Life: A Commentary (standard:other, 3278 words)
Author: Sare	Added: Nov 22 2001	Views/Reads: 3416/2500	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A perspective and commentary on life.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

plea that "We need help!" by saying, "That's why I gave you each 
other." Seems counter-productive to me. 

I read something great by the author M. Stanley Bubien, called "The
Answer of Theodicy" that I think is a brilliant answer to an age-old 
question: 

"If God exists," the philosopher questioned, "why do bad things happen
to good people?" Eyes clouded, Joshua stooped and wrote on the ground. 
"Why do good people do bad things?" he answered. 

I've quoted the philosopher David Hume here before: 

(1) God is omnipotent, but does not want to prevent suffering.
Therefore, God is malevolent. (2) God is benevolent, but cannot prevent 
suffering. Therefore, God is impotent. (3) God is benevolent, and 
omnipotent. Yet, there is suffering. Why? 

I think this may sum up the whole reason for my studying Philosophy and
Religious Studies. I need to know why. 

The traditional Judeo-Christian answer (for the concept of God as
benevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient is something found only in the 
Jewish and Christian religions, and not in, say, Islam) is that God is 
allowing human beings to exercise their free will (ie., from the Garden 
of Eden onward). My personal view, shared by many of the religious 
scholars and philosophers that I've studied, is this: the suffering of 
an innocent human being has no rational explanation, so don't try to 
explain it away by saying God allows or condones it. 

The world isn't so bad??? We build bombs that spend years causing
cancer. Our children bring guns to school and shoot their classmates. 
People bomb office buildings and doctors' offices and federal 
buildings. We fly airplanes into buildings! We spend millions of 
dollars every year trying to build guns that make bigger holes in 
people, bombs that will tear off more limbs, chemicals that will cause 
worse diseases! At the touch of a few buttons the world would no longer 
exist. Maybe that's for the best. 

Who exactly is “we”?  Well, the United States built the atomic bomb that
for years caused cancer in Japan. I don't know their names, but the 
kids who shot the other children in the Columbine incident, for one, 
are "our" children. 

As a general rule, I use "we" to define HUMAN BEINGS. We all are human
beings, and that's all we are. Don't think you can exclude yourself 
from "We fly airplanes into buildings" because you don't happen to be 
from Afghanistan or a supporter of bin Laden's. I don't care if you are 
or not. He's a human being, I'm a human being, you are a human being. 
We are all human beings. 

I know that's there's good in the world. When I hold my niece in my arms
and look at her little face... when I read poetry written by the man 
with whom I am in love... when I see raindrops and snowflakes and 
lilacs... But each and every day I am bombarded by the things in the 
world that aren't good.... that are terrible and awful and horrible. 
And I refuse to accept them. 

But the point I was trying to make, and the question I wanted to ask, is
this: How can we ask our children to accept them? How can we bring them 
into this world of heartache and pain and suffering? If the day ever 
comes when I do have children, how can I ever look them in the eye and 
explain what a bomb is and what it's for? How could I ever explain what 
rape is, what racism is, what suicide, abuse, incest, murder are? How 
can we subject such tiny, innocent creatures to this world? 

We have children for such selfish reasons.  Yes, selfish reasons.
Because we want to give them what we didn't have: love, support, 
stability. Because we want to have someone to love, to hold, to take 
care of. Because we want to show that we can be good parents, that we 
can shelter our children from the world's evils and keep them safe. 

But we cannot. We cannot shelter them well enough, take care of them
long enough, give them what we want to so badly. We cannot. 

Ok, so you adopt a baby... but the day will come when you have to
explain things to them... could you do it? I couldn't. I know that I 
could never listen to my child ask me, curiosity and wonder in their 
voice, "Mommy, what is rape?" and be able to answer them. "Mommy, what 
does suicide mean? Mommy, why do people die? Mommy, why did my friend's 
daddy hit her mommy?" 

Maybe I will never hear a child call me Mommy. But at least I will never
have to answer them those questions. 

