In staff meeting this morning I had nothing to report. Since I'm not normally allowed to have nothing to say (my boss likes hearing about what we're up to) I ended my little paragraph this way:
"As we come closer to Christmas and are assaulted by televisions telling us what we really want, the message I'm giving the youth group is, 'Be very glad that neither from our parents or from God are we getting what we deserve this year.'"
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I kind of question the concept of "deserving", especially in a religious context. There's really nothing a person could do in this lifetime that would make them "deserve" an eternity of torture. The punishment is -- being eternal -- infinitely worse than the crime. Thankfully, our man-made justice systems do not follow the moral logic of God.
While perhaps some punishment is necessary (though kind of unexpected from a loving and all-forgiving God), an eternity is somewhat monstrous. And if we toss Original Sin into the mix, it gets even worse: How does one "deserve" an eternity of torment for something for which only their ancestors were responsible?
Speaking of which, without Original Sin, there never would've been the need for Jesus, as there would've been nothing to forgive. So why punish us for something that was necessary for Jesus's arrival in the first place?
(The paradox here reminds me of the one about time machines: If you build a time machine to go back into the past and change something, you'll be eliminating the motivation you had to build a time machine in the first place.)
Anyway, you can claim that it all rests on our shoulders to take a proactive attitude and accept Jesus in order to be saved, so it's our fault for not doing so, but I'm really uncomfortable with "guilty until proven innocent" being the basis for faith. Especially when it's a system on which people try to base their morality. Rather chilling.
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