Thanks, Cambo!Cambo wrote:1) That your Faith makes sense of everything you see in the world means that it is the right answer for you. I believe, of course, that certain tenets of that faith are wrong. But I wouldn't want to take any hard won answers from you. A willingness to examine and critique the assumptions you hold is indeed a good thing. But that this examination confirms the assumptions merely shows that they are indeed your answers. It says nothing for their rectitude. (Btw, exactly the same can be said of my spiritual beliefs).
2) Now, see, I'd need that lengthy explanantion of your life story to fully understand how your worldview makes sense from your POV. But I accept that it does. People don't adopt faiths and dogmas for no reason. If they are not pushed, they jump. When it comes to Orthodoxy in general, I think I've got a basic grasp. Sexuality was intended by God to be part of the holy union between man and wife. Heterosexual monogamy, in other words, is the only way. Homosexuality is obviously excluded from this, and a sin. But since we are all Fallen sinners, there is no reason to treat homosexuals as any more sinful than the rest of us. They can be accepted, so long as they make the commitment everyone else has to make, to resist the temptation into sin. That seems pretty clear to me. I disagree with it in just about every way possible, but I'm pretty sure I understand. Was that what you were looking for?
3)I'm glad to hear you were'nt impuging my intellectual worth. That is how it sounded to me, however. Perhaps "cut it out" was a bit harsh, but I really do think you need to watch the way you word things sometimes. I would actually agree that most modern assumptions are taken for granted, but I don't see why libertarianism should be a particularly apt example of this. Surely as many social conservatives take as little time to question their own dogmas?
I don't think arrogance is based on a sense of personal worth or merit. I think those things are very healthy things to have, much more important, in fact, than being right. I am worthy and meritorious. Sometimes I am right, sometimes I am wrong. Neither circumstance has any bearing on my worth or merit. I would say the same for most people.
Where arrogance comes into is when you believe yourself so worthy or meritorious that it makes you better than other people. And if you're better than other people, and you disagree with them, then obviously you must be right. This is where our misunderstanding came from. The assertion that your philosophy was "complete and conscious" and that mine "may also be" but that "remains to be shown" seemed to place you in a position of established worth, and my own worth something that must be proven to you. In short, it set you up as my superior. I'm not saying you meant any of this, I'm just saying that's the meaning your words conveyed.
So, can you have pride without arrogance? I would say so. I would say a group of people who know they possess worth and merit, but exist in a society that refuses to acknowledge it, are expressing pride when they march on the streets. Gay pride doesn't (in my experience) claim that gay is better than straight. As worthy as straight would be closer. Now, you're not a big fan of relativism, I know. But try a thought experiment with me. You claim not to have pride, but rectitude. Okay. Suppose you and the other people in the right were denied an equal standing in society because everyone else thought you were wrong (which, by the way, most of the world does). But you're right. They are wrong. Why should the right people be oppressed by the wrong people? Surely something should be done about that?
Substitute rectitude for pride, and you have the gay rights movement. Gay people began to realise that they had worth and merit. Further, they began to realise that they had just as much worth and merit as straight people. For straight people to claim they had more worth and merit than gay people was...arrogance. I don't expect you to agree with me on this. But hopefully you'll better understand why "gay pride" parades happen.
On 1), yes, of course - but we are simply going to fight over it, because the base of subjectivism that you appear to be coming from is one that I have found to be thoroughly discredited in an objective sense. (My favorite exposition of that has already been posted here and has never even been refuted by any subjectivist www.calvin.edu/~pribeiro/DCM-Lewis-2009 ... tivism.doc ) Indeed, as soon as we admit the world to be an objective thing where we can interact with other nouns not of our making, it is obvious that the nature and origin of both that world and man cannot be subjective. Thus, the whole "true for you" and "true for me" falls apart. While certainly some things certainly ARE subjective (especially regarding individuals), this cannot be true about the nature and purpose of man.
2) Yes, thank you very much. I wish more people here could say as much.
3) Well, I think the basic idea that a person can consider their position to be truely and completely right and others' therefore not completely right or even flat-out wrong to be to be shocking, and the biggest reason for this, imo, is the base assumptions of individualism and subjectivism today. If truth were purely individual and subjective, then it would be unreasonable to insist that there IS objectivity and that it can be knowable. And yes, certainly, what you call social conservatives (and all other labels on the spectrum, which I no longer accept or use) mostly do not question (in the sense of consciously learn and understand) what their dogmas are. Only I don't see myself as a "conservative". To my family in the states, I am seen as a 'liberal', due to my international connections and experience.
I think practically the opposite. I do NOT think that I have no value and should go and shoot myself. But I do think that God has a much better sense of my personal worth than I do, and on an honest face-to-face assessment - a much harder thing to my mind than most of us imagine) He would be far more merciful than I would in His shoes.I don't think arrogance is based on a sense of personal worth or merit. I think those things are very healthy things to have, much more important, in fact, than being right.
If you are in a life-threatening situation, I would say being right is far more important than having a sense of personal merit. And I think we are, collectively, in a life-threatening situation, both temporally and in the eternal sense.
This is where our misunderstanding comes from as I see it. Why on earth must I think myself better than you in order to be right? Going back to the example of Jor-El from Superman, I'd say that he had no sense of personal superiority or of being "better" than his fellow Kryptonians. And yet, in the story, he was right, despite being in an underwhelming minority. The Orthodox equivalent would be the story of Maximus the Confessor.Where arrogance comes into is when you believe yourself so worthy or meritorious that it makes you better than other people. And if you're better than other people, and you disagree with them, then obviously you must be right.
Again, I said nothing about your own philosophy, which is being revealed in bits and pieces here, of course, as mine is to you. In my case, I am not the ultimate source of the philosophy I accept, so I can point to something much better than me - the Church, and say "Come and see!" But I do find it to be complete, conscious and consistent. (Alliteration alert!)
I do understand why people calling for "gay pride" do what they do. I am aware that it is a spiritual war, and that one side or the other must win in temporal terms (I don't need to worry about eternity there, but am here in this temporal world for a reason, even if it is only to fight a losing battle). Here I'd have to note that what I see as essential temporal political action is not Orthodox teaching - it is not what the Orthodox Church is about - it is a logical extension of that teaching. Other Orthodox Christians may disagree on the proposals for political action. What they can't disagree on is Church teaching. But the point there is that what I propose politically is a thing separate from what the Church teaches. The Church will get along somehow even under terrible persecution (as it has before) - but it means awful times for Christians that are serious about what they believe when that goes down, and so I would prevent that if I could.
So I expect one side to be "oppressed" by the other. It cannot be otherwise. The ACLU and federal government WILL oppress traditional Christians if this so-called "lifestyle" is granted as a legitimate way of being in society. I don't need to struggle to imagine this when it is already happening. So I only want the right side to win, so that only the wrong view is oppressed. They cannot co-exist. There is no 'happy medium' that has all living side-by-side in peace. If homosexual acts are not outlawed then (most of) the people who do them will demand legitimacy. When they do that, persecution of the view that it is illegitimate is inevitable.
So again, I do understand why my best friend from childhood - a pro-gay activist - does what he does, and I deny arrogance in asserting truth in something from a source bigger than myself. He is wrong and I am right - unfortunately, perhaps, for both of us. And I am certainly not better than he. I wish we COULD have a happy medium where we could both be right, and laugh over our differences. But that would be embracing falsehood.
