They don’t, but it worries me a bit when they say that everyone does.
Before they come to the epiphany that Joyce describes in this strip, people who suppose that fear of divine punishment is the only reason not to do bad things presumably reckon that I am a very dangerous man to be around.
Axel
And Joyce’s parents did express this (about her being friends with Dorothy)
Dana
The part that worries me is that if you think you need God telling you what to do then you’re using things other than common sense, empathy, and science to figure out how to treat people you might end up using things that are against common sense or empathy, for instance much of most scripture I know of.
Maddieface
2 cents, but I’ve airways assumed religious people like this assume that their empathy derives from their faith. Most of them have never had a point they remember where they didn’t believe to go off of for comparison.
huttj509
Cast in Point, Jordan Peterson saying that Matt Dillahunty isn’t a “real Athiest” because if he were he’d be like Raskolnikov in The Brothers Karamazov and have no empathy, but since he does have empathy, he believes in G-d even if he doesn’t think he believes in G-d.
Ironically, Jordan Peterson wouldn’t know empathy if it bit him on the ass.
Some Ed
Unfortunately, this is not irony.
This is the real issue with the religious life. These people *want* to be good, but because they’re so focused on this other thing, they can’t see what it takes to be good.
In the end, it doesn’t really matter if there really is eternal punishment or not, What matters most is whether you’ve developed this sense of consequence by the time you have a crisis of faith, and doubt the eternal punishment for just a bit. Every religious person has these doubts, and it’s something that they all know about and talk about.
In short, I don’t think it’s possible to be good if you’re only doing it to avoid something that you won’t ever have any evidence of until it’s too late.
3oranges
I think these three words do very well on their own:
“Ironically, Jordan Peterson.”
thejeff
Did Peterson talk about empathy in that exchange or does he just talk about behavior? Can’t remember and can’t really stomach watching any more JP these days.
huttj509
I think it was technically a “sense of morality” or something of that sort.
thejeff
But he probably means something entirely different by that than we think he does.
Kaeto
I think this is the case. Cuz my ex-husband was Convinced he would become abusive and hit or rape me if he wasn’t a Christian. And then he left Christianity and, spoiler alert, he did not. He was the same person, just a little less stressed out with shame and guilt over never being Holy.
Magnus
Having grown up in an environment very similar to Joyce’s upbringing (and David’s, since we all know Joyce has a lot of autobio stuff in her)… yeah pretty much, for evangelical christians. It’s kind of misleading to say “religious people” because there are plenty of religions out there that don’t include this kind of logic. But the point is that you do good (whatever your parse that to mean) both because god wants you to and because you have god and the holy spirit guiding you and providing the DRIVE and DESIRE to do good. Sometimes non-Christians will do good things, but that’s either god working through them (so they really had no say in the matter, in a way), or it was really driven by selfishness.
Jamie
I mean, you say that as if they came up with it on their own.
They didn’t. These people aren’t that creative. That idea was invented by people who were living in what we literally call The Dark Ages.
thejeff
I don’t think they came up with it either. I suspect the genesis goes much farther back – probably at least to the original hierarchical city-states. We see plenty of it even in the older parts of the Old Testament and that ethos is certainly drawn from older roots.
In a way it’s just an extension of parental/child models to a societal scale. Ideally of course the parents will be trying to teach their kids to access their empathy and understand why things are wrong, but for young children the direct effect of parental punishment or even disapproval is the main factor.
The big “advantage” of using God is that you can use it to bypass and override common sense and empathy. How else are you going to convince the masses that those people over there are bad and inferior while you deserve their loyalty as their divinely appointed overlord?
Deanatay
That’s the force that has always countered empathy – the ‘othering’ tendency, our tendency to save on mental storage space by reducing our image of certain people to simple stereotypes and caricatures, and think of them as less than human beings.
Charles Phipps
That is inaccurate. Because it predates the Dark Ages by about a 1000 years and if you count previous religions….well, more like 8000 years.
