What should we do when someone wrongs us? How should someone be dealt with? Wrong doing has consequences, and needs to be dealt with. There are three main ways of dealing with it; preventative punishment, restorative punishment, and retributive punishment. In reality the three are probably going to overlap, but for a minute lets consider them separately.
Behind every person there is a story. When people do or say something, it is part of an unfolding narrative that is their life. So, when a person thinks something, there are reasons for what they think, and we need to acknowledge that and accept them for it. If we disapprove of what someone thinks, then we ignore their story, we deny the reasons that have brought them their, and disapprove of them. It is for this reason that I suggest that when we disagree with what someone thinks, we should be hesitant to disapprove of it. We can disagree, but we should avoid disapproving.
Obviously, there are exceptions; for example, parents probably have some degree of responsibility to teach younger children, and may sometimes find it necessary to disapprove of some behaviors (but never disapproving the child), and likewise other authorities may need to ‘disapprove’ of certain behaviors. As a general rule, when an individual is harming other individuals (without their consent), we should disapprove of this.
So life is complex, there are a lot of exceptions, so I want to avoid making a blanket rule. If I say ‘never disapprove, except in the following circumstances…’, you’ll be bound to find some exception that I haven’t mentioned. Instead, I’ll just say:
When we disagree, we should be quicker to be supportive, than disapproving.
So, that’s my main thesis. I’d like to link this with a post Christina wrote a while ago - unfortunately, no-one made a significant reply (online) to it, so I want to correct that. What I’ve writing now isn’t directly in response to it, but it touches on similar issues. Maybe this is part of how we can connect with people who we don’t see eye to eye with? When we disapprove of the other side of the fence, the other side can feel it. When we’re disapproved, we can feel it. If we can’t accept the people on the other side, we’ll never be able to have reasonable interactions with them. Simply, it’s far better to be accepting than have all the right arguments, you may lose and argument or so, but you won’t lose the relationship.
So, I promised an answer to the question; ‘which is better a non-christian theist, or an atheist christian?’
Thanks to everyone who has commented - though, after I’ve read all your answers, it makes it harder to write my own answers, because a lot of the points I was going to make have already been covered. So I guess that means we’re all pretty smart huh? (great minds and all). I’ve put together a bit of an answer. I don’t think it covers everything mentioned in the comments, but I might reply to anything I missed at a later date:
Obviously an atheist christian is going to fit well outside of the traditional christian box (and so would make for interesting conversations). So far that some would argue that they aren’t christian, and hence are unsaved. But this perspective isn’t really that useful in answering the question, because under it the non-christian theist is also going to be saved. So I’m going to come at it from a different angle.
Jesus came with a radical message of love and acceptance. He came to reconcile people, to each other, and to their maker. He argued the greatest commands were to love God, and to love man. So there are two aspects of being a christian; a relationship with natural, to other humans, and a relationship with the transcendent, to our father.
So an atheist christian will be able to follow half of these commands. Given that they are committed to following Jesus message, at the very least they will have a positive effect on the people around them, and the world in general.
On the other hand, we don’t know what the non-christian theist would be like. They are probably going to be quite nice, (and that’s the case for most people who I have met in that category). But, if they believed in a God who told them to do evil, then I would be very scared. Because if someone believes God tells them to do something, it’s hard to convince them to do otherwise.
I guess I have an aversion to theists (despite being one myself :P). When people start to get the idea that their ideas are endorsed by a higher power, there is a danger of slipping into arrogance, of betraying reason, of becoming inflexible and moralistic. The mantra “God said it, I believe it, that settles it”, kinda scares me. It would be ok if God actually did say it, but if he didn’t? The believer is wrong, and is probably not going to change the mind. So beware of the gods people construct. Be careful of those who give their reason away to a philosophy or ideology. Because that is dangerous.
So yeah. At the moment I guess I’d prefer a christian atheist. But I’d also be happy with a non-christian theist, provided they don’t have a scary God :).
I do like it when people comment. It’s good. It makes me feel like I’m not alone in the barren wilderness that is the Internet. So, in order to precipitate a bit of discussion, here’s a hypothetical question for you:
Which is better, believing in God, but rejecting Christianity, or not believing in God, but attempting to follow Christianity?
Let me know what you think, I’ll post my own answer in a couple of days.
Note: The question is mostly aimed at Christian Theists, however, if you don’t fit into that category, and want to throw your two cents in, I’d still love to hear from you
So you know, I do still have the old entries, so if anyone remembers something I wrote about, and wants me to look it up, I might be able to arrange it.
In my previous post, I said it would be nice if what you learned about me was accurate. But I do want to clarify that; I don’t want to blog so that people can just learn about me - if you are going to learn about me, I’d like it to be accurate, but learning about me isn’t (i hope) the primary purpose. I’m really not that important in the scheme of things. If you want to learn about someone important, go read a biography.
I’ve come across some ideas that I think are important, so I’d like to blog about them. And I’d love to discuss them with you, because you’ve probably come across some important ideas too. So that’s my rationale for blogging. So that I can learn, and so that you can learn. Then we’ll hopefully grow, and be better people, and so we can go save the world. Hurrah!
No doubt some of you will be wondering, why has Nathan abandoned all his hard work and started a new blog? Basically, it was messy.
It was messy in the sense that the technical side of the blog was messy - I’d made a lot of customizations, and hadn’t really tidied them up, I hadn’t updated to the latest versions of wordpress, the links were all out of date - it was a bit of a mish mash, and just not fun to blog with anymore.
More importantly, the content of the blog was messy. It lacked direction. It started off as a personal journal that was meant to enable me to talk about things with the world, and hopefully help me and others grow. Back then I had a higher level of self-disclosure than I would now, which I wouldn’t be comfortable with now. Ironically, as time went on, there was a bit of a reaction to the earlier self-disclosure, which meant my blogging was quite closed, which almost became a bit dishonest? Not that I was lying or misleading, but it felt like I was presenting a Nathan that was one-sided, and didn’t feel like me. My blog had lost it’s direction, and felt imbalanced.
For this blog, I’m looking for the middle ground. I don’t want to go exposing my innermost secrets to the world, but I do want to be honest, and take ownership of what I write. So, when you read this blog, you aren’t going to learn any dark secrets about me. But hopefully what you learn about me will be accurate.
Welcome to my brand new blog!
I’m redoing everything from scratch, so bear with me as I sort things out. Thankfully wordpress is very easy to install and use, so it should all be relatively painless.
Hopefully I’ll resume (begin?) regular blogging soon.
Nathan
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