Unitarians on sin

[JimR-OCDS]

The unitarians then sound like just free spirited people. Although I wonder how the pastor helps them find God when each person believes differently from each other.

Not sure how they answer no. 6 when they don’t really believe in sin or like to mention it.
Don’t sin anymore? They must be more spiritual than anyone!

“Seek and you will find, knock and it the doors will open to you”, because faith is a gift from God.

Indeed

A co-worker of mine belonged to a local Unitarian Church. It’s pretty much a free-for all when it comes to what people believe.

They even had an atheist preach to the congregation one Sunday. Go figure.

Jim

 

[OneSheep]

Thanks.
Yeah it seems most of us can empathise and some can’t. What I’m trying to understand is people like you said that don’t have that wiring, are they on the same level as us that do have the empathy wires?
By level I mean sin being the same for us all. 2,000 years ago people with metal disorders were seen as posessed, and it seems some christians don’t believe people have a medical mental disorder, that only Bi-polar can be scientifically proven. So they basicially say that a mental disorder is a sin - disorder-is sin. Which can be turned around by counciling etc and to a point I might agree.

Sorry, I didn’t respond to this because the conversation had moved on when I was able to get back to the thread.

I’m not sure the Church has ever said or implied that “disorder is sin”. I think it says it in a more cause-and-effect way, that sin happens because of disorder. Once in awhile, someone asks me about exorcisms, whether or not people today become possessed and so forth. My response is that all of us are capable of being possessed, and many of us quite often. We are possessed by jealousy, envy, hatred, fear, sexual desire, desire to dominate or be in control, and everything associated with “sloth” (depression, rebellion against action, etc.) However, only in cases of seizures and related phenomena do we have no control of our acts, we can all choose to behave against the pull of that which commonly “possesses” us.

The BBC article was very interesting. Since a psychopath’s empathy default is “off”, one has to wonder if something in their childhood experience led to such a default.

What sometimes irks me a little is when science, including psychology, comes up with a remedy for some condition, and people fail to recognize such remedy as a healing coming from God; it is as if you have to be saying “God” or be wearing clerical garb in order for the healing to have come from above. God works through the science of medicine and all sciences. What doctors do is miraculous, no less, even if it can be explained scientifically.

Is all down to choice? Can a person knowingly choose to have a metal disorder or not, bit like depression, years ago we would say just get on with things…now we reconise depression as medical condition and try to help people through it.

I think that it is beneficial for people to know that they always have a choice. However, if such knowledge leads to self-condemnation, then the situation isn’t better. When I get depressed, it helps me to recognize it, accept that it is okay, and such acceptance takes me to a different place. I allow myself to depress, not to fight it, and in doing so I always pull out. The “choice”, to me, is to decide not to fight. It is a “letting go”.

For people who are brought up in abusive families, there is different degrees of abuse, the child that knows only fear and pain can become someone who then acts the same with others as they mature, and then commit murder.
Another situation, a child experiences the same, but doesn’t grow up and repeat the same to others because they can see what fear and pain they would inflict upon another.
I wonder a some point in our development of our conscience do we make a decision that enables us to empathise or not? Maybe unconsciously?

Very interesting question. Intuition tells me that if there is such a decision, then it is a subconscious one. My own observation of human nature leads me to conclude that empathy development is the default, we can all know what it is like to be a psychopath or have an autistic condition by knowing what it is like to hate someone. When we hate, our empathy is blocked. When we condemn people, our empathy is blocked.

Your observations about abuse history show why people conclude that our experiences do not “destine” us. To me, we have “free will”, but our free will is limited by our knowledge, our awareness. A person can grow up in an abusive situation and still grow in awareness of the value of fellow humans. Unfortunately, many go into such self-protective mode that their moral/spiritual development is somewhat stifled.

I found a link that suggests that people with mental disorders have a on and off switch.
Pretty interesting.

bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23431793

I addressed this above. The article is about psycopathy, specifically.