My experience with “religious” people is that most (not all of them; I can think of two exceptions within my own circle of people) of them are looking for someone to blame. “I’m not judging you. God is.” — said with a certain amount of smug satisfaction that they will, nonetheless, enjoy watching the verdict handed down.
Charles Phipps
Hate based religion has no benefit. Only love based.
I’m guessing this is Joyce’s first time really thinking about hurting someone not in terms of the I Have Sinned angle at all, but purely on the I have hurt someone I care about and I feel bad one. (Given how young she is and how generally Joyce, I suspect she’s never really realized how much things like her constant boundary-violating actually upset people and this is the first time it’s really impacted her like this. At least compared to the more menial – but still freakout-worthy – sins she’s usually aware of.)
I mean, in fairness, most actual scriptural bits about Hell indicate that it’s just… Not being around God. Which for the faithful is punishment enough, and for the non-faithful is… well, kinda what they wanted anyway?
I’m pretty sure it’s mostly just a lack of nuance that has made it balloon up into fire and brimstone and yadda yadda.
And yes, I know, lake of fire, blah blah blah. To that I always say: Do you think Jesus will have a sword coming out of his gullet too? 😛
The lake of fire and whatnot is, I think, mostly Dante, and I’m pretty sure he was excommunicated well before he wrote it. It’s funny how a church outcast’s fanfiction has become effectively cannon.
mrnoidea
Same with Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” at least in the sympathetic-devil angle. From what I heard, Satan had been depicted as an ugly, one-dimensional creature up until that book was published.
I’ve been very church-free for going on ten years now, but last I checked any sympathetic ideas about Satan are very pop culture and very much not be taken theologically. He appears attractive but he’s still the devil and you Do Not Trust Him.
Charles Phipps
Actually, it’s more due to the fact Satan works for God in Judaism.
The idea of him as a fallen enemy of mankind is a read of the Book of Revelations.
Agent 00Pizza
Actually, the lake of fire idea comes from the Book of Revelation, so still very weird but canon. And also I’m pretty sure Dante was not excommunicated, just exiled for being part of the Emperor’s faction against the Pope
Pylgrim
This is true. The Bible constantly uses fire as a symbol of ultimate obliteration. The book of Revelations goes further to clarify this by calling the symbolic lake of fire, the “second death” which seems cogent to me with the idea of a just God: You believed that there was no God, thus no afterlife? That’s exactly what you get.
However, the mere cessation of existence was never a “sexy” enough threat to scare people into religion, hence the fanfiction about horrible, endless torture and the such.
3oranges
That stuff does predate Dante; it may not be biblical, but there are a lot of early Christians who delight in describing how their opponents will be tortured.
Meanwhile Dante does also have a nice part of hell, which is just not being around God. It’s where the Dorothys – people who are good but not Christian – would go.
3oranges
(Actually, probably only the pre-Christianity Dorothys, ones who were never given the option to follow Christ. I’m sure any Christian from his century would tell you a good person could never reject his message given the chance.)
Freemage
Actually, even ‘modern’ pagans and heathens can get into the ‘good Hell’, provided they were never part of the faithful. It’s the former Christians who get dropped several levels down. Heretics get much more derision, because they pose a much bigger actual threat than people outside the flock ever could
Charles Phipps
The idea of all sinners going to hell is also a very fundamentalist read.
It’s a common one but not a complete one.
MutantSentry
I think Saladin got into the Pleasent but Dull outer ring of hell.
He was Muslim but widely respected as an honorable man in Christiandom
3oranges
Thank you two! It’s been a while and I apparently did not remember properly.
Deathjavu
Yeah, this is also where most of the famous Greek philosophers were, and I think also unbaptised babies.
Seeing as the religion in question didn’t exist when they were alive (or they weren’t quite sentient) this seems like a pretty raw deal regardless!
thejeff
Of course, if we’re still talking Dante, it’s mostly just people he admired and wanted to not condemn. Much like he condemned political enemies to deep circles of hell.
