Last night, I caught the documentary “Jesus Camp,” on Netflix. It follows several kids, before and after a charismatic summer camp up in North Dakota. We all indoctrinate our children to one extent or another with our own beliefs. We just do. It’s an inevitable consequence of how kids learn. So, that aspect didn’t bother me as much as maybe was intended.
What disturbed me the most, however, was watching kids being taught that they were born broken, whether through Original Sin or other sinfulness, and Jesus was the only thing that could fix them. Teaching kids that they’re broken and unworthy (throw in a threat of eternal torment for good measure) unless they believe in a particular way is infuriating to me.
How vehemently I would have disagreed 15 years ago! I would have said that what you’re denying is absolutely foundational to religious anthropology. But to boil down the Orthodox Christian view on this narrow point, “Original Sin” condemned every member of the human race to die someday, not to bear guilt from birth and to go to hell someday as a result.
Caveat: It takes (1) a year of (2) perfect attentiveness to (3) a full cycle of services (such as is seen only in *some* monasteries) to learn the whole Orthodox faith, and that some of it remains ineffable even then. So this is not a full account of the matter.
It infuriates you because you are a liberal, and think that everyone is inherently good.
But human history shows that people are born broken, and in all probability will act in the interests of evil more likely than good.
It seems like those of us who are intelligent, educated, thoughtful, and informed can do good without being indoctrinated or threatened by a higher power. I don’t see the underclass having that ability.
Well, no. I don’t think that everyone is born inherently good. I think everyone is born inherently neutral. They are shaped toward good or evil. I think it’s abusive to teach children that, through no fault of their own, they are broken and, as such, unless they swear fealty to a particular God, they’re going to be tortured for all eternity.
Probably it angers me for personal reasons. I remember being a kid, told I had to say a particular phrase about finding Jesus to avoid going to hell. I was nervous that I hadn’t remembered it properly and was desperately trying to get my older sister to repeat it to me so that I didn’t inadvertently condemn myself to eternal torment because I missed a word or two. Now that I’m a Dad, the notion of someone putting my kid through that kind of fear gets my blood boiling.
It also reminds me of what I regard to be my first philosophical argument. I was maybe 6 or so and had been told that if I didn’t believe in Jesus, I’d go to hell. I spent some time worrying about whether I believed in Jesus. Then, it occurred to me that, if I didn’t believe in Jesus, the threat of hell wouldn’t bother me. The fact that I was worried meant I believed.
As I was listening to Julia Sweeney’s Letting Go of God several years ago, I heard her say the following. She put into a few short sentences why I had struggled to accept Christianity all during my upbringing. I could never accept that there was something wrong with me just for being born!
“Why would a God create people so imperfect, then blame them for their own imperfections, then send his son to be tortured and executed by those imperfect people, to make up for how imperfect people were and how imperfect they inevitably were going to be?”
Doug, the evidence is not neutral. It falls pretty clearly in the “broken” camp.
I just got finished reading “Nothing to Envy”, which is about the lives of ordinary North Koreans. Their stories about the mass starvation in the 1990’s once again puts me firmly in the camp that people are inherently evil.
I’m not defending goofy fundamentalist christian doctrine. But while you might not like their methods, whatever damage they might be doing are pretty mild compared to the upside that is likely to result (peaceful, helpful folks).
Buzzcut, have you seen the movie yet? Watch it first, then see if you still agree. I know the documentary maker had an agenda, and edited that way, but there is nothing “mild” about the damage we’re talking about here.
The brainwashing going on is exactly the same as the fundamentalist islamic schools do in Asia. The sort that tend to produce terrorists. If we had a documentary about these schools showing how they corrupt little kids to turn them into militant islamists, people would be up in arms, freaking out, and talking about on the Senate floor. But since its “christian”, everyone gives them a pass.
The problem is not Christianity. Jesus was not interested in religion. The problem is institutionalized religious elites who, finding a broad-based social movement in Judea that they were unable to stop, instead co-opted and corrupted it by creating a formal church and religion, turning the reality of Jesus’s divinity that comes from the fact that we know in our hearts that his teachings about how to live with one another are correct, into a myth of Jesus’s divinity based on the lie that he is the son of god.
Jesus was the savior (“khristos”) of man not because he is the son of god, but because he showed us the way to keep from destroying ourselves. The so-called Christian church has ignored this.
So who’s worse, the Tiger Mom or Jesus camp?
Well, Buzz, I gotta salute that “religion is to keep the underclass in line” business. It’s the sort of blunt honesty which would do our politics a world of good.
But I have to point out that if the overwhelming evidence of history proves people to be born evil, it also clearly shows that for real enormity you need an intelligent, educated elite at the controls. I admire the ability to keep opposing viewpoints in your head simultaneously, but I thought religion was supposed to work on theological certainty.
I don’t know that religion is solely to keep the underclass in line. But it certainly did, along with other societal social norms that religion was one part of.
As liberals have broken down those social norms (such as, I don’t know, how about no sex before marriage) isn’t it interesting that the overclass aren’t the ones suffering, because they still follow the old social norms. People at elite schools are much more likely to be virgins, for example, and highly educated people are much less likely to be divorced, or have children out of wedlock.