Here, I think, are existential questions:

Am I lacking control of my behaviors, am I addicted to something?
If so, is it helpful to me to attribute my addiction or possession to an “evil source”? In other words, does my battle against an “evil source” help me to overcome my hurtful choices?
If such thinking has helped me overcome my hurtful choices, have I developed enough awareness and empathy to move on toward reconciling with all of my internal drives and capacities instead of condemning them?

What do you think are some other related spiritual questions?

 

[OneSheep]

I didn’t catch the changes of the mass (I grew up in the “Novus Ordo”), but I remember my shock when I discovered how they do the mass in Brazil. Previously I wasn’t conscious of my own need for safety regarding the form of the mass. But I continued to watch those masses online and to try to understand where these customs come from and what their style of worship means. Now I have a very soft spot for everything that has to do with them and I can’t tell you how grateful I am for their enlightening homilies, their uplifting songs and their great example of faith.

There is something to be learned from Unitarians also. I have never encountered a faith tradition that does not have something to say about our loving creator.

 

[simpleas]

I guess that in practice their beliefs were not that different (after all, they had the Bible as the base of their faith and their set of basic principles - believe in one God, follow Jesus, receive the Holy Spirit) and the insistence on freedom of belief was directed against the tendency of the state to impose a single official religion and to persecute the others. Plus, the diversity of faiths in that area at that time was very limited. In post #2 there was the question: so Satanism, Nazism, Charles Mansonism are equally welcomed? But by 1560, most people were believers - Catholics or Lutherans - and nobody thought about a society with thousands of denominations, atheists, pagans etc. As for the Unitarians of today, I don’t know anything about the adepts from UK and US, but I know that for the Hungarians from Hungary and Romania, sticking to this religion is a way to preserve their historical and ethnic identity - so, again, I don’t think there are major differences of beliefs amongst them.

About “By the fact that we don’t sin anymore”, I chuckled too Perhaps to sin is simply to do harm to others, and if their faith in the power of God to enlighten the conscience and to help man learn from mistakes is so strong, then the emphasis on sin logically disappears, because the focus is on the potential of man, not on his past or present bad behaviors. At least this is what I understood from reading their short catechism.

This is from the uk unitarians : unitarian.org.uk/intro/spirit3.shtml

They seem to see jesus as a teacher, but still divine in the sense that he showed how we all can have the potential to be divine. They started out as a christian movement, but were open to other faiths.
If someone came to join the congregation and said they were a worshipper of satan, I doubt that they would say thats fine pull up a pew, although they might as they may see this a a potential to help that person find God, just like we might?

The bit about sin. What you wrote, isn’t that mostly what us catholic’s believe in a way. Although we ask for forgiveness through Jesus, we hope that our conscience develops so that we wouldn’t sin again.
I was thinking a few months ago about sin. Thinking, if we love God, why would ever choose to sin again, if we have confessed, been forgiven, done penance etc. Like when you are a child and you do something that upsets your parents, or your friend, you can see the effect it has on them, and would be sorry, you then make a decision that you never do/say such thing ever again to them or anyone else.
So if we do sin again to another, we sin against God also, therefore we can’t love God as much as we think we do? We prefer to love ourselves over another and God.

We could sin less during our lives, although we would never be sinless, because theres always something that can be consider a sin.

 

[simpleas]

Sorry, I didn’t respond to this because the conversation had moved on when I was able to get back to the thread.

I’m not sure the Church has ever said or implied that “disorder is sin”. I think it says it in a more cause-and-effect way, that sin happens because of disorder. Once in awhile, someone asks me about exorcisms, whether or not people today become possessed and so forth. My response is that all of us are capable of being possessed, and many of us quite often. We are possessed by jealousy, envy, hatred, fear, sexual desire, desire to dominate or be in control, and everything associated with “sloth” (depression, rebellion against action, etc.) However, only in cases of seizures and related phenomena do we have no control of our acts, we can all choose to behave against the pull of that which commonly “possesses” us.

The BBC article was very interesting. Since a psychopath’s empathy default is “off”, one has to wonder if something in their childhood experience led to such a default.