There’s hardly any scripture on Hell, especially in the Gospels. Jesus promises resurrection and eternal life if you follow him. No follow, no life.
Kat
If I recall correctly, most of the ideas on hell being a flaming pit actually come from Mark 9:43 where Jesus himself describes it as an “Unquenchable Flame” and goes on to use the ever popular “Where the flame is not quenched and the worm dieth not.” I also believe there were some references to a garbage pit near Jerusalem where fires burned all the time, but I don’t have a direct pointer. So, there is evidence for a fiery hell in Christianity from the most credible source. That being said, Joyce is expressing sentiments here I have heard other disillusioned religious people express. Her statement about believing in a Straw man is particularly potent, though a little on the nose.
Pylgrim
Yep, the Valley of Hinom, which is referenced in Revelations by calling the lake of fire “Gehenna”. Another clear indication that the lake of fire is merely a symbol for final death, not torture.
FacelessDeviant
Gehenna. Final death?
My Vampire: The Masquerade sense is tingling!
Some Ed
Mark 9:43-48 do talk about that. But Jesus doesn’t actually *say* that the place exists, just that it’s better to remove the part of you that causes you to sin than it would be to go to such a place whole.
I found the part of me that caused me to sin: it’s the part that believed that there were no consequences except the eternal damnation bit. I found I needed to also excise a healthy margin around that to really be safe.
That said, I’m not sure it was soon enough. I’ve looked around at the world and seen the suffering here. Where is God? This could already be hell.
I think she’s getting that – just she needed to actually majorly stuff up first, and realise that she’s perfectly capable of feeling guilt and shame and remorse because she did a bad and hurt people and not because a higher being judges her as flawed.
Also, incidentally, the whole “people are sinners” shtick really bugs me. Somebody who can look on a newborn and go “yup, clearly tainted by evil” and think it actually needs to be ceremonially cleansed with magic water because of that (rather than as part of a ceremony and welcome into a community, which, fair enough) has a disturbing outlook on life.
But if you’ve grown up being told it’s only your faith in a higher power that allows you to make good choices and be a good person, and then you start questioning that faith, trying out being a bad person kinda seems logical? And it sounds like this was literally Joyce’s first active attempt at rebellion for rebellion’s sake… (Wrestling with the creed she was raised with and self-evident truths in front of her – Dotty is a kind, moral person; Becky is still family and a good person regardless of her sexuality; trying to make Ethan be somebody he’s not (even if he is cute and non-threatening which is what she was looking for in a boyfriend/potential future spouse) is wrong and unfair; standing up to her parents to defend her friends because they were being unreasonable – may have seemed like rebellion, particularly to her mother, but were really about self-growth and expanding her world view.)
You think prison isn’t eternal punishment? Have you asked some of the folks incarcerated as teens and still there decades later, for literally no reason other than “they black”?
Yes, this!
I also grew up being taught that i can not be a good person without believing in God. Turned out that i met awesome atheists with way better moral compass than the christian people i grew up around. That was when i could finally let go of that belief.
In my opinion, any Christian motivated to be good by the threat of hell has missed the point twice over. First, for the reasons everyone else is noting: empathy is a thing that doesn’t require awareness of God (or, at least, conscious awareness). But also, the threat of hell is supposed to be averted the moment you accept Christ’s forgiveness. Starting from that point, every good deed you do is not and CANNOT be to “save yourself from hell” because that’s already covered. So the only reason to do it is because you want to benefit someone else.
And that’s how Joyce dedicated herself to eradicating Feelings, and became a Care Bears villain.
(Try as I might, I cannot imagine any version of Joyce capable of evil greater than would be appropriate on Care Bears. Maybe with effort she could menace the Smurfs.)
Honestly, can you see her being a care bear villain ending any other way than her cuddling a bunch of care bears and crying while promising to do better in future?
Maybe she would be an enemy to the Care Bears like Elmyra was an enemy to the Tiny Toons? She just wants to hug them and squeeze them so much that she’s dangerous.
