Sinner or Saint? I can't decide!
I know everybody has at one point said to themselves, "I must be the only sane person in this world and everybody is crazy!" I think that's my problem though. I must the only crazy person among the sane! Why you ask? I wonder too.
Let's see. These last few weeks, some odd family news. I have a cousin named Kim. She is 18 but has the mindset of a 9 year old. I'm serious too. She just had a baby last week! The father, who I don't know, is apparently mentally retarded too. Inconcievable!
Just two weeks ago, I found out that another cousin of mine, Matt who is 18, got his girlfriend pregnant. This is his first girlfriend too! Some say she manipulated him to get her pregnant so he would marry her. They've only been dating since late last year!
Matt's sister, Christina, is also pregnant. This is not really a surprise for anybody. However, I kind of disappointed in everybody because no one likes or wants to get to know her husband. Why you ask? He's black! I have no problem with interracial marriages, but it seems my family is very predigious! But I doubt I can change them. Who doesn't have family members like that?
There has to something in the water here! Should I be worried? Maybe I should since a friend of mine (wink, wink.....you know who you are) said I'm sliding into being a redneck! The accent, where I live, even wearing baseball caps constitutes being a redneck.
Hmmmmm.....sinner or saint? Which is better?
posted by Christopher | 11:07 PM
7 Comments:
Outside of being embraced at the beginning and end by a statment about "sinner or saint" I'm not sure what the content has to do with the title. Are those who get pregnant "sinners" and you are a "saint" and you question whether you are correct? Are the mentally retarded or interracial relationships sin filled? What is your point? Is this yet another iteration of the nice guy recurring theme?
Leave it to you to bring the "nice guy" theme back! Ok....I had one or two bad moments of insecurity long ago.....but it's completely not the case this time. Hasn't been a long time really.
Sinner or saint.....two complete opposites along the scale of human morality. I didn't say being pregnant, mental retarded, or having interracial relationships are sin. We deal with the gray area between what we call good (saint) and evil (sinner). I use the terms as metaphors because we don't have true saints or sinners these days. The line is blurred with the two as is morality these days.
Now, if you noticed, I didn't say what my opinons were on those situations. If you want my opinions on the three statments that I made....just ask me! Ask me nicely. Say please.
A much more interesting topic than your opinions on pregnancy would be your opinion of the what is good and what is evil. On a very basic level what is evil? What if you had to do that evil to save your life, would it still be evil? What is good, and is it good because society tells us it is good, or because it ties back to a basic logical philosophical foundation.
I was just confused by your entry. I did not understand the focus so I was completely guessing about the meaning, much in the way one might try to deciphr R.E.M. lyrics. You had mentioned a feeling of being the only sane or insane one... that signifies a feeling of isolation. Are you questioning whether you are good or evil? Are you now saying that good and evil do not exist "these days"? You are an enigma Mr. Crisp.
I have to say honestly that is a tough question to answer....what is good and what is evil. I could say for example that good = Mother Teresa and evil = Adolf Hitler. However from a worldly perspective, do we know that these two people in their entire lives were truly good and evil. Mother Teresa had to do something bad like lie and cheat when she was a young girl. We all know what Adolf Hitler did, was inexcusable, and we say is complete evil. However, do we know if he did one good thing like help a cat out of a tree or help an old lady cross the street.
Again, the line is blurred on what is truly good and completely evil. We all have that capacity to do both. I don't question whether I'm either but I know that I have done some bad things that some may consider evil or do good for others. It's not a question of whether good or evil exists, but how we view what we do is good or evil.
From a religious standpoint, the only true face of good is Jesus/God and the face of true evil is the Devil. That comes from my own faith. But that is a totally different subject to get into.
So, does that help or not? How come you don't want to hear my opinions on pregnancy though? I feel so unappreciated by you Ryan!
Good points sir-crisp-a-lot.
So bringing it back to the foundation of good and evil, what is it that made Mother Teresa good and Adolf Hitler bad, and why did you choose those examples? What foundational principal did you use to evaluate them? A quick important aside - don't say "I just feel it" or "because of faith", more on that in a moment. But I contend that Adolf Hitler is a perfect example of disrespect for human life, and Mother Teresa is his life-preserving antithesis.
I tend to believe that the founding fathers of the United States, starting with the "unalienable rights" of life, liberty, property, and persuit of happiness, hit the nail on the head. Unalienable, not in the sense that we cannot have our life taken, our property stolen, and our freedom crushed - but unalienable in the sense that stomping upon these rights has no moral validity. To me, there is a basic foundation where black and white do exist. Murderers, swindlers, rapists, enslavers, and wealth reappropriating bureacrats (and their "conservative" counterparts moral pushing, censoring bureaucrats) are very clearly evil because they fundamentally reject life, liberty, property, or persuit of happiness.
