Thursday, February 21, 2008
On sin
I've had this conversation with Christians four times in the last two weeks. They claim that a sin of the mind, like thinking about robbing a bank, is the same as actually robbing the bank. It blows my mind that normal healthy adults would buy into this sick thinking. What does it matter what I think? If this were true, I mean if god were watching our thoughts, I would be damned at least three times for every 20 minutes I spend on the Los Angeles freeways. The people who are really damned (usually to prison), are the people who act on their impulses, like the nutjob who shoots at another car for some perceived driving slight, the druggie who robs a bank, or the monster who molests a child. Doing bad things makes one a bad person, not thinking about doing bad things. Am I wrong on this?
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11 comments:
No of course you aren't wrong, but that's Christian dogma.
Hmmm...going to a fundamental church myself, no one I know of agrees with such a sentiment. To think it is one thing, besides, all temptation starts with a thought. It is entertaining the thought that perhaps can be considered a sin, but nowhere in the Bible do I see it to be a sin just to think something.
The trick is not to think. That way you don't commit sin. Also, religion suddenly begins to makes sense.
Epic Win!
Some years ago I attended a Catholic girls' high school reunion. As well as having a great evening, I acquired this gem:
Jane - "Remember how the Nuns used to tell us thinking something was just as bad as doing it?".
Me - "Oh yes".
Jane - "Well, I always concluded that I might as well go and do it then!".
I doubt that's quite what Holy Mother Church had in mind ;-).
This particular form of dogma has been linked to obsessive-compulsive disorder. It is sometimes referred to as thought-action fusion and appears to be an important developmental factor in OCD.
Jersey - commandment number 20 (I think)
Neither shall you covet your neighbour’s wife. Neither shall you desire your neighbour’s house, or field, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour.
I guess that's why you always seem to have an ample supply child molesting clergy to blog about. They figure once they've thought about doing it they may as well go on to do it in real life, since the actual commission of the act is no more a sin than the thought. The difference to thinking people, of course, is that the thought of it leaves no actual children molested. I personally would be happier to have someone think about murdering me than actually to all the trouble of doing it.
This is an amazingly self-centered perspective. It seems to makes the sin absolutely all about the sinner, and in no way about the victim.
If that's true, then did Jesus sin because he was tempted by the devil? Did Jesus not even THINK about what Satan asked him to do? Did he picture Satan's offer in his head? Wouldn't he HAVE to have done that if the devil tempted him?
It's ridiculous. Just another way they f--k with your mind and make you feel worse about yourself. Remember, the worse you are, the more you "need" the church.
It's abusive.
jersey -
"...whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." - Matthew 5:28
I think that line of thinking inherits from this passage.
Also, darwin's dagger - that was an excellent and well-written argument. Keep up the good work!
Just another way for the Church to keep its mindless followers mindless.
I suppose there must be a difference between wanting to kill someone while driving in traffic versus someone who sits down to plot how such a murder might take place, maybe carries a gun just in case, plays out the scenario repeatedly in the mind but never commits the act. The latter while not doing the act probably would disturb us, nonetheless, for a reason.
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