I wonder if Joyce was allowed to watch Care Bears growing up (one of the modern incarnations – she certainly wouldn’t give a hoot about the version I grew up with). Sure, it’s about love and feelings, but it’s also about supernatural creatures who live in a heaven-like realm while being completely secular, and wield magical powers.
Weird to think that the freaking Care Bears was probably considered a negative influence on her.
Miri
Pretty certain that other than Grumpy all Care Bears are infinitely cuddlable and cannot be over-squished?
Given how restricted her TV and film-watching experiences were before she went to college… Dang, yep, they were probably considered some sort of gateway to something bad… Unless it’s possible to argue they’re angels appearing in a child-friendly form and their Stare is divine light shining out of them and casting out evil from the world?
MatthewTheLucky
I’m not Christian and know almost nothing about Care Bears, but that sounds about right.
Reltzik
Aren’t they all the colors of the rainbow? I mean that’s a big red flag, er, rainbow flag right there.
Miri
But rainbows are biblical – a promise made at the end of the Noah story that the world won’t be destroyed by flood again… So this could be seen as rainbows in their correct context, symbolising the power of the divine?
Miri
(I mean personally rainbows in all contexts are great and I love that Pride is celebrated in technicolour coz if you’re going to bust out of the closet nuking it Becky-style on your way out is an awesome way to go, and people should most definitely not be ashamed of their sexuality etc)
Yikes! Hope that goes well. I had some very tense conversations with mine a few decades ago, even though she knew going in. I think she’s drifted into near-agreement with me by now, though I’ve never pushed it. She had used faith to deal with some abuse, and it hurt her to encounter skepticism.
On a lighter note, I did indulge in some of that (fortunately) consequenceless debauchery, and it was great fun and I wouldn’t want to have missed it. But I did get lucky.
I said it in email form, like the conflict averse person I am, but I don’t think it’ll go too badly. My spouse is one of those very progressive Christians who’s primarily a humanist, so we share our important values (human rights and all that jazz) in common, so I don’t think this will change much of anything between us in the long run. Still… conflict averse, as a result of a very controlling religious upbringing. So your nice words mean a lot. ^_^
ian livs
Update: all is well. I quote, “you act like you weren’t blatantly hinting at it already.” It’s probably gonna be one of those things where we just don’t talk about it much, on either end, but we’re good. Phew…
Miri
Phew 🙂 Glad it went well!
Kat
Not gonna lie, don’t see how you decided you knew enough about each other to be married without her knowing you are an atheist unless this is a recent decision. I know I specifically asked my partner about that and a good many other things before decisions were made.
This is not meant as a criticism or disparagement, you do you. It just seems like something that would come up in a deep relationship like that, and I can’t understand how it wouldn’t. I mean, I dated a guy for two weeks during which he claimed he was catholic (it came up for some reason.). The first time I walked into his house, I gave him a funny look and said “I thought you said you were catholic?” He said “I am.” I pointed to a particular arrangement of objects and asked “Then why does that look like a Wiccan Altar?” At which point he freaked out and admitted that he maintains an illusion of Catholicism for his parents, but was actually Wicca. I was more worried about the lying than anything.
Glad to hear it went well and I hope it continues, but this tends to be one of those things that comes up later. Mainly as children enter the picture and questions of how to raise them start coming up. So as simple friendly advice from one stranger on the internet to another, don’t let it go too long without talking about it.
Felgraf
It is entirely possible that they only recently realized they were an athiest/became an atheist.
This is rather different, but when my platonic partner and I got married, I didn’t know I was ace (nor did she know/realize she was gay. That wound up working well because I exist at a VERY weird point on probability curves). When we realized these things (neaarrr simultaneously), there was a lot of anxiety about how to tell the other. People’s self-knowledge can change.
(We’re still legally married and very close, it’s just a platonic relationship now!)
thejeff
Two weeks is easily understandable, in my mind. Especially for something they feel they need to keep from their family. Possibly with very good reason. Like any other major thing you need to keep secret from part of your life, it’s risky to reveal it casually.
