Hi Billy, Congratulations on getting published. I pray this is the start of something!
I’m not sure how this happened, but I have a strong memory of an email saying you really wanted to talk about Justice, not Forgiveness. However, that email seems to have disappeared, which makes me wonder if I imagined it. At any rate, if you did send that email then I think you really hit the nail on the head. To my mind, how we deal with justice — and injustice — is at the core of religion, society, politics, family, and psychology. If we are going to reinvent Christianity (and reform politics), we need to promote better ways to think and talk about justice. Justice in the broad sense is a basic human need; perhaps even the most basic, in that we are quite wiling to trade pleasure, resources, and even our lives to pursue it. At personal level, Justice (and its hand-maiden, Anger) is essential for maintaining our sense of self in relation to other people. Does that definition work for you? >From this perspective, the theological “problem of evil” is really the >psychological and political problem of injustice elevated to a higher level. I want to be me. I want to flourish. I want to be treated fairly. I want my self-hood to NOT be violated. I want appropriate status and respect. Those are legitimate, core human desires. Anger is the entirely appropriate and necessary reaction when those desires are frustrated. Still with me? The challenge is that all human systems (from the smallest family to the largest nation) are never perfectly just — and usually appallingly unjust. So how did we ever survive? And more importantly, how did we ever manage to build and maintain civilization? To a certain extent, I think the philosophers are right when they say that we became civilized when we turned anger into aggression, and sublimated aggression into art. However, that is to colossally understate the role of religion, in the broad sense: whether the ancestor worship of hunter gatherers, the great world religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity, or the secular horror of Fascism and Communism. Religion is often defined as a shared sense of meaning, but (at least in pre-secular times) I think it is better understood as a story about our identity. In particular, religion (among other things) tells a story about the relation of the individual self to the community (communal self), and provides a framework for managing unresolved aggression via institutional authority and cathartic rituals. >From what I can tell, the usual way societies did this was through promoting >aggression outward (towards external enemies) or downward (through >scapegoating <https://2transform.us/2018/10/14/scapegoat-a-love-song/> . That >was the relief valve that allowed people to make sense of (or at least >sublimate) the many small and large injuries to selfhood that occur in any >network of human relationships. And societies that failed to do this fast >enough ending up destroying themselves through internal squabbling or >revolution. Does that match your understanding? It covers what I know of semitic and Indo-European city states, but I’m not sure how it applies to Inuit (eskimo) and polynesian cultures that were more dispersed. >From this perspective, the Problem of Evil is really an extremely profound and >personal one: I want to be me, and maintain my sense of self Other people periodically violate that sense of self The human systems I am embedded in do an inadequate job of redressing those wrongs What else is out there? Is it any better? Does that make sense? Does that capture your question? And have you found an answer that works for you? Love, Ernie -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
