It seems to me -- based primarily on my reading of Jesus' parable of the landlord and his workers -- that God's notion of what is fair does not necessarily match up with what we human beings want to think of as fair. God gives equal wages to all of his workers, no matter when they started, but as human beings we think we deserve more money because we started earlier. Recent primate studies have suggested that this human notion of fairness has its roots in our evolutionary heritage (I love thinking of sin as holdover behaviors from our evolutionary heritage -- it makes so much sense to me!).
Extending on that, I don't know if human standards of justice, which are usually meant to keep a society going, apply in a divine milieu. We can take the worst case scenario of a serial killer who has a neurological or physiological abnormality which compels him to kill despite his knowing that it's wrong to do so. A human standard of justice would put this person away in prison, if for no other reason than because we want to keep the rest of society safe from him (I guess this is part of an incapacitation model of punishment). Specific and general deterrence aren't necessarily realistic models of punishment; if they were, then crime would always go down instead of going up. Rehabilitation is appropriate in some cases, but in other cases -- such as with our hypothetical serial killer -- it is impossible (if for no other reason than because we lack the technology to fix that kind of neurological or physiological abnormality).
I'd suppose, then, that God would have His own way of handling such a person. Does God punish him because he was a serial killer? Or does God reward him for doing his best to overcome his compulsions and not killing as many people as his compulsions would have forced him to? If the compulsions are part of a physiological or neurological issue, then is it really the killer's fault that he was a killer?
The point is that there may be a hell, but I don't know if we're fit, as fallen and imperfect human beings, to decide what the nature of hell really is, or to speculate on whom God has put into Hell and why. Through Jesus we have some insight into the nature of God's love, but we're also cautioned not to judge on this matter.
Traditional models of Hell and God make God to be an obnoxious and whimsical being who punishes for no very good reason. I think that these models are based on human notions of justice and punishment, and are therefore inappropriate for speculating on God's notions of justice and punishment.
There. Having solved that problem, I shall move on to world hunger.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2007-03-04 07:30 pm (UTC)Extending on that, I don't know if human standards of justice, which are usually meant to keep a society going, apply in a divine milieu. We can take the worst case scenario of a serial killer who has a neurological or physiological abnormality which compels him to kill despite his knowing that it's wrong to do so. A human standard of justice would put this person away in prison, if for no other reason than because we want to keep the rest of society safe from him (I guess this is part of an incapacitation model of punishment). Specific and general deterrence aren't necessarily realistic models of punishment; if they were, then crime would always go down instead of going up. Rehabilitation is appropriate in some cases, but in other cases -- such as with our hypothetical serial killer -- it is impossible (if for no other reason than because we lack the technology to fix that kind of neurological or physiological abnormality).
I'd suppose, then, that God would have His own way of handling such a person. Does God punish him because he was a serial killer? Or does God reward him for doing his best to overcome his compulsions and not killing as many people as his compulsions would have forced him to? If the compulsions are part of a physiological or neurological issue, then is it really the killer's fault that he was a killer?
The point is that there may be a hell, but I don't know if we're fit, as fallen and imperfect human beings, to decide what the nature of hell really is, or to speculate on whom God has put into Hell and why. Through Jesus we have some insight into the nature of God's love, but we're also cautioned not to judge on this matter.
Traditional models of Hell and God make God to be an obnoxious and whimsical being who punishes for no very good reason. I think that these models are based on human notions of justice and punishment, and are therefore inappropriate for speculating on God's notions of justice and punishment.
There. Having solved that problem, I shall move on to world hunger.