Awfully close to home:

[omorka]

FriendlyHostility (If you're reading this late, it's the one for the 14th of October, 2005.)

Comments

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

You don't want to hear what I think about someone who would do that. The blatant manipulation, the screaming emotional blackmail -- call it what you like, but that has NOTHING to do with love. It's about control.

[omorka.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I don't think I agree; I think that's a perfectly understandable response from someone who does genuinely love someone whom they think is going to Hell. Not reasonable, no, and not beneficial, and certainly manipulative, but - not unexpected, and not insincere, either.

Having said that, I think it's a pretty good best-case scenario for what would happen if my mother found out I was Pagan (or poly).

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

What made my blood boil was the following sequence:

"I don't think your father would let me see you any more if he found out."
"Well, you're not going to tell him, are you?"
*implied* "Of course I am... unless you repent and swear to sin no more RIGHT NOW. Make up your mind, what's more important, your selfhood or your mother?"

There are not words strong enough to describe the contempt I feel for someone who would pull that kind of shit on their own child.

[omorka.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I guess for me the last part is "What's more important, your selfhood or your immortal soul? If that's what it takes to keep you out of Hell, then yes, I will!" For her, remember, she's not merely saying all the stuff about being separated from her child for eternity - that's the truth as she knows it. Resorting to emotional blackmail to save someone's soul becomes an ends-justify-the-means issue.

The fact that the issue for her at that moment is losing him in life or losing him for eternity makes it rather poignant, actually. (Of course, within the context of the comic, (a) she's right, but (b) Hell really isn't all that bad, so now we're back to someplace not entirely unlike me any my mother.)

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

And now we're down to one of those "no common ground" spots, because this is a variation on the "wouldn't you drag a child out of the path of an oncoming car?" argument. The whole "immortal soul" thing is something you don't know -- you CAN'T POSSIBLY know, by the terms of her own faith it's supposed to be unknowable, and however many times you say you do know, it's just whistling past the graveyard -- and therefore I cannot accept it as a reason for doing something that you DO know is hurtful in real life. The oncoming car is something only she can see; the damage she's doing is right here, right now, physical and real. That's not an accepable tradeoff.

Oh, and a second thought

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

IIRC, one of the temptations of Jesus took the following format: the Devil took him to the top of a high mountain, so high that from it he could see over all the earth, and said, "All that you see will be yours if you will only fall down and worship me." I've always heard this taught as an exemplar that the ends DO NOT justify the means, that doing something you know is wrong is not made less wrong because you have good intentions in doing it. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that teaching to be applied -- and obeyed -- even when it's inconvenient, if one is genuinely a devout Christian.

[memeslayer.livejournal.com]

A thought:

Isn't the nature of heaven such that once you're there, you wouldn't *care* who else is there?

[omorka.livejournal.com]

Talking about "the nature of Heaven" is a good way to get your church to schism. :)

The descriptions of Heaven in the Bible itself are (a) very few and (b) all metaphorical. So honestly, the only real answer to that question is "no one knows." But historically, the Church has portrayed it not only as a place where you know who else is there, but where one of the big entertainments is watching the tortures of the damned. (Whether one cares or not is, perhaps, still up in the air.)

Re: Oh, and a second thought

[omorka.livejournal.com]

Wow, I've never heard that story taught that way at all! (Just a difference in the way the different churches interpret their text, I guess.) For us, it was about delayed gratification - everything already belonged to Christ, because he was God himself, if he only waited through his sojourn through this vale of tears.

Re: Oh, and a second thought

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

Interesting! I think I also remember hearing it taught that this was a temptation for Jesus to become a military leader, and physically "conquer the Earth for God" rather than leading by example and precept. But this was still in the context of "the ends don't justify the means". Perhaps not so surprising, during the Vietnam era...

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

where one of the big entertainments is watching the tortures of the damned

Isn't that awfully worldly -- and full of malice, which isn't supposed to happen in Heaven? ISTR being taught that Heaven was a place where worldly cares didn't exist any more. Maybe that's Catholic thought, though.

[omorka.livejournal.com]

*shrug* I'm not the one who came up with it - it was Tertullian, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Jonathan Edwards, among others: a humanist site with the relevant quotes (http://www.humanismbyjoe.com/some_violent_heartless_believing_hell.htm). Although they all obviously believe that a saved mother watching her damned son will be pefectly happy with the situation, knowing that is is meet, right, and salutary in their god's eyes.