Granted, as some flavor of atheist/agnostic, I probably wouldn’t have even mentioned religion two weeks in unless specifically asked about it or it came up in some other conversation. Not being religious isn’t a big focus of my life.
Moo
Yay! My husband’s an atheist and I’m loosely Christian/spiritual/theist. It’s a complete nonissue in our lives. ?
Agnostic Jew married to a Christian here… My relationship to religion is complicated in that it’s part of my identity, has shaped who I am etc, but it’s more the cultural side than the religious one that resonates with me… His faith seems a lot less complicated… But at the same time although it’s important to him and something he believes in, he also believes in scientific theory and isn’t hugely judgey mcjudgey about it so e.g. pretty certain he doesn’t think I’m a sinner who’ll burn in eternal hell fire because of my evil ways… Does think my parents can be overbearing and controlling, and prone to histrionics, but that’s based in reality (they’re loving and mean well, but they very much believe that their way is the right way, and won’t necessarily listen to any arguments or additional facts that might contradict this)…
252 thoughts on “Freeing”
Ana Chronistic
☝️?
✊?
Joyce, the only difference is us atheists don’t need the threat of eternal punishment to know why not to do bad things
Ana Chronistic
(yeah, doin’ this schtick again)
Lumino
Most religious people don’t need that either.
Agemegos
They don’t, but it worries me a bit when they say that everyone does.
Before they come to the epiphany that Joyce describes in this strip, people who suppose that fear of divine punishment is the only reason not to do bad things presumably reckon that I am a very dangerous man to be around.
Axel
And Joyce’s parents did express this (about her being friends with Dorothy)
Dana
The part that worries me is that if you think you need God telling you what to do then you’re using things other than common sense, empathy, and science to figure out how to treat people you might end up using things that are against common sense or empathy, for instance much of most scripture I know of.
Maddieface
2 cents, but I’ve airways assumed religious people like this assume that their empathy derives from their faith. Most of them have never had a point they remember where they didn’t believe to go off of for comparison.
huttj509
Cast in Point, Jordan Peterson saying that Matt Dillahunty isn’t a “real Athiest” because if he were he’d be like Raskolnikov in The Brothers Karamazov and have no empathy, but since he does have empathy, he believes in G-d even if he doesn’t think he believes in G-d.
Kamino Neko
Ironically, Jordan Peterson wouldn’t know empathy if it bit him on the ass.
Some Ed
Unfortunately, this is not irony.
This is the real issue with the religious life. These people *want* to be good, but because they’re so focused on this other thing, they can’t see what it takes to be good.
In the end, it doesn’t really matter if there really is eternal punishment or not, What matters most is whether you’ve developed this sense of consequence by the time you have a crisis of faith, and doubt the eternal punishment for just a bit. Every religious person has these doubts, and it’s something that they all know about and talk about.
In short, I don’t think it’s possible to be good if you’re only doing it to avoid something that you won’t ever have any evidence of until it’s too late.
3oranges
I think these three words do very well on their own:
“Ironically, Jordan Peterson.”
thejeff
Did Peterson talk about empathy in that exchange or does he just talk about behavior? Can’t remember and can’t really stomach watching any more JP these days.
huttj509
I think it was technically a “sense of morality” or something of that sort.
thejeff
But he probably means something entirely different by that than we think he does.
Kaeto
I think this is the case. Cuz my ex-husband was Convinced he would become abusive and hit or rape me if he wasn’t a Christian. And then he left Christianity and, spoiler alert, he did not. He was the same person, just a little less stressed out with shame and guilt over never being Holy.
Magnus
Having grown up in an environment very similar to Joyce’s upbringing (and David’s, since we all know Joyce has a lot of autobio stuff in her)… yeah pretty much, for evangelical christians. It’s kind of misleading to say “religious people” because there are plenty of religions out there that don’t include this kind of logic. But the point is that you do good (whatever your parse that to mean) both because god wants you to and because you have god and the holy spirit guiding you and providing the DRIVE and DESIRE to do good. Sometimes non-Christians will do good things, but that’s either god working through them (so they really had no say in the matter, in a way), or it was really driven by selfishness.
