Universal Salvation per David Bentley Hart.

I was a little boy once, not to mention a bit of a wiseacre in school (but completely harmless, even in my transgressions). But the fear of punishment, especially for boys, I think is absolutely vital. The punishment should be reasonable. But it should be swift and sure.

I don’t think we can ever get around that. Fear of punishment is why it is safe for anyone (relatively so) to take take their families out on the highways in their car. The fear of punishment (thank goodness) keeps reckless driving to a minimum.

One certainly might find creative ways to incentivize good behavior. Tax codes are kinda-sorta written to do that in places. And “If you clean your room, you can go to the movies with your friends” does that as well. But you stand a better chance of that son or daughter coming back from the movies in one piece if they know there will be swift and sure punishment for grabbing a six-pack and going boating on the lake instead.

The bottom line to all these earthly punishments and incentives in regards to government was stated succinctly by Edmund Burke: “Their passions forge their fetters.” This is why libertarianism will always be a losing proposition in regards to limited government. If one will not control one’s own behavior then you can be sure the government will step in to do so.

One can be sure that children who have shown themselves to act responsibly are given much more leeway by their parents than the child who is constantly trying to dishonestly find his way around limits.

Cosmically, again, I assume the Creator is not beholden to what I think is just or fair. If it turns out that Hitler is pardoned and I enter the Pearly Gates and find him playing canasta with a clutch of Jews at a table, I’ll shrug my shoulders and move on, figuring that the Management must have a good reason. But one would understand if my reaction was, “And I was sweating all those years about stealing a candy bar when I was young? Oh, if I’d only known, I would have had a grand time at other people’s expense.”

Not that my behavior is restrained by fears of hell or the carrot of heaven. I don’t think it is. But certainly implanted in our minds is a conscience that comes from somewhere. And much of that conscience is instilled by fear of punishment, at least of the earthly variety.

Lynnonoymous, I used my omnipotent powers as Editor to fix your quote problem. They have a pill for that now.

At least of the earthly variety ... yes, as an earlier stage of moral development per Kohlberg.

I've always suggested that I'm very happy that certain folks, at certain stages of moral development, are in fact in church on Sundays, especially if they happen to be motivated by the fear that they'd otherwise be cast into hell, because, if they weren't in church, many of those same folks would otherwise be busy burglarizing the houses of their fellow worshippers.

Our human moral & spiritual formation is dynamical, developmental, staged with a trajectory and ... well ... it's only due to the fact that wo/men are not angels and that most of us spend the greatest part of our lives in the early stages of moral development that we need government, in the first place. Hence, our libertarian impulses set practical defaults and proper biases in an "all things being otherwise equal" sort of way and not as some absolute principle that ignores the vagaries of our human condition.

All that recognized, there's a principle of proportionality that should be in play: If hell is a fact, and Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin & Pol Pot occupy a wing, how could anyone have ever taught that there are kids sharing that wing for eating meat on Fridays, masturbating on Saturdays, missing church on Sundays? That's a bridge too far.

Even the worst human evils, which are temporal & finite, do not seem to warrant an infinite & eternal punishment, in my view. To suggest that this amounts to questioning the Lord's mysterious ways is a cop out; after all, our human moral sensibilities have to have been largely informed by a God of reason, Who'd not have left us with such a radical degree of moral perplexity as to be so totally & woefully out of touch with eternal notions of goodness and justice! Rather, would God, however S/He's conceived, not condescend just enough to show us those paths of goodness & justice, even including such novel ideas, to some anyway, as mercy & forgiveness?

I had a talk with my surrogate pastor today. I don’t go to his service but I go to their monthly food-and-fellowship. He rents the floor upstairs for his church. I’m the caretaker of the building.

It’s a predominantly black church but, for the most part, nobody sees color. But it certainly has that “black church” vibe, sort of the energetic variety you see in the Blue Brothers. They can get a wompin’ and a stompin.” The Lord ain’t deaf, but if he’s a little hard of hearing, he’ll hear this congregation, for sure.

The pastor was telling me the sales pitch he recently used on some yutes. He invited them to his church and they told him something like “We don’t need none of that stuff.” The pastor told them it was thanks to God that they exist and that they even wake up in the morning. He noted to these kids how many kids in the world (through whatever cause) don’t wake up.

It was an interesting approach. I like this guy because he’s not particularly namby-pamby. Most of all, he’s a good man. I would go to his church if I went to a church. But, of course, I don’t. So I do sometimes, but not really. It’s really very simple.

He’s a teeny bit too much “prosperity gospel” for me. But he does preach moral lessons. (Believe me, I can hear them from downstairs.) I can sympathize because people want do know what they’re going to get not what they can’t do. If I was a pastor I’d have maybe 3 members because “thou shalt not” is not popular these days. You need to tell people how God is going to shower them with the blessings of money, a good, job, etc. And it’s not that these things aren’t important. But there was something written once about a camel and the eye of a needle.

The pastor was almost apologetic speaking to me about all his “brothers” that need the Word in order to stay out of trouble or to get their lives back in order because they’ve been in trouble. I eased his mind and told him, “Black or white, rich or poor, I don’t know of anyone who doesn’t need moral lessons in this society that is littered everywhere with crud.” He agreed with that.