***** 

I have for quite a while been a very vocal critic of this American ideal
of "freedom of speech". Of course I believe that people need to speak 
out about things. Violence, injustice, inequality, should never be 
silenced. Of course, I'm not saying that I or anyone else should be the 
judge who gets to draw a line between what deserves expression. But 
like Cyrano mentioned in his post, there should be a point when we 
refuse to accept garbage as an expression of freedom of speech. 

There are already conditions imposed on this "freedom". Racism, sexual
harassment, etc. are all terms we use to restrict the actual amount of 
"freedom" one has to express themselves. "Yes, you may say that you 
hate someone. But you mustn't say that you hate them because they're a 
n****r." Political correctness. I mean, come on. You shouldn't say that 
because it's indecent, not because some politicians thought up the 
concept of correctness. Like they're all fine upstanding, correct 
people themselves. 

In a discussion on "The Merchant of Venice" in my Religious Themes in
Literature class this afternoon, my professor and I had a debate about 
whether Shylock's moral attitude was enough to merit his punishment. I 
argued that a person's morality is irrelevant as compared to their 
actions. You can be morally reprehensible and yet never act on it. 
Perhaps for that you would earn some sort of divine correction or 
punishment but does that mean you should be punished here on earth? Of 
course not. Yes, you can blame an act of evil or of hatred on your 
inherent morality. That doesn't excuse it. 

Claiming freedom of speech is a way of denying accountability for your
words. You make a claim or a statement that may be morally 
unacceptable. Someone like me calls you on it, and all you can come up 
with as a defense is, "Well, it's a free country, I can say what I 
want." 

What happens if it isn't "a free country," and you're actually held
accountable for every word that passes your lips? Hiding morality (or a 
lack thereof) behind a supposed freedom is simply a form of cowardly 
denial. 

In this forum there is quite a bit of attacking people for what they've
said. I'm sure I've been guilty of it, too. But the most important 
thing to remember, I think, is that you can't hide. The fact that you 
have the ability and the freedom and the "right" to say something, 
doesn't make it acceptable or appropriate for you to do so. 

Perhaps I am not the best person to get into this discussion because I
don't believe praying to God for anything will serve any useful 
purpose. You can bet that the end of the world will find me with my 
arms around someone to comfort them and not on my knees whispering a 
fruitless prayer to God. I'm not particularly concerned with the state 
of my soul after I die, I am far more concerned with the state of the 
world that I am forced to live in. 

I do not condemn the man who shoots the intruder. I don't applaud him,
either. I condemn the world that it is such a place, where homeowners 
with families have guns to "protect" them, and people are killed 
because they are stupid enough to intrude in someone's home. I have no 
patience for stupidity. 

In "The Merchant of Venice", Shylock and Antonio sign a contract stating
that if Antonio doesn't pay back the money he is borrowing within a 
certain amount of time, Shylock gets as his payment a pound of 
Antonio's flesh. I shan't spoil the ending for you, but Shylock 
definitely doesn't get his pound of flesh, and this is, apparently, in 
the name of justice and mercy. I argued in class that Antonio was 
stupid enough to sign the contract and should have had to suffer the 
consequences. "Does that mean he deserved to die, Sarah?" my professor 
asked incredulously. "What about mercy?" I'm sorry, but if you're 
stupid enough to sign your life away, you ought to suffer the 
consequences. There was a big debate about it. I was, for the most 
part, only playing the devil's advocate in an effort to get people 
angry (it worked), but in a way I believe it. If you sign your life 
away, if you give someone power over you, you have to deal with that. 

Someone told me, upon hearing me say that, "That's not a very Christian
attitude." I said, "I don't happen to be a Christian." Which is true. 
More and more I'm moving away from the hypocrisy of the Church. Most 
days, I believe that God exists, in some way. Many days I think it's 
all God's fault. But even if God does exist, you can be sure I'm not 
praying. Especially not (and I'm sorry to those offended by this) for 
the United States or the soul of any nation. The United States can 
handle itself. I only wish we weren't being dragged along behind, like 
the little brother your mother insisted you take along to the park. 

I don't sit on my fence waving a Canadian flag, but I'll be damned if
I'll let Old Glory fly over my head. 

