Guest Post by The Zman
Religions tend to set limits. Those limits come with the force of God or some spiritual force that transcends man. Otherwise, a religion would be nothing more than man-made rules enforced by the strongest. This is why laws in most of the world are rooted in the dominant religion of the region or country. The local religion is a list of restrictions and limitations placed on the believers. Naturally, when it came time to form a government and write laws, they relied upon the laws and rules of their religion.
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This may seem rather obvious, but the concept of the limiting principle is easy to take for granted. This is a core feature of most religions and it easiest to understand by considering our laws. Take two people who are not robbing banks. Just as long as both are not robbing banks, neither is more or less of a bank robber than the other. Both are simply not bank robbers. In other words, while there may be degrees of bank robbery, there are no degrees of not bank robbery. Not being one is the limit of that virtue.
This is true of religion, of course. The sinner can be someone breaking a minor rule or someone violating the big rules. Their degree of sinfulness can be established, but their degree of virtue does not exist. If you are not violating the rules of the faith, then that is as good as it gets for you, at least in this life. In other words, there is a limit to virtue. That limit is the rule or prohibition. You are either within the rules or not. Efforts to out-virtue others are usually seen as vanity, unjustified boasting about one’s spiritual state.
The limiting principle keeps religions and the law from going crazy and descending into virtue spirals. After all, if one can be more virtuous than the next guy, then the next guy can be even more virtuous. The cycle ends only when everyone is dead. The same is true of the law. Utopian schemes like communism are aimed at constructing the perfect society, but since perfection is impossible, it is a never ending cycle of madness to make society better, which means making people better. It’s why they always end in violence.
This has always been the problem with efforts to create a civic religion. Robespierre and his radical buddies figured this out quickly, which is why they came up with the Cult of the Supreme Being. Of course, their new reason cult got weird in hurry and contributed to the demise of Robespierre. The reason is any effort to invest moral authority in men or their creations turns those men into gods. The madness of the French Revolution was a virtue spiral, as there was no transcendent limit. The radicals could always be more radical.
We see this with the nature movements that have been a feature of the Left for as long as anyone reading this has been alive. The greens always aim for some sort of Edenic outcome. Their goal always lies just a little further. The idea of “good enough” is outside their comprehension. Couple that with their preternatural belief in the sinfulness of man and you end up with a nature cult that borders on being a suicide cult. The end point of every Progressive nature movement is the end of mankind.
The greatest impact individuals can have in fighting climate change is to have one fewer child, according to a new study that identifies the most effective ways people can cut their carbon emissions.
The next best actions are selling your car, avoiding long flights, and eating a vegetarian diet. These reduce emissions many times more than common green activities, such as recycling, using low energy light bulbs or drying washing on a line. However, the high impact actions are rarely mentioned in government advice and school textbooks, researchers found.
Just look at that list. It sounds like a combination of the Shakers and 1970’s new age mysticism. In order to save the planet, according to researchers and experts no less, is to avoid having more humans and make the ones waiting around to die as miserable as possible. The unspoken reason for selling the car and sitting in the dark with your nothing burger is so you can suffer and atone for your sins. In other words, it is not enough to be a green, you have to kill yourself as the ultimate sign of your virtue.
This is not new. The Shakers, obviously, are an example of what happens when a religion cannot imagine a limit to virtue. The Shakers, though, had the decency to mind their own business and not try to inflict themselves on the rest of the world. In the long run, they were a slow-motion suicide cult, but they were willing to let nature take its course. The modern nature cults not only want to rush their demise, they want to take the rest of us with them, or at least make us suffer for their religion.
This is the problem that has haunted the Left in America. There’s no concept of good enough. They are always chanting, “we can do more” or “there is more work to do.” No matter how much damage they do in the holy cause, they are sure that more needs doing, more must be done. It’s why their causes tend to burn out in fits of insanity like we see with the whole transgender thing. The quest for the ultimate victim has led them to celebrate mental illness as a virtue and deny biological reality.
There’s another point here worth mentioning. A reason Progressives lack the concept of the limiting principle is that the modern American Left grew out of the postmillennialism of the 19th and early 20th century. This was an American Protestant movement based on the belief that the time between now and the end times would be one where the Church came to dominate the nations of the earth and usher in an era of peace, prosperity and righteousness, signally the return of Christ. Abolitionism was a product of this movement.
Modern Progressives have abandoned the language of Christianity, but they retain the characteristics and much of the language of their spiritual forebears. Instead of spreading the Word, they spread democracy. Instead of defeating Satan by expanding the kingdom of God on earth, the modern Progressives expands the inclusive Community to defeat the Hate. Saving the earth is, in a way, the restoration of Eden. When the goal is to immanentize the eschaton, it is no wonder they set no limits for themselves.
” If you are not violating the rules of the faith, then that is as good as it gets for you, at least in this life.”
In Christianity the “rules of the faith” include that which you hold in your heart, not just your overt behavior. You are equally held to what you think and intend as well as what you do.
I don’t know if any other religion holds this same standard.
Yes, agreed, his thesis is a bit simplistic when he says being good is as good as it gets. Yet the bible tells us that a man is convicted by his thoughts. Pascal’s Wager is little more than a Machiavellian ruse to insure salvation in case hell is real. It’s the kind of hypocrisy found in rich folks who give the appearance of piety but are in fact rapacious wolves.
