And on Earth peace to people of good will

[AlanFromWichita]

Don’t worry Alan, I’m not talking about you. Having half a brain is a simple observation, I would love to be proven wrong.

I’m not so worried about it being against me personally except I thought maybe it was; I’m not even interested in defending OneSheep. I’m actually interested in you with what I write – lurkers and other posters are just icing on the cake.

My mother had a stroke a few weeks ago which damaged a small portion in a “watershed area” (not next to a major blood vessel) of the left brain. It affects her ability to control her right arm and to communicate. Overnight she went from confident, positive, social woman to a near-vegetable. Incontinent for the first few weeks to boot. To say someone has less than half a brain, to me, is quite profound and the fact that the person even knows there is such a thing as a computer and is conscious enough to type on it is evidence in itself that you are quite likely wrong. Of course I can’t prove it because I have NEI.

How does that make me feel? It didn’t really make me feel one way or another until you just replied you’d like to be proven wrong. If I were more sensitive to insult or (mental) injury like I used to be, I might feel like a bit like I was in the Special Olympics and you were comparing a slow performer in a race, to a paraplegic. Like I said, I don’t feel this way – but we are talking absolutes here and that’s my absolute thoughts on the matter.

Am I condemning? Ofcourse I am, just as the scriptures command me. “Be on your guard! If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him”.

I’ve seen this and it makes me curious. How do you square that with the commands of St. Paul and Jesus not to judge? Are we talking to the same audience under the same situations, or what?

… when you claimed that relativism is true.

Oh uh, better watch out using “relativism” as a generic term, or we may end up with another thread like this one. Like I say I’ve skipped some of your discussions with OneSheep so I’ll leave that at that.

Alleluia! Why would you stand and argue with me all this time when that’s exactly what I’ve been saying? Have you read my posts at all? Have you misunderstood me? Why didn’t you ask me to explain like I prompted?

This is ridiculous.

Just from jumping in right here I’m seeing mixed messages. And note that I am talking about you personally and the way you post, not necessarily your argument itself. (I hope you see this as an observation that you at least kind of asked for, not an attack.) But still the point I want to make is exactly on topic on the sin-and-forgiveness front. I’m am writing this for you, not against you.

Does it not appear that on the one hand you are rejoicing that someone agrees with you, but scorning their not agreeing with you sooner, by mixing in complaints about the argument culminating in “This is ridiculous?” Whether agreement has now been reached or not, this is precisely along the lines of an unforgiveness issue. If the other poster agrees now, then what is the purpose of “This is ridiculous?” To rub it in his face like a dog with its mess? To me, if someone sees my point after lengthy discussion there should be pure rejoicing – the only reason to come back would be as a snipe to satisfy some baggage attached to the ego. Like the father didn’t lecture the prodigal son; he simply rejoiced at the son’s return – the older brother would have taken a different approach. I say this as a fellow “sinner” in that regard; you may rest assured I am extremely capable and experienced at writing such snipes, but I tried giving them up for Lent last year. If course I was totally successful… Now if you are accusing someone of intentionally being obstinate or stubborn, then you’re on your own. But you now have my :twocents: on sin and forgiveness.

Here is my challenge to you. For the remainder of the thread, see if you can distill out any unfriendly or judgmental remarks even without giving up on the logic of your argument. I mean even one word. If a “negative” remark isn’t needed to explain or illustrate, let it go.

Alan

 

[Darran]

I’m not so worried about it being against me personally except I thought maybe it was; I’m not even interested in defending OneSheep. I’m actually interested in you with what I write – lurkers and other posters are just icing on the cake.

My mother had a stroke a few weeks ago which damaged a small portion in a “watershed area” (not next to a major blood vessel) of the left brain. It affects her ability to control her right arm and to communicate. Overnight she went from confident, positive, social woman to a near-vegetable. Incontinent for the first few weeks to boot. To say someone has less than half a brain, to me, is quite profound and the fact that the person even knows there is such a thing as a computer and is conscious enough to type on it is evidence in itself that you are quite likely wrong. Of course I can’t prove it because I have NEI.