Down in the trenches, I don’t think anyone but intellectuals are concerned about universal salvation. Each person is his own universe and, of course, he’s going to be worried about himself. But in the trenches, there is no universal breadth of behavior that is going to keep one on the straight and narrow. God is said to have built his church on a rock. People need their own houses to be put in order, and they need something more than the sand of broad theories. And I don’t see how in any way, shape, or form watering down the notion that good-behavior-averts-penalties is going to help anyone.

My philosophy, Mr. Kung — I think it’s an obvious observation — is that life is mostly about making choices that have little to do with right and wrong. If I eat chocolate ice cream instead of vanilla, that’s not a cause for vanilla-lovers to be concerned or to take offense.

In the context of Marxism/Leftism today which tries to insert a political dimension into everything, I’m sure by preferring chocolate I’m contributing to “climate change.” Or vice versa with vanilla. It’s hard to keep track.

In fact, this is a good point to insert the topic of superstition. Both Neo-Darwinism and “climate change” are superstitions. I can unpack the Neo-Darwinism component more fully if needed. Yes, overall, there has been evolution if only you consider that several billion years ago there apparently was nothing but blue-green algae and now we have human beings. And, yes, micro evolution does occur. But other than that, we cannot say anything authoritative. We can only forward creeds. And, ultimately, I’ not sure we can do much with human opinions regarding salvation.

As much as we might like to apply to Cosmic standards, beyond The Ten Commandments and a few other rules, most of life exists within the nitty-gritty of a fine-grained social network that is a realm of its own and has a mind of its own. It can be no coincidence that those those who seek God the most tend to segregate themselves away into cloisters and monasteries. To separate ultimate right-and-wrong from every-changing social norms is an almost impossible task.

One of the interesting articles I read lately (and I shared it here somewhere, I think) noted how our society today is ordered almost completely for choice and self-expression, "free will" having been made into an idol. A conservative looks at this and goes, “Oh….put some clothes on and clean up.” The other side has little or no problem with vast quantities of people using city streets as their toilet. Once you get on that “Anything goes/self-expression uber alles” bandwagon then truly “Who am I to say no?” disables the needed immune system of Vitamin N (aka “no!”). So we have men posing as women and beating the women at their own sports. We have a bazillion various “genders” and pronouns that no one can figure out. That’s fine, because being offended is also part of the game.

A good society has always been about a networks of “Thou shalt nots.” If punishments have often been too harsh, the liberal idea of getting rid of them entirely has its pitfalls as well. (See: Streets of San Francisco or Seattle.) A society with a utopia slant that believes human expression and micro-grained identity are the idol to be prayed to still needs a moral framework. And that framework today is grievance, environmentalism, and anti-capitalism. Those are driving the game.

For the most part, Christians and others have been left to either oppose it or, more often, accommodate it. Much of Christianity has become little more than a poverty program, the great sin being “income inequality.” Never mind that Jesus said we would always have the poor. Never mind that St. Francis saw poverty as an absolute virtue.

The “thou shalt nots” are being replaced by the “thou can do whatever the hell you want as long as you recognize the victimhood status of women and non-white people, believe that environmental concerns trump all other concerns, and that socialism eventually must replace freedom and the free market.” Oh…and “don’t be judgmental” (accept regarding that trinity of grievance, environmentalism, and anti-capitalism).

This is what troubles me about “universal salvation.” I see it as an offshoot of this accommodation of the Left. Still, I’m not saying it’s not possible, for how would I or anyone else know? As such, can it ever be much more than a flattering notion, a form of virtue signaling? I think it’s much easier to be “inclusive” than to draw a line in the sand and say “This side and not that side.” And you can justify the opposite outlook in a thousand aways because, yes, many people have drawn lines in all the wrong places. But I say to draw smarter lines, not erase them altogether.

I think that’s a huge topic onto itself, 1 Timothy Reviews&Things. But I believe forum space here is free, so there’s no constraints in that regard.

The remarkable thing is that we do appear to have a conscience, a basic set of moral inclinations or beliefs. It’s not the same for everyone. And this tends to be a small influence compared to groupthink and self-interest. But there does seem to be something there — something that even defies the all-encompassing survival pragmatism of “evolution”.

But it is there. It’s at the root of the term “I did such-and-such against my better judgment.” It’s that niggling doubt, the hammering of the Tell-Tale heart. Alcohol, drugs, power, rationalizations, and other forces can very easily push those doubts aside. But often they do not die completely.

Guilt can certainly be habitually learned from one’s culture about nearly anything. Even so, no matter how hard Satan tries to use the Left to implant the idea that abortion is completely a-ok, it doesn’t ever really set well, even with proponents. You can tell they know something is wrong by the way they react to simple things like facts. God forbid you show them a sonogram, for instance.

I’m not sure it’s clear what is innate and what is learned in regards to the conscience. Different cultures (or families) have different ideas about right and wrong. It’s my understanding that throughout history, right-and-wrong was a function mostly of how it effected one’s tribe.

Either Judaism/Christianity implanted yet another idea of right-and-wrong — ultimately arbitrary but anchored in authority and tradition — or perhaps it was representative of the cloud of forgetfulness lifting, the conscience returning form hiatus in the tribe. Maybe.