What sometimes irks me a little is when science, including psychology, comes up with a remedy for some condition, and people fail to recognize such remedy as a healing coming from God; it is as if you have to be saying “God” or be wearing clerical garb in order for the healing to have come from above. God works through the science of medicine and all sciences. What doctors do is miraculous, no less, even if it can be explained scientifically.

I think that it is beneficial for people to know that they always have a choice. However, if such knowledge leads to self-condemnation, then the situation isn’t better. When I get depressed, it helps me to recognize it, accept that it is okay, and such acceptance takes me to a different place. I allow myself to depress, not to fight it, and in doing so I always pull out. The “choice”, to me, is to decide not to fight. It is a “letting go”.

Very interesting question. Intuition tells me that if there is such a decision, then it is a subconscious one. My own observation of human nature leads me to conclude that empathy development is the default, we can all know what it is like to be a psychopath or have an autistic condition by knowing what it is like to hate someone. When we hate, our empathy is blocked. When we condemn people, our empathy is blocked.

Your observations about abuse history show why people conclude that our experiences do not “destine” us. To me, we have “free will”, but our free will is limited by our knowledge, our awareness. A person can grow up in an abusive situation and still grow in awareness of the value of fellow humans. Unfortunately, many go into such self-protective mode that their moral/spiritual development is somewhat stifled.

I addressed this above. The article is about psycopathy, specifically.

Here, I think, are existential questions:

Am I lacking control of my behaviors, am I addicted to something?
If so, is it helpful to me to attribute my addiction or possession to an “evil source”? In other words, does my battle against an “evil source” help me to overcome my hurtful choices?
If such thinking has helped me overcome my hurtful choices, have I developed enough awareness and empathy to move on toward reconciling with all of my internal drives and capacities instead of condemning them?

What do you think are some other related spiritual questions?

Thanks,
Sorry wasn’t meaning our church, it was another christian site I was looking on that said a mental disorder is a sin. I was exploring how others view sin and how they explain it.

I get what you mean about feeling depressed, I remember when I was in my teens I promised myself I would never allow myself to become deeply depressed that I wouldn’t be able to pull myself out of it. Can’t remember why I thought this.

Yes I believe we have freewill, but it seems some people have more…strength? than others, to be able to break free of a form of mind conditioning. And I wonder how God plays a part in it. Its not say that God gives strength to one person more than the other, but it can seem that way, or maybe because the person doesn’t pray enough, but that doesn’t fit either as God loves everyone the same…

 

[vames]

If someone came to join the congregation and said they were a worshipper of satan, I doubt that they would say thats fine pull up a pew, although they might as they may see this a a potential to help that person find God, just like we might?

The site says “Unitarianism can include people who are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Pagan and Atheist”, but I think you have a point that they may be open even to the idea of helping a satanist find God

I was thinking a few months ago about sin. Thinking, if we love God, why would ever choose to sin again, if we have confessed, been forgiven, done penance etc. Like when you are a child and you do something that upsets your parents, or your friend, you can see the effect it has on them, and would be sorry, you then make a decision that you never do/say such thing ever again to them or anyone else.
So if we do sin again to another, we sin against God also, therefore we can’t love God as much as we think we do? We prefer to love ourselves over another and God.

We could sin less during our lives, although we would never be sinless, because theres always something that can be consider a sin.

Indeed, as you say, we hope that our conscience develops so that we wouldn’t sin again. IMO the key is to not **equate **this development with the effort of learning and accepting particular teachings even when we don’t understand them, because sooner or later practice will fail us and we’ll ask ourselves at every turn: “Did I commit a sin? Is this allowed or forbidden? Show me the rule, because I’m not sure I remember it correctly”.

