you brought it on yourself miss twiddle

The problem is that you see people whom you knew were probably conservative but didn't actually *know* were, and whom you respect and like a lot, because they were your high school cello teacher, and have given you a lot of opportunities to play over the years (even though they gave you terrible advice and a recommendation that probably hurt more than it helped when you were applying for undergraduate and you may or may not be bitter over that). Anyway, you can see that such a person has joined a "Support Arizona and Stand Against Illegal Immigration" group whose page is full of pretty nasty hyperbole about protesters against SB 1070 and really despicable comments about the Raza programs in Tucson. And sometimes that makes one sad.

I had been having an urge to read "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" again, so last night I ditched Plato for Jonathan Edwards. I think it is because it is finally autumny out, and I always associate fall with Thanksgiving and hence with Puritans.*

Now I've been reading variously from his sermons, and, it's all in the same very powerful and very creepy vein. Even the more cheerful, or at least, more encouraging ones seem to be setting up the listeners for misery. For example, he writes (says? -- these may be through-composed, so to speak, but they are meant for performance and are certainly written at the listener. Were they all given, or did he write some sermons that he never gave? I should actually do some research.) that if you are touched by Grace, you will become wise and prudent; that in fact, it can happen in a sort of overnight transformation from foolishness to plain wisdom. On the one hand, this would tend to promote a certain kind of pretense of prudence and godliness, but on the other hand, an individual would be bound to realize or suspect that s/he was only pretending, and so I can't help imagine New England villages full of agonized hypocrites. (I suppose Hawthorne thought so.) It is at any rate easy to see where the accusation of "precise, whimsical and hypocrites" would tend to come from.

Or these bits, from the rather thrillingly entitled "Eternally Undone by One Thought of the Heart"

"God may Leave Persons that he Punishes by forever witholding his Conv. Grace from them. Some he in his sovereignty Continues under means of Grace or under some strivings of his Spirit so as to Put them upon seeking Conversion, and yet he Punishes their sin by forever denying them success to Means and to their seeking. … [S]ome may seek Repent and pardon Carefully and with tears and yet God may forever withold it from them in wrath…"

"Every sin as we have observed already deserves the Penalty of the Law which is death and the Curse of God on this Life and that which is to Come, and therefore Every Particular sin and Even Every sin of thought deserves this Curse, viz. being Eternally Left of God to Continue in sin and to Perish at Last. If it were so that there were any men that never had Committed but one sin, God is not bound to such a man not to Inflict this Punishment, viz. Eternally to Leave him without Repentence and Pardon. God has Reserved his sovereignty to himself in this matter he Remains arbitrary."

Generally, I do not like opinions of the form "I can't believe in a God who would/does X." Because generally, the idea of a god is that he was there before you were, and is a whole lot more powerful than you are, and if he happens to exist, it's just too bad for you if you don't like the way he does things. And for someone who does believe in such a god, presumably the above are considered to be true. But, in an ethical religion, there can, I suppose, be a question of whether the god is acting justly, or in accordance with What Is Right.

But I don't think that even that is a legitimate objection to Mr. Edwards' theology. His god does seem to be acting in accordance with Justice. (Although, if God created the world, and is the one constant thing in it, is there any absolute standard not created by Him? That sort of pokes a big hole in the God-approves-of-it-because-it-is-good and not it-is-good-because-God-approves-of-it argument, so much for Socrates/Plato, then!) It's simply hard for me to imagine living in a belief system where it is only a matter of time before the hand opens and you tumble down to the infernal eternal, particularly when the one possibility you have for an out, viz. (to borrow a phrasing) Repentance and Pardon, might be denied to you in spite of your best efforts at it. And this kind of system is, inevitably, one where you are set up to lose.

Certainly, I have a kind of gleefully morbid interest in this kind of belief-system for that reason. I think that I also find it fascinating because it is such a "pure form" of religion. It lays out an unpleasant and borderline hopeless situation with very little to comfort of buck up the individual believer. But it still succeeds, sort of, although I suppose this strict Calvinist kind of worldview isn't too common anymore.

I also wonder if I am thinking a lot about sin today because I fudged a practice-room card against the possibility that my quartet wouldn't be able to find an open room. In the end, we didn't need it, but I am still feeling like a bit of a terrible rule-breaker.


*I do know that the colonists with whom Thanksgiving is concerned were by and large Congregationalists/Separatists and not Puritans.