Faith in faith is another huge deception and hell awaits those who promote the pagan worship of women of a certain race and the prophet of racism. These neo-heretics seek to supplant Christianity with their own worship of a mythical white, blond guy who lives in a tavern in the sky.
But they won’t tell anybody that they are modern pagans. Instead of promulgating Satan directly, they seduce melanin-deficient morans with the promise of a white heaven. The modern-day Joseph Smith is revered as Odin’s prophet. No doubt he is partying in Valhalla with Hitler.
Give me more down-thumbs, pagans!
Where does the Bible say: “… a man is convicted by his thoughts”? I’m starting to worry that you are a Jehovah’s Witness.
Romans 2:12-29New International Version (NIV)
15 They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness,
and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.)
JWs do not consider Jesus to be God, he is merely the son of God. I guess they missed this verse: The Unbelief of the Jews
“29My Father who has given them to Me is greater than all. No one can snatch them out of My Father’s hand. 30I and the Father are one.” 31At this, the Jews again picked up stones to stone Him.…”
(Mormons consider Satan to be a son of God as well as Jesus.)
JWs also do not believe in hell (or the judgment). I guess they never read this portion: The Final Judgment
“14Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death—the lake of fire. 15And if anyone was found whose name was not written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.”
Is this accusation some sort of payback for my “neo-pagans” comment?
EC You have become very biblical as of late. I don’t know what to think.
As for heaven and hell maybe we the awake remnant are really in hell right now and have no idea. To be awake in modern America is almost a nightmare since so few of us exist, that we rarely ever get together in meatspace.
The sad state of our sacred rights handed down to us, are a fools reminder of what we have lost. The world we live in is shrouded in a sort of magic veil. Every once in a while we get a glimpse behind the curtain and what we see changes everything.
To live in a country that only exists in the past, and only in the minds of those who grew up on the greatness that was and is never more. this is our nightmare.
And by the way Odin doesn’t allow milk sops like Joseph Smith and Hitler into his tavern.
Contentious maybe. Biblical only because I have to counter the idiocy of the neo-paganism being promoted like it’s gospel. It is filth. You don’t see Admin overlooking a dog turd on the sidewalk. I don’t want to overlook real shit that could lead an innocent down the path of paganism.
No Other Gospel
“I am astonished how quickly you are deserting the One who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—which is not even a gospel. Evidently some people are troubling you and trying to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be under a divine curse!…”
EC I don’t know about the individuals you and Yo battle about on an almost daily basis. I do know that the God of nature and natures God is creator of our entire universe. His son Jesus Christ was the example of what we should aspire to and his spilled blood is the door to human salvation.
False prophets abound everywhere in these last days. I know evil when I see it and the darkness that sweeps the globe is not some meme or a group having pride in it’s culture. The evil is the ideology that allows a small group of evil people to spread the disease unchecked while always claiming some sort of moral superiority while denigrating and trying to destroy anyone who disagrees.
I know the teachings of Christ and I try to follow them, I am however a mortal man of fallen nature and there is still much hate in my heart. I meditate and ask god to take the hate away and it seems to be a process.
I am curious as to what dog turd Admin saw on the sidewalk that he couldn’t overlook.
Regardless of what you think of Christianity, your advertisements have the best titty shots on the web, and I thank Christ for that.
I have always attempted to follow the thought process where those feverishly trying to convince me to kill myself are the ones on the edge where I can convince them to kill themselves . If you think the world is a better place with less people in it fine at least lead by example . First have your self sterilized and then at the first sign of any illness do yourself in as clean and neatly as possible . Perhaps cutting your ankles and go wading in deep warm ocean water of south Florida . No energy wasted and you feed the big endangered fish AMEN !
That was good, Boat Guy.
Good stuff, Z. Jim Ostrowski has a great little book out on Progressives.
I really like the way this guy thinks. Every single essay shows a determination to understand whatever the topic is in a way that is novel and then he expresses it in language that is simple enough for a ninth grader to grok.
And in this installment, he nails a specific truth about human behavior- we need limits. If there is no arbiter of limits, no God to whom we submit ourselves, we look for ways to impose them upon others. That’s why even the folks on NPR who are die hard atheists will use words like “morality” in order to push their particular agenda, despite having taken the stand that there is no objective reality. So where then does “morality” come from if everyone can come up with their own particular belief system? That’s why they always turn into carpet gnawing lunatics if anyone shows so much as a grin of disdain for their pet causes.
Great article.
There are many examples given in the bible; signs of a bad religion. Church leaders impose rules they don’t follow. They curtail individual freedom and even prohibit folks from marrying. They raid widow’s homes.
I suppose that somewhere in there is the church that keeps raising the bar.
That is the whole point of this article, morans, (Not HF) read it over. This article is like that clear-eyed evaluation; Strip Mining. It all began with the pagan GAIA witches seeking to ‘save’ the earth.
They keep finding new things to avert the destruction of the earth. They should ask, like the wise rich man did:
16 And behold, a man came up to him, saying, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” 17 And he said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments.” 18 He said to him, “Which ones?” And Jesus said, “You shall not murder, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, 19 Honor your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 20 The young man said to him, “All these I have kept. What do I still lack?” 21 Jesus said to him, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” 22 When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.
climate change, reduce co2, stop breathing….. even an idiot could do that
They left out one of the best ways- stop importing third world bottom feeders to first world countries where they and all their descendants will use substantially more energy.
I like you better when your unemployed, KaD. Are you back on that “hope they die before they get to our borders”?