From: perry@apollo.hp.com (Jim Perry)
Subject: Re: Jesus & the Sin of the World
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 14:24:35 GMT
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Corporation, Chelmsford, MA

In article <1992Sep1.212511.8879@tc.fluke.COM> emery@tc.fluke.COM (John Emery) writes:
>In article <1992Aug26.130657.7148@ac.dal.ca> hartigan@ac.dal.ca writes:
>>Looks like a condition to me! What happened to unconditional love?
>
>What does the Scripture say?  It says "God so loved the world that He
>gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish
>but have eternal life" (John 3:16).
>
>It is for *whoever* believes.  No stipulations except believes that Jesus
>died for them, confessing their sins.

Well, there's actually a whole stack of stipulations: belief that
there is a God, belief that we "sin", belief that this condition is
our own fault, belief that were we not to do so we could live forever
in some future state, belief that we are incapable of doing so
ourselves, through our own fault, belief that a man named Jesus was an
incarnation of aforementioned God, and that his purported death
somehow can cover for our individual sins in a way that we
individually, through our own fault, cannot, and personal acceptance
of that sacrifice, just for starters.

>Analogy:

[Mortgage company analogy deleted for brevity]

This is an interesting analogy, but it's entirely from the perspective
of the Company and the Boss's son, assuming they exist.  Let's see how
it looks to the individual homeowners...

These individuals believe that they don't owe anything on their homes,
because they inherited them from their parents, and have been in the
family for generations, with no known outstanding debt.  There are
those who go around teaching that everyone's home is actually
mortgaged to something called Big time Mortgage, and claim certain
payment terms, but they have no evidence to offer for this position,
and there is no way to distinguish their claims from those who
similarly teach that all homes are the communal property of all people
or that everyone should leave their homes and live in tents.  Yet
others claim that while Big Time was involved in the original purchase
of the homes, the debt has been paid off already or is forgiven for
those who maintain the homes properly.

There are those in particular who wander around telling this story
about Big Boss's son, who makes a benevolent offer to redeem their
mortgage, if only they believe certain things.  For instance, they are
to believe that there is in fact a mortgage, that Big Boss and his son
are not just fictitious characters, that this particular story is
correct while the competing versions are wrong.  As this is a question
of belief, not action, there is the additional problem that the story
is to be accepted entirely on faith, without evidence, for instance a
loan form, bill, or payment book.  These BigBossSonists claim to speak
on behalf of the Boss's son who makes this benevolent offer, but the
son himself doesn't come around or show himself.  When questioned on
this they will produce an ancient and yellowing tract in the form of a
comic book in which some claim to read these things about Big Boss's
son.  However most of the comic is actually about the particular
financial relationship, part of a smaller project by Big Boss/Big Time
involving only one particular neighborhood.  There is a small section
stapled on the back which records some stories about a representative
of the Big Boss who claimed to have some instructions and new terms
for that neighborhood.  Attached to that are a series of post-it's
which make the claim that that representative was the son of the Big
Boss come to forgive all debt for all people, though this involves not
only reinterpreting most of the comic, but also treating the whole
thing as non-fiction.

Now it is certainly true that if the post-it reinterpretation of the
comic book is true, then it falls into place that there is a Big Time
Mortgage company, a Big Boss, there are in fact mortgages on our
homes, and we are offered a way of avoiding paying our legitimate
debts; it would then be most sensible to accept the offer.  However,
many folks don't see any reason to suspect that there is a Big Time, a
Big Boss, a mortgage, an offer, or that the comic book is any truer
than Captain Marvel.  Even most of the people who do believe those
things can't offer any such reasons (except the above line of thought:
"if it *is* true, it would be good to act on it"; unfortunately there
is no way of distinguishing this interpretation of this comic from a
whole bunch of other conflicting interpretations and comics).

Ah, argument by analogy can be such fun, and so creative...  Not
necessarily productive, but entertaining.
-- 
Jim Perry   	    	    	    Distributed Object Computing Program
perry@apollo.hp.com	    	    Hewlett-Packard Co., Chelmsford MA
This is the way the breakfast ends, not with a wimp but a banger.