to lay down one's life
May. 7th, 2003 02:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
serenissimaFrom Merriam-Webster OnLine:
I've been thinking about this for a couple of days. This concept is deeply rooted in most cultures worldwide. People like things to be fair. Good deserves good in return and, more to my point, bad deserves bad.
People are sometimes more concerned with the "deserves bad" part. Debts must be paid; evil deeds must be punished. I remember seeing a TV program about a tribe of Indians in South America, whose children were taught that if anyone hits them, they must strike the person back an equal number of times. "Payback" is a major component of the very long-lasting wars around the world. One of the main reasons to offer sacrifices to the gods is to atone for sins.
And that last is a different twist on retribution: the idea that you can shift the burden of your troubles to some other object. See Leviticus chapter 4, as well as Chapter 16:21-22: "...and Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins; and he shall put them upon the head of the goat, and send him away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who is in readiness. The goat shall bear all their iniquities upon him to a solitary land; and he shall let the goat go in the wilderness." (Revised Standard Verson) That idea is at the heart of Christianity.
When I was very young, I wondered: if God can do anything, why couldn't he have just forgiven everybody without someone having to die? I haven't really found an answer. In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, C. S. Lewis presented the death of one person as part of a lawful bargain, and the substitution of someone else's death as acceptable according to a provision of the law. And this explanation satisfied me for a little while: God made his law to be just, the law demands retribution for sin, and he has to follow his own law.
But why? You might say that for the creator of a law to break it would invalidate the law. But can't an omnipotent being find a way around that, if he's truly all-powerful?
retribution
1 : RECOMPENSE, REWARD
2 : the dispensing or receiving of reward or punishment especially in the hereafter
3 : something given or exacted in recompense; especially : PUNISHMENT
I've been thinking about this for a couple of days. This concept is deeply rooted in most cultures worldwide. People like things to be fair. Good deserves good in return and, more to my point, bad deserves bad.
People are sometimes more concerned with the "deserves bad" part. Debts must be paid; evil deeds must be punished. I remember seeing a TV program about a tribe of Indians in South America, whose children were taught that if anyone hits them, they must strike the person back an equal number of times. "Payback" is a major component of the very long-lasting wars around the world. One of the main reasons to offer sacrifices to the gods is to atone for sins.
And that last is a different twist on retribution: the idea that you can shift the burden of your troubles to some other object. See Leviticus chapter 4, as well as Chapter 16:21-22: "...and Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins; and he shall put them upon the head of the goat, and send him away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who is in readiness. The goat shall bear all their iniquities upon him to a solitary land; and he shall let the goat go in the wilderness." (Revised Standard Verson) That idea is at the heart of Christianity.
When I was very young, I wondered: if God can do anything, why couldn't he have just forgiven everybody without someone having to die? I haven't really found an answer. In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, C. S. Lewis presented the death of one person as part of a lawful bargain, and the substitution of someone else's death as acceptable according to a provision of the law. And this explanation satisfied me for a little while: God made his law to be just, the law demands retribution for sin, and he has to follow his own law.
But why? You might say that for the creator of a law to break it would invalidate the law. But can't an omnipotent being find a way around that, if he's truly all-powerful?
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(no subject)
Date: 2003-05-07 02:22 pm (UTC)1.) Yes, such a creator could. So even if one assumes that there is a God and it gives two shits about us, the various religions have got it all fucked up and twisted around and ass backwards.
2.) It says right in the text how things worked out. You could speculate about why It did what It did, but the fact remains that It has done it.
There aren't any definitive answers. You can't deductively prove much of anything - not even really a consistant metaphysic or ethic - taking any given religious text as a premise.