So, back to the point about feeling and faith: You may say, feeling and faith are critically important. Feeling is just that, feeling. It does not have any respect for reason. If you choose to respect feeling as a fundamental principal to rule ones life, you must completely respect the right of others to do the same. Maybe you feel that killing is wrong, and I feel that killing is right - therefore you, respecting my feeling as a fundamental principle to operate one's life, would stand by as I kill a child - because after all, I was acting in accordance with my feelings. Of course this example is absurd - but it illustrates that LIFE trumps feelings. Similarly faith rejects reason. The dictionary defines it as "Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence". Imagine if we ran our courtrooms on a principle like this. Picture a defense attorney saying "sure, you can show all your fancy evidence and proof, but what does that really mean - my faith says that my client is innocent". To me, this shows the power and importance of reason.
Don't get me wrong, sometimes when people say "my faith" they are not talking about their reason-rejecting belief with disrespect to evidence. They are normally talking about their set of morals and principles by which they lead their life. That is completely different. But those who reject reason and believe that the answer to "why" is "just because" are the reason that many atrocities occur.
What made Mother Teresa good and Adolf Hitler bad? What they did for their fellow man reflects upon their character and therefore tells us why they are good or bad. Mother Teresa spent her life helping the poor. Adolf Hitler spent most of his life persecuting other’s, taking away life. The fundamental principle behind picking these two was their contribution to society, their character, and moral values.
What you said about the founding fathers of the United States is probably the best example of my entry. I agree with you about everything they set up, the rights we have, and the foundation that we serve today. Great men and great leaders that many look up to and admire. Saints? However there’s the irony of using that example. Even these great men and leaders had their share of hypocrisy. We had slave owners and drunks, murderers and adulterers. The Vice President Aaron Burr shot and killed Alexander Hamiliton in a dual. Some of the founding fathers had slaves. The irony of saying that “All men are created equal” when they still had men and women as slaves. Thomas Jefferson……a great man, great leader, inventor…..who I admire still, was also a slave owner who had kids with his slave Sally Hemmings. I know this for a fact but I still look past their faults and sins and still admire the man…..probably since I worked at his place for 4 years! So some may look at them as hero’s and saints, and others see them as sinners and hypocrites. Sinners or saints? At which end do we put them at when the line between them is blurred?
As to the subject of reason and faith, I think it’s far more complicated that you state. You are correct to say that faith does not respect reason, but neither does reason respect faith. I like to believe that I have reason and faith, even though they may conflict with each other. Take for example the subject of abortion. My faith states that abortion is immoral because it kills an unborn child and I abhor it. However reason dictates that in some situations that aboration may be necessary in such cases as rape, incest, and complications to the birth of the baby that may endanger the life of the child. So I would have a deliemma if abortion became illegal.
Now my case for faith over reason would be in our understanding of our basic emotions. Can you describe what love is? How about saddness? Can reason really explain these basic emotions to another? If I asked you if you loved your mom, dad, or Stacey, you would say yes I presume. But if I asked you to prove it, could you? Reason would dictate that you could, right? There is no true way to prove your love, correct? You can touch it but you know what it is, you can feel it. That is how faith is. You may disagree with me in my thinking but that is my understanding of what reason and faith is. How far are you willing to respect my opinions and thoughts even if we disagree on them? Therefore it is reason that you may disagree with me but I have faith that you will have respect for me.
A fundamental principle is used as a foundation. As an analogy, if I make a mixed drink with Coke, sour mix, gin, vodka, and rum - and you ask me if it has sugar I would say yes - because sugar is a foundation for Coke and sour mix. I'm asking what the foundation of your three judgement points is (contribution to society, character, and moral values). Although you can say that the answer to why is simply "just because", but as soon as we decide to accept that as an answer now any arbitrary argument and absurd comment can be made with the same validity. "Killing babies and eating them is good", "why", "just because". Character is defined as moral or ethical strength, which is a Coke style definition. Unless we agree on what is moral and what ethical strength means we cannot have a productive discussion. Substitution of feeling for reason is a dangerous place. I know this sounds silly, but if you respect feeling as a valid foudational principle, respect feeling as a valid foundational principle. To do this you should respect the actions of all people that are based on their feelings. Pedofiles, rapists, and murderers who have no remorse, who "feel" what they did was fine have the same foundation to their beliefs. They have different morals than you or I, but if base element is feeling, and you think morals are built off feeling, you must respect those actions. Personally, I think this is circular. Feelings are built on morals, morals are built from observation, observation is built from reason.
With respect to your last paragraph: No, I cannot detail the inner workings of love, hate, or fear. I just feel them. I can describe them, but I suppose what you mean is that my description would not truly define them. This does not mean that we can reject reason. I cannot explain how a television or microwave work, but that doesn't mean that "feeling" is what created them.
I wish I would have taken more philosophy courses when I was in college, because I believe it's critically important to figure out what the basis is for your beliefs. I'm just using logic to point out hypocrisy. By the way, I don't have particular respect for the hypocrisy of our founding fathers you point out. Really life, liberty, and property is from John Locke - but either way my respect for those rights is not rooted in my repect for the first person to write it down.
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