How does that make me feel? It didn’t really make me feel one way or another until you just replied you’d like to be proven wrong. If I were more sensitive to insult or (mental) injury like I used to be, I might feel like a bit like I was in the Special Olympics and you were comparing a slow performer in a race, to a paraplegic. Like I said, I don’t feel this way – but we are talking absolutes here and that’s my absolute thoughts on the matter

I’m sorry to hear that Alan, but evidently that isn’t what I was intending.

I’ve seen this and it makes me curious. How do you square that with the commands of St. Paul and Jesus not to judge? Are we talking to the same audience under the same situations, or what?

It isn’t a matter of judging (judging by definition is passing a judgement on someones soul). Just because I can add up a logic like numbers and point out the error doesn’t mean that I’m judging, you have to read fully what is being discussed here.

Just from jumping in right here I’m seeing mixed messages. And note that I am talking about you personally and the way you post, not necessarily your argument itself. (I hope you see this as an observation that you at least kind of asked for, not an attack.) But still the point I want to make is exactly on topic on the sin-and-forgiveness front. I’m am writing this for you, not against you.

Does it not appear that on the one hand you are rejoicing that someone agrees with you, but scorning their not agreeing with you sooner, by mixing in complaints about the argument culminating in “This is ridiculous?” Whether agreement has now been reached or not, this is precisely along the lines of an unforgiveness issue. If the other poster agrees now, then what is the purpose of “This is ridiculous?” To rub it in his face like a dog with its mess? To me, if someone sees my point after lengthy discussion there should be pure rejoicing – the only reason to come back would be as a snipe to satisfy some baggage attached to the ego. Like the father didn’t lecture the prodigal son; he simply rejoiced at the son’s return – the older brother would have taken a different approach. I say this as a fellow “sinner” in that regard; you may rest assured I am extremely capable and experienced at writing such snipes, but I tried giving them up for Lent last year. If course I was totally successful… Now if you are accusing someone of intentionally being obstinate or stubborn, then you’re on your own. But you now have my :twocents: on sin and forgiveness.

Alan, not to be blunt, but nothing I have said was directed at you. We are talking about Onesheep’s theory, you can’t chase a negative and come down on me when you don’t know exactly what we are talking about or what was said. This is what is ridiculous in this thread, we have what is either heresy or very poor communication/attention/reading skills on one end, and another dissecting what I say without understanding what the context is on the other.

I don’t think anything else needs to be said on this topic, I will either be repeating myself or ignored, depending on the uncertain stance of the OP. Make certain what you’re saying Onesheep. Understand your own argument. If you think that relativism applies to sin, then take it to the philosophy section. If you are curious as to the theological elements of forgiveness, take it to the theology section. Holding to your own opinion without trying to understand it is always pointless. If you are infact communicating something other than what you seem to, then I’m sorry, but we have no way of telling that from what you write.

Darran out, pax vobiscum.

 

[AlanFromWichita]

I’m sorry to hear that Alan, but evidently that isn’t what I was intending.

Thank you for you concern. There is a lot to the story but the Lord is getting us through it.

I know it wasn’t what you meant, but not only is it what you wrote, when called on it you actually defended it as if it were infallible by challenging it to be disproved. Then you are chiding others for not being absolutists. Do you not find that rather ironic?

It isn’t a matter of judging …

… Just because I can add up a logic like numbers and point out the error doesn’t mean that I’m judging, …

Now I think we’re getting somewhere. Adding up numbers and pointing out the error is exactly what I’m doing on you “half brain” remark, not judging. Honestly, I thought you’d like to know. These things jump out at my like misspelled sore thumbs with egg on their faces – you can check a mirror and/or wipe the egg off, or you can defend against the observation; from this vantage point you seem to have chosen the latter. Or another way to put it is, I’m telling you, brother, that you are sinned and am rebuking you, as commanded. I don’t like that terminology because it implies I have judged, but you are saying this is how we are all commanded to be.