Frankly, there are a lot of things that I consider garbage which I
certainly wish I hadn't read. 

Further, I'm not condemning people for saying what they think or feel.
My criticism is that they say what they think or feel and then refuse 
to be accountable for it by hiding behind their freedom of speech. 

Of all the things my parents taught me, some on purpose, and some just
by my growing up refusing to be like them and make the same choices 
they've made, what I value most is that my father taught me to always 
take responsibility for my actions, to always be accountable to myself. 
If I ever do I have children I hope I can instill that in them. 

***** 

Between 1941 and 1944, there were 300 million people living under German
occupation. 

* more than 90% of these were raised as Christians, and 70% considered
themselves to be “very” or “somewhat” religious. 

* a “Righteous Gentile” was a Christian who helped the Jews without
demanding anything in return. 

* there were about 250,000 “Righteous Gentiles”. This is less than
one-tenth of one percent of 300 million. 

* those 250,000 “Righteous Gentiles” saved about 250,000 Jews. 

* had just one whole percent of the Christians living in Europe under
German occupation been “Righteous Gentiles”, they could have saved 6 
million Jews. 

* approximately 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. 

Apathy. Indifference. The world is characterized by these things. They
aren’t happening to me, so I don’t need to do anything about them. I am 
just one person, what could I do? So I will do nothing. 

The above statistics were quoted to me today by my “Evil and Sin”
professor. I looked in his book at the reference. They’re real stats. 
It made me feel sick. 

I am not a great person. I have faults and frailties and am a total
b*tch sometimes. I am selfish and crude and arrogant and insensitive. 
But I will not sit here, living my meaningless, selfish, arrogant life. 
I refuse to accept that the world “just is” this way. 

People die, and other people kill them. Human beings hurt other human
beings. On purpose. You hurt me so I will hurt you back. You hurt 
someone I know, so I will hurt you back. You hurt someone who was from 
the same city as me, so I will hurt you back. You hurt someone who was 
from the same country as me, so I will hurt you back. YOU HURT ANOTHER 
HUMAN BEING, so I will hurt you back. You’re a human being, too. And 
all the other people who live in the same country as you, they’re human 
beings, too. But I will hurt you, and I will hurt them, because you 
hurt me and I can hurt you back. 

I was hurt very badly a few years ago. People used to try to make me
feel better by telling me that I wasn’t alone, that other people had 
gone through what I was going through, that other people had felt just 
as I now felt. I refused to listen to them, didn’t want to hear it. I 
never knew quite why until today. Really. 

We live in little cocoons. We go about our lives and do the things we
do, live the way we live, and we don’t really think too much about 
other people if we can help it. We assume that they are far removed 
from us, and we say things like “Isn’t it awful about the war in 
Rwanda? Isn’t it terrible about the fighting in Ireland?” It hits 
closer to home and we hold our children closer, kiss our husbands and 
wives when we say goodbye, sit riveted to our televisions and eat up 
everything we can about the terrible tragedy. 

The reason I couldn’t stand to hear about other people suffering the way
I suffered is that I can’t bear to know that other people have hurt 
this much. If it was just me it was okay... I could handle a world 
where this happened to me and I had to deal with it and then get on 
with my life. Yes, it happened to me. But that doesn’t really motivate 
me to do anything other than get better. 

But there are other people out there who hurt. Women and girls who have
been raped, children who have been molested, sodomized. Women and 
children whose husbands and fathers beat them! This happens every day 
and those people are human beings! 

They’re human beings who hurt, who hurt all the time. What kind of world
lets that happen, what kind of people let it happen, what kind of God 
lets that happen? 

One of the most touching things I’ve ever read was about the Massacre at
Tiananmen Square in Beijing, in 1989. The students were crowded into 
the square, and the tanks were coming. The citizens of Beijing who 
lived around the square came out of their homes, risking their lives, 
to protect those students. “These are the children of our nation,” they 
said, “and we will not let you kill them.” Hundreds and hundreds of 
people defending and protecting the children of their country. There is 
a very famous photograph of a man in a white shirt standing in front of 
a tank with his arm raised in a signal to “Stop”. 

We should all be so brave.


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