Injustice

It occured to me that when Christians talk about sin and forgiveness and atonement and so on, that we immediately get hammered for spreading fear and false guilt. But when Christians start talking about forgiveness and salvation and new life and spotless souls, we immediately get nailed for eliminating personal responsibility. We can’t […]

Depending

Y’know, there’s this thought that goes around that good cannot exist without evil. And in a way, I can see where that comes from. I’m unfamiliar with the details of the philosophies that teach it, but anyone who’s spent enough time thinking about things can work out that bad actions can have good […]

Rules

So here’s a question for y’all: why do we have rules?

This is an especially fun question for Christians, seeing as we go on quite eloquently about how our salvation makes us free, and how we are no longer Under The Law. If I were the kind of person who liked […]

Justice

We like justice. We like rules. We like to draw lines between things.

One place on TVTropes.org that I like to tool around in is the Morality section, especially those parts pertaining to heroes and villains. It’s got all kinds of classifications. Hero, antihero, villain, antivillain, chaotic good, lawful evil, true […]

Palm Sunday

You know, of all the Christian holidays, Palm Sunday strikes me as being a bit weird. I mean, yes, I know it’s the start of Holy Week, and the beginning of the end of Jesus’ pre-death ministry, but I don’t quite get why churches celebrate it with such enthusiasm. Yes, Jesus was riding […]

Have it your way

If you believe that God is Love, how can you believe that there is a hell?

Ah yes. Time for the essay in which I dig around through infuriating topics. Last week I posited that God is Love, and that he loves everyone, regardless of who they are and what they’ve […]

Sorrowful Joy

Was thinking yesterday – it being 9/11 – about how sadness is necessary. It’s the inverse of something I’ve heard an atheist say, that in an unfeeling, impersonal, chaotic universe, joy is a fleeting thing, so we have to cling to it. G. K. Chesterton wrote in Orthodoxy that he believed that something […]