Harmony or Justice?

[Purple Knight]

Is the goal of modern anti-racist culture harmony - to allow all races to live together with as little strife and group conflict as possible - or is its goal justice, in other words, punishing the guilty even at the cost of harmony?

No reasonable person disagrees that white people are racist and getting more racist all the time. If this is because they see the seeking justice against them as some sort of initiatory attack because they (wrongly, of course) do not see themselves as guilty, and they believe it is permissible to "defend" (in their minds, they are the ones being attacked) then conceivably this nasty culture war could have ended by simply forgiving them for their transgressions and not seeking justice, except in provable cases of individual racism (and then, only against the actual perpetrator, as we do for every other crime).

Admittedly this forgiveness suggestion lets people get away with murder, and presumably, in the future, white people would learn from this that they may enslave and mistreat, then simply have their descendants be forgiven for all of it for the sake of harmony.

What say you: Harmony, or Justice?

[nobspeople]

Does it say they must forgive everything or just forgive?

The way I read the parable in question is forgive everything.

Jesus tells a tale of a master whose slave owes him money. The slave can't pay, and the master forgives him. The slave promptly goes to another slave who owes him money and shakes him, demanding the full sum.

At the point Jesus basically says, God forgives you, so how dare you be this nasty hypocrite slave and not forgive others?

Since God forgives everything, to me this asks me to forgive everything also.

The difference to me is that God doesn't really personally suffer if someone murders someone else, so of course he can forgive it. But if someone murders my wife she's [expletive deleted] dead. And I have lost her. And she's gone. God hasn't lost her; he may still interact with her. Why would he care?

Thank you for the reply. That's how I was taught it as well, with one caveat: I was taught, growing up, that (in regards to your God doesn't suffer comment) God does indeed suffer every times someone disobeys him and for every soul that goes to hell. It makes him sad, for lack of a better terminology.

Which made no sense to me then or now. How can a supreme being suffer when A) he knows what's going to happen to that person (if he's all knowing that is) and 2) he has the ability to stop it but actively doesn't?

It seems this Christian god has way more human-like characteristics than expected of a supreme, all knowing, all loving, all powerful, forever being, first and last being. Attributing human style emotions to him seems belittling to me. I suppose my 'god expectations' are more grand than many, however.

[Purple Knight]

Thank you for the reply. That's how I was taught it as well, with one caveat: I was taught, growing up, that (in regards to your God doesn't suffer comment) God does indeed suffer every times someone disobeys him and for every soul that goes to hell. It makes him sad, for lack of a better terminology.

That's the main reason why I said "suffer personally" though this doesn't adequately describe the situation. We all regularly inflict a little so-called suffering on ourselves in exchange for some other benefit. A fat person may find it difficult to exercise, for example. It may hurt, and it may even wear down his joints. The fact that he decides to do it anyway attests to another component of true suffering: Powerlessness.

Simply having the choice makes a huge difference. I might choose to sacrifice my wife (and I would, if it made me a good person) but that's a different situation than what happens to me when someone breaks in and murders her. If God knew he would be upset then he could have simply not created that soul, but he did it anyway, which addresses your second point. In other words, I don't really believe that counts as suffering in the sense that we should take pains to spare that person suffering. We have more than enough on our plate dealing with instances in which the person had no control and couldn't have prevented the outcome. It's simply not right to put the fat guy and his knee pain ahead of that. If he doesn't want to exercise, he doesn't have to. If he chooses to, that's on him.

It seems this Christian god has way more human-like characteristics than expected of a supreme, all knowing, all loving, all powerful, forever being, first and last being. Attributing human style emotions to him seems belittling to me. I suppose my 'god expectations' are more grand than many, however.

Actually my expectations of a god would be the opposite. I see increasing aptitude for torture as intelligence and reason increases. A human is capable of more cruelty than a monkey, and a monkey capable of more than a cat, and a cat capable of more than an amoeba.

If God were simply the nastiest, cruellest being of all it frankly wouldn't surprise me. And it could do it all with a perfection that prevented any of its actions from being technically cruel, evil, or wrong.

[Nataly11]

Harmony it the first