If someone disrupts Mass, remove them. If they steal from the collection plate, remove them and/or take action to recover or prosecute. None of this means the person has sinned. I don’t know how Jesus and St. Paul say not to judge in one place but to act upon others’ sins in another. That might be an interesting academic discussion.

… you have to read fully what is being discussed here.

Not for what I’m talking about. Let me show you what your conversation looks like to me and tell me if you can pick out the “problematic” parts of this below without understanding any electrical engineering – and yes, this is exactly what it looks like to me because conversational dynamics are more fascinating to me than most other topics:

When you apply a LaPlace transform to an “ideal” impulse function, you get a spectrum of constant amplitude over all frequencies. But, if you apply an “actual” impulse function of “small enough” duration (based on system bandwidth), you can measure the output of the system in time, and if you apply LaPlace to that output, the result will be the actual transfer function of the system. How many times and ways can I say this before you start paying attention? Now you can simply multiply the transfer function in the s-domain by the LaPlace transform of any time-based (name removed by moderator)ut signal, and you will get the spectrum of the response. This is a tremendous simplification compared to doing the same analysis in time domain, as only a blithering idiot would do, because there we would have to use convolution integrals rather than algebra. A trained monkey could figure this out so I don’t know why I’m even bothering to say it here. This is why we find LaPlace, and its periodic counterpart Fourier transform, so useful. Moreover, we can find the algebraic inverse function for the system, and actually design a system that can actually take the distorted output and produce the corrected original signal from it. I know you think I’m stupid; of course this requires the assumption that the system is operating within its linear region.

Alan, not to be blunt, but nothing I have said was directed at you.

To be blunt, I know. I see problems with almost every poster, including myself, and I’m on a mission here as the self-appointment “poster clinic technician.” I’m not talking about rules, dogma, or logic, or even formal forum rules; I’m talking about courtesy, kindness, and sincerity. If more of us can get those down, the rest of the discussions would become a piece of cake. You just happened to get “lucky” because I have seen other posts by OneSheep that I really liked and I don’t see OneSheep as the type of person who would do these things so I noticed these things first and that they were being repeated. Maybe OneSheep is doing the same thing, but I noticed you first, and out of compassion and desire to do spiritual acts of mercy, I called it to your attention.

We are talking about Onesheep’s theory, you can’t chase a negative and come down on me when you don’t know exactly what we are talking about or what was said.

You are not only talking about theory, you are mixing them with insults like my signals-and-systems blather above. Even a spectator can recognize that name calling and shoving are unsportsmanlike even without knowing the rules or the score of the game.

When you say “come down,” it makes me sound negative. We are literally forum friends. Wouldn’t you want a friend to tell you if your “slip” were showing?

This is what is ridiculous in this thread, we have what is either heresy or very poor communication/attention/reading skills on one end, and another dissecting what I say without understanding what the context is on the other.

I assume you are talking about yourself with poor communication skills, and me with dissecting? But dissecting without context? No. I stated my context very clearly.

Holding to your own opinion without trying to understand it is always pointless. If you are infact communicating something other than what you seem to, then I’m sorry, but we have no way of telling that from what you write.

Ditto, and back atcha.

Darran out, pax vobiscum.

Please don’t go away at this point. I like you and I want to see you either understand what I’m saying or just plain tell me you don’t care how your posts come across.

Alan

 

[OneSheep]

Don’t worry Alan, I’m not talking about you. Having half a brain is a simple observation, I would love to be proven wrong.

You are saying Onesheep, that even sin is goodwilled and if it isn’t, that it is subjective. For the love of God, if 4 pages wasn’t enough for you to redefine the statement that you were trying to make I don’t know what is. If I misunderstand what you are saying for this long then it isn’t exactly my fault for not being told what it is you are actually saying, I have asked you to explain your particular stance a number of times.

Understanding what I am saying is a process. It doesn’t have to do with the amount of time, or the amount of writing. Understanding is a process of prayer and reflection. When I was in the process of forgiving all others, myself, and all people in history, I focused on these things:

Do not judge

Remove the post from your own eye before removing the twig from your brother’s.