Jamie
I mean, you say that as if they came up with it on their own.
They didn’t. These people aren’t that creative. That idea was invented by people who were living in what we literally call The Dark Ages.
thejeff
I don’t think they came up with it either. I suspect the genesis goes much farther back – probably at least to the original hierarchical city-states. We see plenty of it even in the older parts of the Old Testament and that ethos is certainly drawn from older roots.
In a way it’s just an extension of parental/child models to a societal scale. Ideally of course the parents will be trying to teach their kids to access their empathy and understand why things are wrong, but for young children the direct effect of parental punishment or even disapproval is the main factor.
The big “advantage” of using God is that you can use it to bypass and override common sense and empathy. How else are you going to convince the masses that those people over there are bad and inferior while you deserve their loyalty as their divinely appointed overlord?
Deanatay
That’s the force that has always countered empathy – the ‘othering’ tendency, our tendency to save on mental storage space by reducing our image of certain people to simple stereotypes and caricatures, and think of them as less than human beings.
Charles Phipps
That is inaccurate. Because it predates the Dark Ages by about a 1000 years and if you count previous religions….well, more like 8000 years.
DSL
My experience with “religious” people is that most (not all of them; I can think of two exceptions within my own circle of people) of them are looking for someone to blame. “I’m not judging you. God is.” — said with a certain amount of smug satisfaction that they will, nonetheless, enjoy watching the verdict handed down.
Charles Phipps
Hate based religion has no benefit. Only love based.
Regalli
I’m guessing this is Joyce’s first time really thinking about hurting someone not in terms of the I Have Sinned angle at all, but purely on the I have hurt someone I care about and I feel bad one. (Given how young she is and how generally Joyce, I suspect she’s never really realized how much things like her constant boundary-violating actually upset people and this is the first time it’s really impacted her like this. At least compared to the more menial – but still freakout-worthy – sins she’s usually aware of.)
But I bet that’s Dorothy’s next strip, too.
JetstreamGW
I mean, in fairness, most actual scriptural bits about Hell indicate that it’s just… Not being around God. Which for the faithful is punishment enough, and for the non-faithful is… well, kinda what they wanted anyway?
I’m pretty sure it’s mostly just a lack of nuance that has made it balloon up into fire and brimstone and yadda yadda.
And yes, I know, lake of fire, blah blah blah. To that I always say: Do you think Jesus will have a sword coming out of his gullet too? 😛
Deathjavu
The lake of fire and whatnot is, I think, mostly Dante, and I’m pretty sure he was excommunicated well before he wrote it. It’s funny how a church outcast’s fanfiction has become effectively cannon.
mrnoidea
Same with Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” at least in the sympathetic-devil angle. From what I heard, Satan had been depicted as an ugly, one-dimensional creature up until that book was published.
Schpoonman
I’ve been very church-free for going on ten years now, but last I checked any sympathetic ideas about Satan are very pop culture and very much not be taken theologically. He appears attractive but he’s still the devil and you Do Not Trust Him.
Charles Phipps
Actually, it’s more due to the fact Satan works for God in Judaism.
The idea of him as a fallen enemy of mankind is a read of the Book of Revelations.
Agent 00Pizza
Actually, the lake of fire idea comes from the Book of Revelation, so still very weird but canon. And also I’m pretty sure Dante was not excommunicated, just exiled for being part of the Emperor’s faction against the Pope
Pylgrim
This is true. The Bible constantly uses fire as a symbol of ultimate obliteration. The book of Revelations goes further to clarify this by calling the symbolic lake of fire, the “second death” which seems cogent to me with the idea of a just God: You believed that there was no God, thus no afterlife? That’s exactly what you get.
However, the mere cessation of existence was never a “sexy” enough threat to scare people into religion, hence the fanfiction about horrible, endless torture and the such.