So, to the extent that religion was one enforcer of social norms… yeah, it kept the underclass in line.
Look, we know that you need 3 things to not be poor: graduate from high school, refrain from getting knocked up before marriage, and stay out of the criminal justice system. Jesus Camp is going to give you 2 out of 3. That ain’t bad.
Interesting, Buzzcut.
So, it was “liberals” who broke the “social norm” of no sex before marriage. Amazing. Did you learn that in Sunday School? Hate to break it to you, but people have been having sex before/during/after marriage long before there was such an animal as you think “liberals” are. That most definitely includes the “enforcers of social norms” directly connected with religions. As far as your “elite school” theory, I suppose you include Duke in that select group, for example? Or perhaps Brigham Young? Plenty of sex going on down there, I’ve heard.
Your last paragraph just cracks me up. Plenty of poor people who have followed all three of your checklist maxims. If that was all there was to being “not poor”, I’m thinking that there would be a huge shift in socio-economic status in this country.
I’m 57 years old, which means I’ve known for 47 years that people would say anything, and justify anything, in the name of religion. But how one gets “Blessed are the really wealthy, for they have made excellent lifestyle choices” from Christianity still gives me pause.
So let’s recap: religion is good because religion keeps people from doing bad things, as defined by religion. Unless, I guess, you want to count “lying about your virginity at an elite school”.
Sex and Wealth! It’s interesting that history teaches us nothing about Avarice, Covetousness, Theft, or Violence; it’s interesting that we don’t look back wistfully on a bygone time when we treated all men as brothers, gave our cloaks as well to those who asked for our coats, and happily rendered unto Caesar. Interesting, really, how easy it is for the wealthy elites to stay on God’s Good side just by changing His definitions to suit their needs. I guess that’s what they call Grace.
The likelihood of being in poverty if one has a high school education, waited until marriage to have children, and never been incarcerated, is on the order of 2 or 3%. It’s minuscule.
I think there’s a name for statistics like that.
You can believe what you want to believe, but don’t then claim to be the “reality based community”.
Deal!
I won’t claim to be the “reality based community” if you quit making up numbers and purporting that they are actual “statistics”.
That was a swell trade. I, for one, feel better already.
Who says that I’m making up numbers?
Just throwing numbers out without citation makes them unverifiable, for which they must then be considered “made up”, imaginary, or false.
I’m not going to do your googling for you, dude.
Allright, I got one thing for you. The best antipoverty program would be for the poor to be converted to Mormonism.
You don’t have to do my Googling for me (sounds rude enough as it is). But, you have to provide your own documentation to you own arguments, otherwise they are considered specious.
You can’t make unverified assertions, then expect everybody else to verify (or contradict) your opinions. That isn’t the way it works. If you think it is, then you should anticipate to be called out on it each and every time.
Oh, and your link? That is imaginary evidence. Plus, it has nothing to do with your offering that certain behaviors are only linked to poverty 2-3% of the time. Nothing.
You might have well said something like, “”I have in my hand a list of 205 Communists working in the State Department”, while waving a blank sheet of paper.
I believe the study I was referring to was “How Not to be Poor” from the Heritage Foundation. Robert Rector has a lot of interesting papers, also at that link.
But, of course, everything that has ever need to be said about the poor, their work habits, etc. was said in The Ultimate Household Income Regression.
I got this one, too.
The Hasidics perhaps also prove my point. They’re poor, but do not show the effects of poverty.
Or maybe you think it is the exact opposite of my point, because they’re living a traditional lifestyle, but are still poor. But they’re unusual in that they are poor without the downsides of being poor (no crime, no blight, etc.)
You know, Buzz, you also make an excellent argument for being gay. Or Swedish.
And an even better argument for not using statistics to “prove” a point just because you already accept it as axiomatic.
None of what you’ve said even begins to suggest causality. You haven’t controlled for large, faceless, transient urban populations vs. small, homogenized, restricted small town or rural ones. You haven’t controlled for age, a major factor in determining poverty. Nothing in there about inheritance of wealth, access to quality medical care, or discrimination. There is that little tacked-on bit about out-of-wedlock sex, stuck on there the way another man puts a Colts pennant on his car antenna.
And now it’s “religion may not always make you magically wealthy, but then it spares you the consequences of poverty”? So which is it? If “crime, blight, etc” are the results of poverty, maybe we should be taking some positive steps to ameliorate it, rather than accusing everyone under a certain income level of immorality.
I would never put a Colts pennant on a car antenna. Now THAT’S gay.
;)
The typical liberal response is to “taking some positive steps to ameliorate it”, without ever considering that the behaviors of the poor are what are leaving to that poverty, and those conditions. And if those conditions are ameliorated through behavioral change, even if it doesn’t get you out of poverty, doesn’t it make being poor acceptable?
What are the downsides of being poor? Why would one not want to be poor? Doesn’t it have a lot to do with certain conditions that, if that Times story is to be believed, do not effect the Hasidic poor?
I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires. – Susan B. Anthony