Christians condemn certain actions which other people
who called themselves Christians did as ``non-Christian''. No doubt those
people would or do disagree. How can any Christian be sure that he is not
practicing a false Christianity, despite having all the best intentions in
the world?

I have yet to find any acceptable solution. This question bothered Soren
Kierkegaard a lot, but, by and large, I have not found that it has bothered
other theologians and philosophers who have assumed that because they were
sincere that they were also correctly understanding what God wants of them.
This particular belief bothers me a great deal.

Laura Creighton
utzoo!laura