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From: david@ssc-vax.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Guilt
Message-ID: <791@ssc-vax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 30-Jan-84 17:38:49 EST
Article-I.D.: ssc-vax.791
Posted: Mon Jan 30 17:38:49 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 2-Feb-84 01:26:30 EST
Organization: Boeing Aerospace, Seattle
Lines: 57

Laura Creighton said this in an earlier article:

> I think that this is horrible. It is one thing to be responsible for the
> NOW, but must one carry all one's past misdeeds with one? Certain moral
> theories would have this. I remember being told that "god will sit there and
> tell you all your sins, every last one, on judgement day and you will be
> responsible for eery one". Hmm. I did a lot of awful things as a child,
> most of which I would not do now. I am not the same person. I find it hard
> to take responsibility for things that "the-I-that-was" did -- I have enough
> to worry about with "the-I-that-is". 
> 
> I can sit with an amused detatchment and wonder at the person that I was,
> but I feel very little (perhaps none? it is hard to say) attatchment for
> that person. I feel the same sort of detatched copmpassion that I can summon
> for any human being. As I move closer to the present I feel more of an
> attatchment, and the sins of 2 years ago still weigh upon me -- but I can see
> that in a few years they too will be gone, as I commit them to the past. 

Isn't this a very dangerous position?  Using this approach, I can justify
murder: "No, I didn't kill him!  The Dave Norris of January 29th killed him;
to-day is the 30th, and I am not the same person."  Ok, one day isn't that
much.  But does four or five years of "commiting sins to the past" make the
child whose father was murdered any better off?  Admittedly, this is a very
emotional argument.  But where do we draw the line?  A day? A week?  Ten years?
What kinds of guilt-ridden sins do we include?  Murder?  Rape?  Picking your
nose?

This argument has the appeal of softening the guilt for past sins (*not*
mistakes) and making one's conscience feel better.  But it has two flaws:  it
makes the (perhaps false) assumption that guilt is a totally bad thing and
serves no useful purpose.  Remove the guilt, feel better.  This has somewhat
of the "EST" flavor which has always left me cold; indifference to guilt is
one thing, indifference to the act that caused the guilt is another.  What
about the fellow whose wallet you stole?  No matter that his vacation is
ruined, let's just worry about our own feelings.  Secondly, it ignores the
fact that there are consequences of sin.  Before anyone starts flaming, ignore
any religous viewpoint at all and just consider the average drug addict who
steals to support his habit.  The first theft must have been very hard.  But
after time, he becomes callous to his feelings of guilt, and it is easier to
steal the next television set; he no longer worries about the people he stole
it from.  Remember "Holocaust"?  The first Jew killed is the hardest.  The next
ten are not so bad, after 100, it gets real easy...  The horrors committed by
the Nazis were easier for them to do the more they did them. 

Laura, pardon me for being sarcastic, but I know where you are coming from.
But for such a belief to work, men (read *all* men) must abide by the "Golden
Rule."  As is usually the case, however, someone will use the law to their
own advantage (the case of the fellow who was acquitted because he did not know
his 'rights' is a prime example.. a new law was created requiring police to
read rights verbatim from a card.. what was his name?  Any lawyers out there?).
And if all men abided by the "Golden Rule", there wouldn't be any guilt to
worry about, would there?  (Laura knows where this is leading :-)

Please take all sarcasm in the humorous vein in which it is intended.

	-- David Norris
	-- uw-beaver!ssc-vax!david