James Dean, And The Insight That "We Are Not Punished For Our Sins, But By Them"

 

We Are Re-Made In The Image Of Our God (Or Gods). This Bedrock Fact Makes Me Increasingly Critical Of America As A Judeo-Christian Culture That Worships A God Who Is Wrathful And Punitive. Trump And His Cultists Comprise Incontrovertible Proof That The United States Of America - Which Has Always Been A Punitive, Retributive Society - Now Genuflects At The Altar Of Cruelty. Cruelty Is Not An Aberration. It Is The Central Point Of Unbridled, "Christian" "Conservative" Capitalism. Let's Make Up Our Minds. John The Apostle Says "God Is Love." Is "He?" Or Is God Punitive And Hellishly Cruel? Do Not Look Away. Do Not Sweep This Under The Rug. Be Whatever You Want To Be. But Do Have The Courage And Integrity To Own Up To The God You Worship, And In Whose Image YOU Continually Re-Make Yourself

http://newsfrombarbaria.blogspot.com/2023/06/we-are-re-made-in-image-of-our-god-and.html

Alan Archibald

It shouldn't matter, but I think it does.

In any event...

Some years ago, I heard an Afro-American say: "We are not punished for our sins; we are punished by our sins." (Since then I've discovered that the origin of this saying seems to be a late 19th century and early 20th century wit named Elbert Hubbard who coined many splendid apothegms. Elbert is best known for founding the remarkable Roycroft Community in upstate New York. Here's Hubbard's Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbert_Hubbard)

What I perceive as the curse of Christian fundamentalism is a deliberately know-nothing constituency -- profoundly contemptuous of deeply contextualized learning-and --- whose spiteful, malicious and (not-infrequently) cruel adherents "just know" that the Universe can only sit properly on its foundation when God Almighty personally demands that sinners-and-infidels be eternally tormented in a "Never-ending Lake of Unquenchable Fire."

And so these small-minded, vicious and cruel people end up with a God made in THEIR OWN IMAGE, not in the image of God whom the evangelist John defines with three words: "God is Love."

Virtue is its own reward.

And hatred (no matter how well hatred is rationalized) is its own punishment.

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4Leigh Sturman, Susan Annette Lieber and 2 others

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