Google Has Justified Me

After some hesitation, or more, I have come back to the blog and mated it to my Google account.
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"For one believes with the heart and so is justified."

That's from the Letter to the Romans in the New Testament.  Being justified is a big deal among evangelical and fundamentalist cults of christ, but when I listened to christ cultists talk about it, I experienced a frightening realization.  They see their belief as a sort of magic pill that literally justifies whatever behavior they want.  I grew up hearing about justification by faith and accepting that so long as I have faith in christ, I am in a continual state of forgiveness for my actions.  There is nothing I can do to cause God to condemn me so long as I retain my belief in the philosophical proposition of justification.

"There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in christ Jesus."

The attraction of the christ religions is this assurance of complete forgiveness and continual justification no matter what the believer does.  When I was a believer, I attended a wide range of cult assemblies but heard this one consistent message throughout:  A believer's behavior is justified because of the death of christ.  I have sat in churches in many places and heard exclamations from the congregants such as, "Justify me, Lord!"  "I am justified! Amen!"  This is the bedrock of the christ religions, but it is also the most sinister aspect of their cult.

If a person can do whatever he likes and be assured of God's favor, based on faith, what moral foundation can they claim?  Morality is right action.  Of course, there is disagreement about what is "right", but the discussion and debate revolve around the accepted concept that some actions are right and some actions are not right.  If someone dismisses this entire concept, morality becomes an esoteric notion rather than a realistic means of keeping the peace.

"All things are permissible, but not all things are beneficial."

The christians have all manner of public caveats to satisfy general society that the cult of christ is not licentious, but it was obviously an important point in the early history of the church.  It was put in the bible, so it must have had value and meaning to them.  Christians viewed (and mostly still do view) themselves as above man-made rules.  (Let's suspend reality for a moment and pretend that the bible isn't a man-made collection of literature.)  If you believe that all your actions are justified because of your faith in christ and that all things are technically permissible, you are, strictly speaking, a sociopath.  If you look at the way the church is attempting to intimidate government into adopting cult principles, how the cults of christ are forcing public compliance with their rituals, the murders of doctors and gay people with the universal praise of the cult communities, the insertion of bogus and deceitful messages into school textbooks, the glorification of war in the Middle East as anticipatory of christ's coming, the vitriol spat out hourly against the President, against free thinkers, against anyone who isn't in the cults.  By faith they claim justification for all these sociopathic actions.

To counter this false philosophy and dangerous cultic dogma, I propose Man stop believing that unright actions are justified.  They are not.  We are called by the uncountable eons of evolution and the goodness within us to live right without caveats and qualifications, without the flippant excuse of faith to justify us.  We are called not to ask a mystical spirit in the sky to forgive us, but to seek forgiveness among ourselves for our human failures.  We are called not to expect some inert divinity to justify our actions, but rather we are to control, discipline and govern ourselves so that our actions are right.  The way of christ is lazy.  No sacrifice is asked or expected, simply the idle assent to a philosophy of unremitting justification.  In the real world, human beings must always sacrifice for the good of all and peace among us all. There is no sweet, easy deal with the gods, or even one of them, to get us out of that.

Letter to the Romans 10.10 and 8.1
First Letter to the Corinthians 10.23

  

The one about spring

Winter is a hard time for me.  It gets cold in Korea, not as cold as my hometown in America, but it is still pretty cold.  Riding my motorcycle is one of my favorite activities, but when the temperatures are low, ice often forms on the streets which makes riding dangerous.  Walking in the cold is OK if the day is sunny.  It is not pleasant, however, when the day is overcast and windy.  Though it doesn't snow much where I live, when it does snow, the traffic is a nightmare and everything looks dirty and messy outside.  Of course, heating the house is expensive.  The utility bills in the winter are very high.

When spring finally appears, it is the happiest time of the year.  This week spring is beginning here in Korea.  There is still a tussle between the cold and the warm.  One day is cold, the next warm, cold, then warm again. As the seasons wrestle, signs of new life begin to show on trees and bushes all over the city.  There are little buds that will become leaves and blossoms in a matter of weeks.   Rains caused by the conflict of warm fronts and cold fronts soak the earth to free up grass and flowers.  Insects wriggle from their hiding places to search for food and mates as the promise of long, warm days rises with the sun.

I love spring and summer to the same degree I dislike winter. When winter is past, there is no love lost between us!  Am I alone?  Hardly!  There are a lot of people who also don't like winter, people who rejoice at the longer days of spring and anticipate the coming warmth of summer.  Count me among them.  Good riddance, old man winter!  Welcome, flowering spring! It's time to dust off the motorcycle and time to let the warm breezes buoy my spirits.

The One About Tumbling Walls

I teach English to speakers of other languages.  It isn't the career I had prepared and studied for,  but in many ways it's the career that is best for me.  Maybe that's the way life works; your personality, skills, and circumstances eventually guide you to where you ought to be.

On my own time, when I'm not teaching English at my university, there's a place I go to help other learners with their English language skills.  It's online in the open secret of Second Life, the 3D environment where anyone with an internet connection is loosed from the bonds of location to venture beyond their home, their town, or their nation to a wider and wilder world created from the minds of artists, businesspeople, programmers, and many others, including people like me, teachers.

This is where learners from China and Korea sit side by side with those from Japan and Russia.  A housewife in Estonia and a travel agent in Brasil practice speaking English with each other as though the 11,000 kilometers between them were but across the room.  Teachers from America and Australia work together unfettered by the restrictions of place to help learners meet their goals, goals that include self-improvement,  competence on the job or job advancement, more enjoyable travel opportunities, and more awareness and familiarity with the people and cultures of the broader world.

There's no money in doing this, but it isn't about money; it's about people.  The world will only prosper and humankind will only advance when there is understanding between and among us.  No, learning English is not the true and proper goal in itself.  Learning English is only the walking-stick that supports us along the path up the steep grade of our human progress.  Generations further up that path will not even realize how much language was a barrier to our common advancement but only because of the hard work we have been doing to build bridges, tunnels, and highways in communication now. Learning English, or any language, does not solve the problems between human beings, but it does help us get started.  When the barriers of communication are breached, it will not be long before the walls come tumbling down.