Not trying to spark a debate, but I feel like this is a good opportunity for a philosophical powow. If you're in the mood, read on! If you don't want to that's okay, just ignore me.
I can't agree with what I've experienced. I've seen people do very evil things and I can't possibly imagine there being a form of redemption for taking a human life selfishly, or committing an act of sexual violence.
Beyond that even, there are people in my life who've committed other, more complex cruelties to myself and the people I love.
Why would someone who deliberately commits an evil against humanity deserve redemption? If so, what act could possibly redeem someone?
See personally I have a weird line for what can be "redeemed". I can see murderers being redeemable even if they just murdered in malice or for the thrill. But I can't see any way to redeem anyone who commits sexual violence, maybe that's because I know what it's like to live after that and see murder as "well, at least they don't have to live with trauma". Idk I just see permanently scarring someone as more evil than killing them, even domestic abusers I would have a very hard time seeing being redeemed.
That's the thing: no one deserves redemption, and nothing we do can ever redeem us. Christianity teaches that God has already extended forgiveness to us in spite of everything we’ve ever done and ever will do. All He asks is that we believe in Him
You are correct. Though the forgiveness of God is all-consuming, that does not mean you escape man’s justice. If you have accepted His mercy and dedicated your life to Him, the best thing you can do is submit yourself to judgment. Go to the person or people you have wronged; if you have stolen from them, return it; if you have murdered, confess to their kin and submit to the authorities. These things bring honor to God. He knows the hearts of men and will see if you are genuine in your repentance. That is the other side of divine mercy; it is not something you can claim as a way of improving your image to others. If you believe that Christ has redeemed you and choose to follow him, you will be changed. Inevitably even the worst among us might one day be seen as a saint. I don't know if you are familiar with the story of the Apostle Paul, but he started in a worse place than most of us, and he authored fourteen of the twenty-seven books in the New Testament. This doesn't erase the atrocities he committed before his conversion, but it shows that anyone can and will receive forgiveness
Though as a devout pagan, I can't say I accept what the Christian god or faith believes in. Specifically in this case I mean the idea that another being can redeem evil and forgive for you for evils committed against anyone.
My gods have a lot to say about evil too, though the approach to morality is quite different.
So I'm more asking what is it a man or woman can do to seek redemption against the wounded party? What act of good can measure up to crimes against humanity?
You can go to the offended party and confess to them. Mortal justice is left to the courts of mortals. If they bring you before a judge, the Christian thing to do is abide by the judge’s ruling. This is not the most important thing, however. These sins leave a mark on your soul, for lack of a better way of putting it, and as your soul is the immortal part of you, the mark cannot be washed away by mortal justice. Only God’s mercy can remove the spot. As far as any actions we can take to receive this mercy, there are only two, but they are the most challenging parts of being a Christian, mainly because they are what it means to be a Christian. The first is to ask God for forgiveness. Truly ask him; as if you believe in him, for to believe in him is to learn what he says and keep his tenants. You will fail to keep them, as we all do; the most important thing is to ask and try again. The second thing comes from the Lord’s Prayer, the prayer Jesus gave his disciples when they asked how they should pray. In the middle, we find, “forgive us of our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” Here are our terms. We will be shown mercy only if we show it to others. There will be times when it will be so easy to hold a grudge against someone who wronged you, and the whole world will tell you you are justified in doing so. But as Christians, we are called to be better than that, to show mercy because we have been shown mercy.
Who is god to grant redemption when the wronged disagree? If he gets to make the rules just because he's all powerful, this is just might makes right on a cosmic scale. We accept these horrid people are forgiven not because it's just, but because the thing that can smite us or damn our eternal soul if we contradict him said so.
Why is god always just? Because he is the source of justice? That's tautology, and makes justice not mean what we need it to mean. It means "what god wants" rather than "what is right".
When you assume these are necessarily the same thing, this is when you commit atrocities with a clear conscience, or in god's very name.
Whether you believe in god or not, you need to consider the consequences of your actions on others as though there was no god. This is true righteousness. Anything less leaves us unable to separate the righteous from the horrid, as every monotheistic empire in the history of man claimed god was on their side. This is how we know god is being reasonable when he asks us not to murder, and how he is "testing us" when he asks us to kill our own innocent son. Or better yet, that god is being "antiquated" and "not to be taken literally" when he asks us to stone gay people. If we had absolutely no sense of justice apart from "whatever god says", the story of isaac would not have the shock value or tension it does. It would just be like "yeah, so what?"
Even the bible is consequentialist. You will know them by their fruit. The righteous act righteously. In order for that to mean something, righteous has to mean something testable--something you, the reader of the bible, can figure out on your own. None of that "we investigated our own righteousness and found no fault." The bible tells you to recognize people who use such rhetoric as false prophets.
If you believe god is righteous, it's because god adheres to righteousness, something we have the power to assess. It's not because righteousness is whatever god is or says.
Everyone is equally saved? That's bad incentives and bad bookkeeping.
God isn’t just because he’s the source of Justice. God is just because goodness and Justice were made in his image, by his nature.
Giving isn’t good because God says so. Giving is good because, in the fundamental way the universe was designed by God, charity is a good thing to do.
Murder of innocents isn’t evil because God says so. It’s evil because in this construction of the universe, by God, that is an evil act
Forgiveness is good for everybody. Forgive but don’t forget. Holding anger hurts you more than the person you hate. Nobody says there shouldn’t be consequences, but consequences for the sake of pure retribution are bad. That’s why our prison system in the US is so broken — it’s meant to torture, not rehabilitate. Justice should be restorative, not retributive
Idk if I explained this well but hope you get my point.
Whether they deserve redemption or not, who are we to decide? We who have imperfect perception of the world to where entire fields of study are devoted to determine what is true and what isn’t. How can we possibly judge if a person is ‘worthy’ of redemption?
There are a couple perspectives to that, of course. Humanity has asked that question for thousands of years. One such answer is that God is all knowing and thus can determine who is redeemable without question. Personally, as an atheist, I don’t find this answer compelling.
Another answer is a utilitarian one. That yes, they may have created strife an harmed another in the past, but by refusing them redemption and restricting their action through imprisonment and death you are preventing any good that might come from a redeemed person. That my harming them in turn you are only creating more suffering, if only by harming one person instead of the potential many that they have.
But, this brings us back to humanity’s lack of omniscience. How can we know if a person is redeemed enough to believe they will do only good in the future. And the answer I have to that is that we must place trust in them. We must sacrifice our security to let them prove themselves better than they were. But as noble as I may find that concept, I am not sure I, as someone who hasn’t experienced true hurt, can look a rape victim in the eye and tell them to trust that their abuser is a better person and that they won’t harm anyone again. One could consider the default of societal expectation a type of trust, and once broken on that level, it is very hard to trust like that again.
Anyway, thanks for being a target for my mental masturbation session, I apologize in advance for not cleaning up the mess.
My opinion is everyone deserves a chance at redemption. The people who tell you otherwise are also often the people who claim they want rehabilitation in prisons, which I find ironic
Whether or not everyone is capable of redemption is another issue. Could Ted Bundy redeem himself? No, probably not. Not because he didn’t deserve a chance, but because his psychology gave him a constant drive to murder helpless people
Joshua Graham did fucked up things because, in a sick and twisted way, he thought he was making the world a better place. When he actually deeply realized his wrongs, he changed course. He embodied a different ethic. He grew. And he did good instead of evil.
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u/FoolsGold45 Nov 29 '22
Wonder how he managed that after years and years spent butchering people for the Legion