Bringing the discussion forward:
Dear Mum/Dad: Sorry if my recent posts have been pretty religion-related. Though if you can read and think through them as well they should be pretty interesting to you too! It is a good chance for you to know what I am actually believing in.Let me copy out my characterisation of GCS's viewpoint regarding Christianity and he approved it:
CS's position further means that, if God shows himself and sticks out a hand to pull him to heaven, he will not reject Him; he just doesn't like the idea that, if people stand up against God or do not receive Him, they will be thrown to hell for eternal damnation, and he feels that even for people who do not accept God, by our definition of God, He should accept them as well because He is infinitely good. So, Jesus coming to the world and dying on the cross to redeem us from our sins and offering righteousness through faith (by Christian doctrines) is not enough to show the grace of God; by the Christian definition of God, He should be handing out free gifts to all. Then that's when He is worth being followed.
I would reply to this as follows. I will not use any analogy - Ferret's chicken rice analogy has been twisted and it is not twisted in a convincing way either. So as a lot of prominent philosophers'. Analogies are not necessary.
(And I am not going into why evil exists in the first place here.)
To reply to GCS's point regarding a humane and benevolent God should be handing out 'free gifts to all': God like that is not humane and benevolent; that would be one which encourages anarchy. If God is indeed humane and benevolent, He would be able to differentiate what is good and what is evil, goodness will be rewarded and evilness punished. There will not be fairness in the world if everyone is rewarded even if they reject God outright - and by nature of human beings non-distinction encourages the evil to be more evil and the good to become evil.
I do not think that we can see God's grace as being completely 'free'. We did not earn it, obviously in that God sent Jesus to die for us without even asking for any pre-requisite. But that doesn't mean that it doesn't come with a price. To accept God's grace there is a certain attitude that we have to undertake. Throughout the Gospels the theme regarding 'following Jesus means sacrificing everything else that you have for the Truth' repeats itself numerous times. We might suffer, we might be persecuted, we have to dig open our hearts and lay all our deeds and thoughts open and repent, we might be put through all kinds of temptation, but all those are okay because we know it is the Truth that we are seeking. We are not doing this to seek favour in the Lord, but it is just what we are supposed to do.
It is the act of accepting that makes the difference.
Honestly I don't think the Pharisees that openly persecuted the Church would be allowed entry to heaven if they didn't repent and cease doing what they were doing. Saul did that when he was called and he became the hero St. Paul; I have no idea about the rest. He talked about himself in Philippians 3.
Thus, Christians are always warned against self-righteousness. Simply put - thinking that you can be good enough. A lot of people's objection to the whole hell idea is that, doesn't good people who are 'righteous' their whole lives would have to go to hell as well just because they are not followers of Christ? In Christian doctrines, we do not believe that anyone is good enough, at least in the eyes of God. By definition, God is infinitely good, and we are finite - this is one way of seeing it. Another way of seeing it is, we don't even know ourselves well enough sometimes. Who is to tell that righteous people living in this world are all perfect - how do you know the philanthropist who donates 1 million to YLL SOM every month does not secretly have an affair, does not like to surf porn, etc.? If you are that philanthropist, and you know that you don't have an affair and do not like porn, but probably you won't know that 50 years ago when you made your first million you forced three other businesses to go out of business and 30 families to lose their main source of income and suffered, and apparently you were so engrossed in your success then that you didn't do anything about it, and then you forgot about it.
This is why we are warned against self-righteousness. You think that you are good enough, but in fact there still are some problems within yourself that you probably don't even know. Comments made by others are even more suspicious: time and again people whom we all agree to be upright in society has been charged with all kinds of crimes, including prominent religious figures, whether Christian or not.
To that God has a very high standard. He needs all of us who enter heaven to be almost like Him (makes sense right?). He knows none of us have the ability to do that by ourselves, so Jesus came and was crucified to fill up the gap 2000 years ago to pave the path towards judgment day. God knows each and everyone of our problems, we might have forgotten about them, but He still sees them. Being self-righteous means that you will be blinded in some way. Heaven by its nature should be infinitely good too; thus, no one can achieve God's standard by himself without His help (many ways to articulate this concept), and if you do not do something to accept His (free) grace, you cannot achieve God's standard, you are not eligible for heaven, and the only other option is Hell and nothing in between at the end of time.
Thus, when we ask the question 'Doesn't good people who are righteous their whole lives would have to go to hell as well just because they are not followers of Christ?' we are judging other people and God using human standards. Heaven is where God lives, God does not judge with our standards. He judges us using His. Our standards are nowhere near His, and He is always helping and willing to help us achieve His.
Buddhists believe that one can achieve self-enlightenment; this is a concept fundamentally different from Christianity. Humanists believe that humans can settle everything without the need of a God, this is also something fundamentally different (more similar to Buddhist thought though). If you are a humanist, your main objection should not be the 'compartmentalisation of religion'; because Christians are not compartmentalising our faith, it is just that we simply do not believe that humans by ourselves are good enough to achieve the standard of God. Instead, your objection should be this fact that I have just stated.
I mentioned when I spoke in large group that I thought about a lot of things when I was in my freshmen year; one of the conclusions that I came to was this. I would rather be skeptical about human ability and human institutions than to be skeptical about God. I am extremely thankful to God that He made me realise this, and CS - this is the fundamental difference between us.
No fairy tale involved.
Labels: Philosophy and Religion
