Reflections From a Murky Pond

Christianity seems to claim to be rooted in compassion and in your God’s boundless capacity for mercy and forgiveness. No transgression seems so great that God will not turn aside his wrath and accept the sinner back into the fold. The prayers of others even seem enough to stay His hand and His judgment as the three Biblical passage below seem to clearly say:

Moses’ Prayer, interceding for Israel…again

So Moses went back to the LORD and said, “Oh, what a great sin these people have committed! They have made themselves gods of gold. 32 But now, please forgive their sin-but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written.

– Exodus 32:31-32 NIV

Stephen’s prayer for his murderers

Then he fell on his knees and cried out, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” When he had said this, he fell asleep.

– Acts 7:60 NIV

Paul’s prayer for the Colossians

For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance…. in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

– Colossians 1:9-17 NIV

In the light of these passages and a great many others like them, it seems that the God of the Christians is very forgiving indeed. It also seems that another can intercede with God on behalf of a sinner or indeed an entire city or race of sinners. Therefor I have a question for any and all Christians who find this post:

Have you offered even a single prayer for Satan, the first and direst sinner who Fell so far due to his sin? Have you prayed once that God forgive Satan’s pride or prayed once that Satan might repent his sin and be brought back into your God’s grace?

Eric Brown has posited on his blog WeirdGuy that the Principle of Reciprocity applies to the act of giving. While this is a wonderful idea I believe it falls into the realms of fantasy instead fact. I do not concur with his assessment that “giving is infectious“.

Altruism has its place and that place is good in that it serves the Good. It does not engender similar behavior in the beneficiaries of such kindness. Many people do not even recognize that they have been given a gift; they take the gift as their due - fair recompense for some past act of theirs. Others live under the delusion of Entitlement - the self-serving surety that they deserve such gifts because of some accident of birth or upbringing.

Most of us in Western cultures are familiar with the Seven Deadly Sins: Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, and Pride. These Cardinal Vices were enumerated by the early Christian church as a way to educate and instruct followers concerning man’s tendency to sin. I believe we must add an eighth Deadly Sin to that list – Guiltism.

Guiltism:

Guiltism is a mindset or belief system that espouses that an individual or group is inherently “evil” because they are possessed of some innate benefit that they did not earn and must be ashamed of. At guiltism’s core is the mandate that since someone or some group has privilege, they must pay reparations to all others who do not possess that privilege. Failure to pay without complaint absolves all others who harm the privileged person or group from some or all responsibility for their actions.

This is an insidious and pernicious belief structure. Guiltism it is on both the idea of collective guilt, which is guilt attributed to someone who has some sort of relationship – familial or societal – with someone else who perpetrated some transgression, and upon the idea any privilege automatically incurs an individual or group the burden of guilt and the need to offer both apology and recompense to diverse strangers.

Guiltism is an extremely damaging “sin”, possibly worse than the original seven combined. It corrupts the Seven Contrary Virtues: chastity, abstinence, liberality, diligence, patience, kindness, and humility.

• Guiltism corrupts Chastity by causing a beautiful person to hate their own bodies – an unearned privilege, which detracts from successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of a human person in his or her bodily and spiritual being.

• Guiltism denies Abstinence because the virtue of abstinence is intended to be a conscious act, freely chosen to enhance life, and guiltism twists this into repressive self-denial.

• Guiltism counters Liberality by denying any act of charity. Guiltism would claim that any charitable act was actually nothing more than rendering partial payment due.

• Guiltism perverts Diligence. Diligence requires that a human being freely to direct himself to conform to the good promised by God and attested by moral conscience. Guiltism both adds a goad, which precludes the person’s freedom of action and supplants the purpose of a vocation to divine beatitude with the assuagement of guilt and reduction of personal tribulation.

• Guiltism defies Patience by forcing a person to defy the existence of a divine plan and divine wisdom in favor of acting at their own pace to correct perceived injustices.

• Guiltism refuses Kindness by making all good acts towards others who carry this burden of adopted guilt an exacerbation of their condition, and any good act to the less privileged being recompense as opposed to kindness.

• Guiltism contravenes Humility by causing a person to aggrandize themselves and their self perception of their power and influence. To carry guilt implies the belief that one had the power to enact either harm or good.