Questions About God, pt. 2

This is my response to a comment from Ollie, on my previous post, Questions about God. He raised some really thought-provoking questions, and I've of course responded, so I just thought that I'd put the response in a new post, so other people could join in if they wanted to. Ah, the beauty of the adversarial method in finding truth.

I think what should have been addressed, even before arguing why Jesus had to be human and divine to save us, is why humanity needs saving in the first place. I find this concept vicious, sadistic, and dehumanizing. What were we taught? What did we need saving from? We needed saving from original sin. What is original sin? The sin of "eating from the tree of knowledge" apparently committed by a fictional couple, Adam and Eve. If that logic holds, why should I need "saving" from something I did not even do myself? Why should I be made to pay for the "sins" of my ancestors(who probably weren't even real in the first place)?. This huge guilt complex in Christianity, passed down from generation to generation, vexes me to no end.

And of course, theologians, being smart people as well, have spotted this flaw and have defined "salvation" in several ways. One of those ways was what you alluded to... that man is flawed, and we need saving to reach our full potential. But the question is, why is belief in the existence of God a fundamental prerequisite to being "saved"?

"Humans need direction and guidance, because it is only they who have the capacity to carve their own paths."

You said it right... people need guidance, but why use God to fill this need? What guidance are we talking about here? Moral guidance? We've proven in Philo 104 that ethics and morality can exist independent of religion. A sense of purpose? I can argue my sense of purpose can be independent from believing in the divine... My purpose is to help out fellow man, nothing more, nothing less.

Your friend is right when she says "before I fully devote myself to something, I'd like to understand it". What we need to talk, though, is not Christian theology, but the fundamental belief in God's existence.

All right, let's talk about the fundamental belief in God's existence and break that down into two questions: 1) Why humanity needs saving, and 2) Why the belief in the existence of God, or even the belief in God himself, is a prerequisite to salvation.

So first, why humanity needs saving. I don't argue that it would indeed be an unfair concept if what we needed saving from is something that someone else (or a fictional someone else, depending on whether you think Creation is a myth, which I personally think it is) did. But I also feel that it is largely inaccurate to compartmentalize "original sin" into a specific event that is somehow divorced from what happens in this day and time, and more importantly, in the way that we live our lives. Because it's not. "Original sin" happens again and again. And although "original sin" may have never been in fact committed by Adam and Even, because they did not exist in human history, the point is that it has happened and will continue to happen in human history because we do it, and our very real ancestors have done it.

What this means, therefore, is that we need saving from original sin because it is in our lives. It is something "inherited," but at the same time, it is something lived. And I think that makes all the difference. Because this means that the sin I need saving from is not something that is imposed but is something that is produced from within. And because I am the sinner, I need to be saved.

It's certainly colorful to characterize the story of Adam and Eve as the origin of this guilt complex that has, as the statement goes, plagued humanity from time of its existence. But again, what is the source of this guilt complex? Is it the fact that I have inherited original sin? Or is the fact that I reproduce the original sin in my life? Because if it is the latter, then the existence of this "guilt complex" is not unjustified.

Second, why is the the belief in the existence of God a prerequisite to being "saved"? I think, here, we encounter murky ground, because in my original response to my friend's post, I didn't define what exactly we need saving from. I just threw around possible options as to what people may need saving from. In any case, a response can still be made.

It's definitely true that humans can find substitutes for God. That's a fact. Definitely, ethics and morality can exist independently of religion. Definitely, men can define their own purposes in life and live according to that. Christianity in fact recognizes that because men have free will, they are therefore free to shape their lives without God. Framed in that way, then, the question is not so about necessity but about adequacy. Are Christ-free ethics and morality and self-defined purposes sufficient to lead to salvation?

The question then turns on what religion has that ethics, morality, and self-defined purposes don't have. And the answer to that is communion with the Divine. There are a lot of ways to define this communion with the Divine. For example, I suppose the ultimate method of communing with the divine would be knowing and following the path of Christ, who is both fully human and fully divine. And unlike the human codes we talked about, He can show us the will of the Father, the Creator.

At this point, I just want to say that I understand some difficulties with this line of arguing, in that what we're talking is largely self-defining. These two statements illustrate that: 1) if I believe that being saved is equivalent to me being fair to other people, then of course mere ethics, morality, and self-defined purposes will suffice; and 2) if I believe that God is necessary to salvation, then of course mere ethics, morality, and self-defined purposes is not enough. Anyway, just said that so we're aware of some of the deficiencies in the framework we're working with here.

But anyway, what I will say is even without focusing on the full extent of what Christianity has to offer, there are some things that ethics, morality, and self-defined purposes (save those self-defined purposes that are aligned with and enlightened by Christianity) don't have. And I think that ethics and morality are situation-based. They focus on the here and now, and on behavioraly responses to particular situations. Sure, they have principles behind them, but they give no insight as to the more fundamental questions in life: who we are, why we are here, and what exactly we are aspiring for.

Christianity offers us that. And salvation requires that we address those questions, and live in accordance with our answers for them. At the end of the day, salvation is a reunion with God, just as we were one with him before He created us. There has to be a desire to be with God, a desire that has been implanted in each of us, and a desire that we have to choose to give fruit to. And the first step in getting there is having faith that the God who made me exists.