05 Jun 2011

Scorn’s Boomerang

Religious 10 Comments

When I say that Jesus is a fount of wisdom, saying things that at first seem like non sequiturs but grow deeper with age, Exhibit A is this:

Judge not, and you shall not be judged. Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you.–Jesus Christ

When I was younger, I just assumed Jesus meant that if you go around shaking your finger at people on Earth, then uh oh you’re in for a nasty surprise when you get to heaven and God gives you a taste of your own medicine.

But as I get older, I think Jesus is telling us how our minds have been designed. If you construct mental weapons with which to blow up people around you, you can’t help but turn them on yourself.

So when I encounter really critical people–like the guy on Facebook who saw the zombie video and told me matter-of-factly that the makeup job was worse than a 12-year-old’s on Halloween–I try not to be insulted. Instead, I focus on pitying that poor guy. Can you imagine how hard it must be to live in his shoes, using that framework to evaluate his life’s accomplishments up till that point?

And don’t say, “Bob, what are you talking about? Some of the most arrogant people I know, are hyper-critical jerks when it comes to others.” Exactly–I conjecture that they are compensating. They need to constantly praise themselves, in order to fend off that merciless voice within them that they have cultivated for decades. After all, they’ve seen firsthand its vicious power to shred anyone in its path.

So heed Jesus’ teaching. It’s not just to gain bonus points once we leave this planet. It’s to improve your life right now.

10 Responses to “Scorn’s Boomerang”

  1. Mattheus von Guttenberg says:

    See, this is the kind of stuff I think us atheists can get behind. Some worldly wisdom about being a good guy, trying not to judge people, etc. I think it’s a wonderful message. This is the kind of stuff you should post on Sundays. It seems like the rest of your Sundays posts always devolve into arguments over historical authenticity, epistemology of divine knowledge, arguments over plausibility, etc that a lot of non-believers bring to the table (because the topic is controversial).

    But this is non-controversial. It’s great wisdom to suggest humility and decency as a means to live your life, no matter the atheistic objections to Jesus, the Bible, etc.

    • Joseph Fetz says:

      Exactly. As an atheist, I have but one question about my life, “can I lie on my deathbed and be free of regret”? Whether you put your faith in God, in life, or in yourself, you must always be cognizant that it is you who knows yourself, it is you who knows the ails of your past deeds. No matter if there is a God, you will always know if you committed a wrongful act upon another, and you will always know if you did so out of fear for your own ego.

      One can escape many things in their life, but one can never escape their own conscience.

      • Joseph Fetz says:

        Well, there are the sociopaths. But, I have an inkling that even they know and struggle with their own misdeeds. Personally, I would rather not even have that to worry about in the first place.

    • knoxharrington says:

      Exactly right and well said. The beautiful thing is that what Jesus is reported to have said does not require divinity to be true.

  2. Avram says:

    Are you saying “Judge not lest e be judged” actually means “Judge not others too harshly lest you end up judging yourself the same way, and getting low self eseem”

    • Avram says:

      Before you get the wrong Idea I’m not setting you up so I can ridicule your interpertation I am just asking if I understood you correctly

  3. Major_Freedom says:

    But as I get older, I think Jesus is telling us how our minds have been designed. If you construct mental weapons with which to blow up people around you, you can’t help but turn them on yourself.

    If the standard by which you criticize other people’s arguments is able to logically apply to your own arguments (such that you can criticize without committing a performative contradiction), and your intellectual demeanor is one that openly welcomes any and all self-referential arguments in response from the people whose arguments you are criticizing (such that you can encourage a common foundation to be made explicit to judge each other’s arguments), then I say one SHOULD be “weaponized,” ready to destroy bad/wrong/incorrect arguments as you see them.

    And don’t say, “Bob, what are you talking about? Some of the most arrogant people I know, are hyper-critical jerks when it comes to others.” Exactly–I conjecture that they are compensating. They need to constantly praise themselves, in order to fend off that merciless voice within them that they have cultivated for decades. After all, they’ve seen firsthand its vicious power to shred anyone in its path.

    Is it possible that a relentless and perhaps visibly off-putting approach of refuting falsehoods whenever one sees them, on the basis of wanting maximum truth to be understood by both oneself and others, be mistaken as a psychological shortcoming of constantly needing to praise oneself due to dealing with one’s “inner demons”?

    Isaac Newton was by all historical accounts exactly like the person you are talking about. Yet he was a brilliant thinker, and, I would argue, someone to look up to.

    This I think leads to the following question: How can you tell the difference between someone who is on a relentless search for truth, and someone who is on a relentless search to praise himself and look down on others? Don’t they appear interchangeable? What if you’re wrong about judging someone and you incorrectly conclude that they are in need of praising themselves and looking down on others, when in reality they are just trying to find truth, regardless of what people think, and regardless of how respected the person they are talking to happens to be?

    If I may, let’s turn your ideas around and apply them back to you, which is what you proposed to be inevitable. When you considered the person who criticized your zombie face paint, you concluded that your intellectual disposition is above theirs, such that your standard for life success is much higher than how good one can paint one’s face. All well and good so far I think. What then if we turn that criticism around on you, which you said is inevitable? Thus, what are you compensating for? What “inner demons” are you dealing with over the last few decades that you feel the need to think to yourself that your standard for what constitutes accomplishment is greater than others, which of course means you are praising yourself? Why do you have the need to feel sorry for others who criticize you, rather than, say, have the need to improve your performance everywhere and always, even if it means spending a Saturday afternoon getting face painting lessons? Why do you need to look down on their standard for life accomplishments, instead of taking their criticism and forming in your mind one area where you have an opportunity to improve? I mean, did you really think that your face paint was awesome and above criticism? If not, then what difference does it make that someone criticized your face paint? Maybe he was a profession make up artist and he just has a thing for pointing out (what he thinks are) bad make up jobs?

    I know what you are saying, and I probably would have scoffed at the guy too, but I’m just redirecting your standard back at you like you said is inevitable anyway, to see just how self-consistent your standard for self-consistent standards really is. Is it?

  4. Anon1315 says:

    What does “good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom” mean?

  5. Anon1315 says:

    This is a really late response, but I think worth considering. The most straight-forward interpretation of the above passage from the NT is “people will treat you as you treat them”. Your claim is that there is a deeper meaning regarding “mental weapons” and “how our minds have been designed”, but what exactly is your evidence that the authors of the NT intended the passage to be interpreted in that particular way?

    How do you know that the hidden wisdom you see in the NT is actually there and not just a figment of your imagination?

    • Anon1315 says:

      P.s. Your zombie makeup was perfect for a parody (it’s not like you were trying to make a horror film). The script and performances were perfect too. Very very funny.