Heaven on Earth
I was going over the “Our Father” very slowly with my son, since there is often a tendency for Christians to rush through it without really contemplating the words. When we got to “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven,” I stopped to dwell on just how amazing the world would be, if everybody obeyed God.
I don’t think even standard libertarian anarchists realize just how destructive the State is, and how unimaginably prosperous the world would be as a stateless society.
However, although getting rid of major institutions of theft and violence would be great, that’s arguably a drop in the bucket compared to how inconceivably joyous life would be if nobody ever sinned. Can you imagine how different you would be, if your parents (assuming you knew them) never made a mistake in bringing you up, and none of your peers ever said an unkind word to you growing up? Imagine if you never had a teacher or boss who ever unfairly criticized you or quashed your legitimate ambition?
I’m not saying I can imagine it either. The closest thing I can do is remember how happy I was circa kindergarten. And then it was all downhill from there…
You may remember in previous posts that I suggested that perhaps hell is when, after you die, God shows you the full ramifications of your sins during your life. You see in exquisite detail just how much suffering YOU CAUSED. And then you just sit with that for eternity. I could see that being described as burning in fire forever, and yet it also being perfectly just. You would be in anguish because of your own value judgments, your own conscience applied to your life with razor sharp clarity.
So, if that is true, then take it the opposite. If the present world we live in–awash with sin–is full of the hell-like anguish caused by billions of people, then imagine if you ran it in reverse. Imagine if just one person had lived a sinless life; then all of the countless suffering HE caused would be gone. And so on and so on, billions of times over. (It’s not just the people alive today, but also the people from the past. After all, when Marx e.g. sees the ramifications of his actions, it’s not just going to be the paperboy whom he treated rudely.)
It’s possible that in a world free from sin, the material productivity of our resources would defy our current understanding. Even our bodies would perform at extraordinary levels if we never had a moment of anxiety or stress stemming from social factors.
It would be paradise.
And that makes it all the more heartbreaking that we so habitually ignore God’s rules.
Is this how Christians imagine eugenics?
“It’s possible that in a world free from sin, the material productivity of our resources would defy our current understanding.”
It is interesting that dwelling on a sin-free perfect world, your thoughts turn to material productivity.
Such a world would be an interesting place, and perhaps a form of paradise, but it would look nothing like the world today.
I see two ways to think about it. Either a world in which there had never been sin, or if the world today suddenly became sin free.
Looking at it from one perspective, people are driven to achieve by sins of envy, greed and pride. Without these it is possible that many developments would not have happened, and our productivity would be far short of today’s level.
On the flip side, evolutionary theory tells us that cooperation will be out competed by selfishness, but in the absence of any sin, we would have no selfishness, and hence guaranteed cooperation. It is certainly possible that such a society could have produced wonders beyond our dreams.
Is the definition of sin that you cause suffering or that you intentionally cause suffering? Did Marx really sin because he wrote a book which was then taken by others as justification to commit atrocities? Did Einstein sin because his work led to the atomic bomb and the deaths of millions? Unless you are going to define sinless as perfectly good and with perfect foresight, I’m not sure it would be as big an improvement as you claim (still better of course, but not paradise)
Chris, interesting point – what is sin? We presume that the rest of the world is unchanged by Humans being sinless, so there would still be human suffering through disease, natural events and predation. It cannot be a sin to cause harm inadvertently, if well motivated. If you move a rock but someone trips over it, you have not sinned unless you moved it for that purpose.
But what does being sinless really entail? Since everyone is sinless, helping beggars and the less fortunate would be less of an issue, because you would know that they had arrived at their unfortunate position through no fault of their own. In a world without sin, there would probably be no beggars.
Sins of omission would be tricky. Is it a sin not to help someone when you could do so? Wikipedia says “In Catholic teaching, an omission is a failure to do something one can and ought to do. If an omission happens deliberately and freely, it is considered a sin.”
But how far ought you go to help someone?
If you could save someone’s life with 95% certainty by raising a finger, probably most people would think it wrong if you did not do so because you could not be bothered. But if you could save someone from a lion with 60% certainty, but put yourself at some risk, is it wrong not to? Does living without sin mean that we must treat everyone as equally valuable, including ourselves, so we should offer our lives to save two others (all else being equal)? We would not suffer from the sin of pride, so we would be able to asses our own worth reasonably.
Causing deliberate harm to an animal is surely a sin. I think by extension we would be vegetarian except in times of desperation.
I didn’t even think about sins of omission. That definitely opens up even more challenges. Even if I spend all of my time helping others in need, am I sinning if I didn’t help the right people? Do I have to allocate my charity time efficiently in order to be sinless?
My take is that it is impossible for us to aspire to be without sin, for the reasons you mention. I was taking it as a given that people were sinless and wondering what the world would look like. I find that I cannot work it out.
My wider question is can the human world work without sin, or is it so bound up with human nature that the whole concept of a sinless human society is an oxymoron?
“Is the definition of sin that you cause suffering or that you intentionally cause suffering?”
Neither. To sin is to turn away from God. It WILL cause suffering, but that is its effect, not its essence.
“Did Marx really sin because he wrote a book which was then taken by others as justification to commit atrocities?”
Might be worse than that. His work probably convinced some that stealing wasn’t wrong. That is that he led people astray and may have cost them salvation. He may well be in the “millstone around the neck” , better off never having been born category.
Proverbs 6:30 says “Men do not despise a thief if he steals to satisfy his hunger when he is starving.”
Now the bible is pretty clear generally on stealing, but if someone were to read only that passage they may well believe that stealing was not wrong. Is that the fault of the author of the bible?
By comparison, Marx himself was not sinning *only* because his writing convinced some people that stealing was not wrong, as we can see that the bible could do the same thing.
It surely depends on the intent of the author, whether the writer was negligent and if the reader applies reasonable interpretations.
Perhaps the “better never been born” category does not depend on the individual concerned sinning – can they be innocent, yet still better not born?
It is a tricky category anyway. Anyone who causes just a bit more harm than good could be in that category. Plenty of people believe we are all in that category.
Proverbs 6:30 says “Men do not despise a thief if he steals to satisfy his hunger when he is starving.”
Now the bible is pretty clear generally on stealing, but if someone were to read only that passage they may well believe that stealing was not wrong. Is that the fault of the author of the bible?
Does this matter? Assume your fellow forgives everything. If you don’t repent, do you think you get a pass?
Perhaps the “better never been born” category does not depend on the individual concerned sinning – can they be innocent, yet still better not born?
I was specifically speaking of Matthew 18, Mark 9 and Luke 17. As I understand it, those who lead others astray are in a much worse situation than those who were led astray.
“I don’t think even standard libertarian anarchists realize just how destructive the State is, and how unimaginably prosperous the world would be as a stateless society.”
Dude, how would Al Gore have invented the internet without the state? Pffffbbbbtt.
“how unimaginably prosperous the world would be as a stateless society…”
Thank you. I had lost track of the previous quote demonstrating dreamy utopianism at this blog, so it is good you have posted another.
Oddly, we *know* how prosperous stateless societies are, as we’ve seen plenty of them. And the answer is “Not very.”
We have never seen a stateless society without sin.