Forgive them, for they know not what they do.

It is not to condemn or condone, but understand. ( from a priest I once talked to)

One of our miscommunications come from the whole rebuke/condemn definition. I can rebuke without condemning. By condemnation I mean "to consider someone “evil” or “bad” or “worthless”, some negative association, which I sense is the case in your attitude toward me at the moment.

Your accusing me of having half a brain could be considered “hurtful”. If nothing else, it was provocative, and seemed judgmental. But your “good will” to me (as you remember, I equate with “good intent”) is still present. You did not intend to hurt, but correct what you saw as an evil of sorts.

Am I condemning? Ofcourse I am, just as the scriptures command me. “Be on your guard! If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him”. You are teaching if not an absolute, then a boarderline heresy. Stop trying to explain it and simply weigh it and understand. I fail to see how you’re so sure that I have sinned when you claimed that relativism is true.

Our Gospel is quite clear about not judging. There is a big difference between rebuking, and condemning people. Consider yourself rebuked. Do not condemn people. Condemnation blocks empathy, condemnation blinds us to the humanity of others. All racism is group condemnation. Don’t rationalize it, brother, condemnation blinds you to the presence of Christ in others.

That said, I readily admit I am not immune to condemnation. I do it plenty, it is a part of our nature. I have certainly tried to preempt it, to make it not happen, but it happens too fast, it is a matter of “pushing my buttons” so to speak. What I find much more practical is to 1. Realize when I have condemned. 2. Forgive. It is for this very reason that I think Jesus put a lot more emphasis on forgiving than he did discouraging judgment. It is hard, if not impossible, to avoid judging others. Forgiveness, though, is a matter of Will. It is always doable. Please, forgive me for however I have violated your rulebook.

Relativism as the idea that all moral codes are acceptable and should be tolerated is ridiculous. Examples: Abortion for convenience. Environmental destruction that does permanent damage or endangers health.
Relativism as a way of describing that everyone has their own rulebook is a matter of observation. We all have our own rulebooks. Our rulebooks guide our behavior.

Supposedly John the Baptist is the biggest sinner in the world then, according to the logic you’ve been using, yet he was the greatest prophet of the Old Testament. Presummably Jesus sinned in rebuking people! You’re saying now that you acknowledge sin as sin and that ignorance reduces culpability. Alleluia! Why would you stand and argue with me all this time when that’s exactly what I’ve been saying? Have you read my posts at all? Have you misunderstood me? Why didn’t you ask me to explain like I prompted?

This is ridiculous.

I think I’ve lined out the difference between rebuking people’s actions and condemning people. Read my posts. I have never contested the Church’s definition of sin. What I am saying is that all hurtful actions are a result of good will (i.e. “I want the cake”) filtered through ignorance (i.e. the distress I will cause is insignificant because…). Because of this, the God I know already forgives before the action even occurs. I am also saying God forgives in the absence of repentance because he knows our ignorance and our motivation. Jesus clearly saw that the crowd did not know what they were doing, He forgave in the absence of repentance. I haven’t been arguing with you, I have been trying to prove my point by analyzing a scenario. What I am saying is that people do not knowingly choose hell or knowingly choose to hurt those they value, and that the value we see in people is compromised when we condemn them, just as the value the crowd saw in Jesus was compromised as they condemned Him. I am also saying that we too, can forgive unconditionally. It takes prayer, understanding, and effort to control the situation at hand, but it is doable.

What has become obvious to me, and correct me if I am wrong, is that fear of punishment is what you use to limit your own behavior. This is an essential stage in moral development, and should be your guide until empathy and love for others becomes the guiding factor. I appreciate your incorporation of the moral code. In the mean time, forgive me, forgive all people you condemn, “relativists”, or whoever, including yourself. Pray about it. And at this point, do not feel obligated to respond.