When one insistently asks these questions, to me it’s a sign that he or she is a person with little real experience of sin. Beyond learning the teachings, the love that you talk about develops through what we do, good and bad, so the experience of sinning and being sinned against is very helpful in making us aware of what love really means. Of course I’m not thinking “let’s hurt others and let’s seek to be hurt, just to see how it feels and to gain experience” - I’m thinking about what Peter did when he realized that he had denied Jesus not only once, but three times, out of fear for his life. Jesus knew that Peter would do that. And He also knew that this failed test would be an eye-opening and strenghtening experience for Peter, who was eventually chosen to be “the rock” of the Church. Understood in this light, sin can be an awfully good teacher. Otherwise we’d think that what Jesus said “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” is a recipe for perpetual guilt and despair.

 

[cheese_sdc]

My brother who was in high school gave a speech to the congregation about why he wasn’t Unitarian. In it he spoke of Unitarians being afraid to believe in anything.

Wow. Can you imagine that happening in any other church? I can’t. That took bravery by the congregation, pastor, and the boy. Applause all around.

 

[simpleas]

The site says “Unitarianism can include people who are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Pagan and Atheist”, but I think you have a point that they may be open even to the idea of helping a satanist find God

Indeed, as you say, we hope that our conscience develops so that we wouldn’t sin again. IMO the key is to not **equate **this development with the effort of learning and accepting particular teachings even when we don’t understand them, because sooner or later practice will fail us and we’ll ask ourselves at every turn: “Did I commit a sin? Is this allowed or forbidden? Show me the rule, because I’m not sure I remember it correctly”.

When one insistently asks these questions, to me it’s a sign that he or she is a person with little real experience of sin. Beyond learning the teachings, the love that you talk about develops through what we do, good and bad, so the experience of sinning and being sinned against is very helpful in making us aware of what love really means. Of course I’m not thinking “let’s hurt others and let’s seek to be hurt, just to see how it feels and to gain experience” - I’m thinking about what Peter did when he realized that he had denied Jesus not only once, but three times, out of fear for his life. Jesus knew that Peter would do that. And He also knew that this failed test would be an eye-opening and strenghtening experience for Peter, who was eventually chosen to be “the rock” of the Church. Understood in this light, sin can be an awfully good teacher. Otherwise we’d think that what Jesus said “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” is a recipe for perpetual guilt and despair.

“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect”

I’m still not sure what Jesus meant by saying this, he knows we could never be perfect like God is…try as we may to refain from sin, we still have to remind ourselves that we are sinners and unworthy of God.
Not to say we should give up trying, but to think we could be perfect like God?..

 

[vames]

“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect”

I’m still not sure what Jesus meant by saying this, he knows we could never be perfect like God is…try as we may to refain from sin, we still have to remind ourselves that we are sinners and unworthy of God.
Not to say we should give up trying, but to think we could be perfect like God?..

“Be perfect” is the direction that we need for our way. We remember that sin = “hamartia” = to miss the mark, to wander from the right path. But to know where to go and how to walk, we need a direction. If you want to draw a straight line on a paper, you do this - so you need an ending dot and you need to look at it constantly instead of looking at your hand and the pencil. The Easterners talk about “theosis”, the process of coming into union with God: their idea is that it takes a lifetime and continues after death, so focusing on the direction is more helpful than focusing on hurdles, wanderings and dangers.

And it’s important to consider the context of “Be perfect” - Jesus talking about loving our enemies. This was a new ending dot, explicitly different from the old ending dot that the people from that time used to follow (an eye for an eye).

 

[simpleas]

“Be perfect” is the direction that we need for our way. We remember that sin = “hamartia” = to miss the mark, to wander from the right path. But to know where to go and how to walk, we need a direction. If you want to draw a straight line on a paper, you do this - so you need an ending dot and you need to look at it constantly instead of looking at your hand and the pencil. The Easterners talk about “theosis”, the process of coming into union with God: their idea is that it takes a lifetime and continues after death, so focusing on the direction is more helpful than focusing on hurdles, wanderings and dangers.

And it’s important to consider the context of “Be perfect” - Jesus talking about loving our enemies. This was a new ending dot, explicitly different from the old ending dot that the people from that time used to follow (an eye for an eye).

Thanks