 

[AlanFromWichita]

This is an essential stage in moral development, and should be your guide until empathy and love for others becomes the guiding factor. I appreciate your incorporation of the moral code. In the mean time, forgive me, forgive all people you condemn, “relativists”, or whoever, including yourself.

This is a critical piece I think we haven’t been seeing here. Franciscan SD Fr. Richard Rohr talks about this as a critical first step in formation of conscience. But then one transitions in the “second half of life.” In his 2/12/2012 email, he wrote this about people who have made the transition:

The Eight Beatitudes speak to you much more than the Ten Commandments as you grow older. Life is much more spacious now. The boundaries of the container have been enlarged. You are like an expandable suitcase, and you became so almost without your noticing. Now you are just here, and here holds more than enough.

This is like what St. Paul is talking about in Rom 8.

Rom 8:
Hence, now there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has freed you from the law of sin and death. For what the law, weakened by the flesh, was powerless to do, this God has done: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for the sake of sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the righteous decree of the law might be fulfilled in us, who live not according to the flesh but according to the spirit.

For those who live according to the flesh are concerned with the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the spirit with the things of the spirit. The concern of the flesh is death, but the concern of the spirit is life and peace. For the concern of the flesh is hostility toward God; it does not submit to the law of God, nor can it; and ***those who are in the flesh cannot please God. ***

But you are not in the flesh; on the contrary, you are in the spirit, if only the Spirit of God dwells in you. Whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is alive because of righteousness. If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also, through his Spirit that dwells in you. Consequently, brothers, we are not debtors to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

Hope this helps. Now I won’t write anything more about this … unless provoked.

Alan

 

[OneSheep]

Rom 8:
Hence, now there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has freed you from the law of sin and death. For what the law, weakened by the flesh, was powerless to do, this God has done: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for the sake of sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the righteous decree of the law might be fulfilled in us, who live not according to the flesh but according to the spirit.

For those who live according to the flesh are concerned with the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the spirit with the things of the spirit. The concern of the flesh is death, but the concern of the spirit is life and peace. For the concern of the flesh is hostility toward God; it does not submit to the law of God, nor can it; and ***those who are in the flesh cannot please God. ***

But you are not in the flesh; on the contrary, you are in the spirit, if only the Spirit of God dwells in you. Whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is alive because of righteousness. If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also, through his Spirit that dwells in you. Consequently, brothers, we are not debtors to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

Hope this helps. Now I won’t write anything more about this … unless provoked.

Alan

A priest once told us in a bible study that to understand writings by the Jews in new testament times, you need to understand the mentality of the times. If you felt guilty, then God was condemning you. If you did not, then God was not.

But that is the way it works today too. We project how God feels about us. When we break our own rulebook, we condemn ourselves, we dehumanize ourselves, we consider ourselves bad or worthless, and it makes sense that God does too. But God doesn’t. He may rebuke us, but still loves us and sees our beauty.

The most amazing thing of all is that the whole mechanism of what I like to call the “punishment drive” is also a “concern of the flesh”. The desire to punish is ultimately no less a spiritual drag than gluttony, for example, if it is not in control. Look at all the people who struggle with scrupulosity! Look at the people who are so self-condemning that they commit suicide! Look at all the people whose life ambition is to beat down the liberals, or beat down the conservatives, or beat down the “relativists”. This, too, is a “sin of the flesh”, it closes our mind to the humanity of whoever is in the “out-group”. I know plenty of people who are caught up in this way, and I pray for them; I’ve been there too. To me, the “spiritual death”, as all sin, is to be an automaton to our nature, (which is also a gift from God, given to every living creature on earth) we become judgement machines, lust machines, or material-wealth machines if we don’t keep it in check. In the case of judging, this is certainly why Jesus told us not to judge, and told us to forgive always. Judging others is not a matter of will, it is part of our automatic nature (and in all people, it is essential in our development). Forgiveness, however, is wholly a matter of will, it is not the “default mode”.

At this point, I wrote out my own view on the “second half of life”. It was too long for this posting, and a little off-topic for this thread, so I am creating a new thread.