3oranges
That stuff does predate Dante; it may not be biblical, but there are a lot of early Christians who delight in describing how their opponents will be tortured.
Meanwhile Dante does also have a nice part of hell, which is just not being around God. It’s where the Dorothys – people who are good but not Christian – would go.
3oranges
(Actually, probably only the pre-Christianity Dorothys, ones who were never given the option to follow Christ. I’m sure any Christian from his century would tell you a good person could never reject his message given the chance.)
Freemage
Actually, even ‘modern’ pagans and heathens can get into the ‘good Hell’, provided they were never part of the faithful. It’s the former Christians who get dropped several levels down. Heretics get much more derision, because they pose a much bigger actual threat than people outside the flock ever could
Charles Phipps
The idea of all sinners going to hell is also a very fundamentalist read.
It’s a common one but not a complete one.
MutantSentry
I think Saladin got into the Pleasent but Dull outer ring of hell.
He was Muslim but widely respected as an honorable man in Christiandom
3oranges
Thank you two! It’s been a while and I apparently did not remember properly.
Deathjavu
Yeah, this is also where most of the famous Greek philosophers were, and I think also unbaptised babies.
Seeing as the religion in question didn’t exist when they were alive (or they weren’t quite sentient) this seems like a pretty raw deal regardless!
thejeff
Of course, if we’re still talking Dante, it’s mostly just people he admired and wanted to not condemn. Much like he condemned political enemies to deep circles of hell.
drs
There’s hardly any scripture on Hell, especially in the Gospels. Jesus promises resurrection and eternal life if you follow him. No follow, no life.
Kat
If I recall correctly, most of the ideas on hell being a flaming pit actually come from Mark 9:43 where Jesus himself describes it as an “Unquenchable Flame” and goes on to use the ever popular “Where the flame is not quenched and the worm dieth not.” I also believe there were some references to a garbage pit near Jerusalem where fires burned all the time, but I don’t have a direct pointer. So, there is evidence for a fiery hell in Christianity from the most credible source. That being said, Joyce is expressing sentiments here I have heard other disillusioned religious people express. Her statement about believing in a Straw man is particularly potent, though a little on the nose.
Pylgrim
Yep, the Valley of Hinom, which is referenced in Revelations by calling the lake of fire “Gehenna”. Another clear indication that the lake of fire is merely a symbol for final death, not torture.
FacelessDeviant
Gehenna. Final death?
My Vampire: The Masquerade sense is tingling!
Some Ed
Mark 9:43-48 do talk about that. But Jesus doesn’t actually *say* that the place exists, just that it’s better to remove the part of you that causes you to sin than it would be to go to such a place whole.
I found the part of me that caused me to sin: it’s the part that believed that there were no consequences except the eternal damnation bit. I found I needed to also excise a healthy margin around that to really be safe.
That said, I’m not sure it was soon enough. I’ve looked around at the world and seen the suffering here. Where is God? This could already be hell.
Miri
I think she’s getting that – just she needed to actually majorly stuff up first, and realise that she’s perfectly capable of feeling guilt and shame and remorse because she did a bad and hurt people and not because a higher being judges her as flawed.
Also, incidentally, the whole “people are sinners” shtick really bugs me. Somebody who can look on a newborn and go “yup, clearly tainted by evil” and think it actually needs to be ceremonially cleansed with magic water because of that (rather than as part of a ceremony and welcome into a community, which, fair enough) has a disturbing outlook on life.
But if you’ve grown up being told it’s only your faith in a higher power that allows you to make good choices and be a good person, and then you start questioning that faith, trying out being a bad person kinda seems logical? And it sounds like this was literally Joyce’s first active attempt at rebellion for rebellion’s sake… (Wrestling with the creed she was raised with and self-evident truths in front of her – Dotty is a kind, moral person; Becky is still family and a good person regardless of her sexuality; trying to make Ethan be somebody he’s not (even if he is cute and non-threatening which is what she was looking for in a boyfriend/potential future spouse) is wrong and unfair; standing up to her parents to defend her friends because they were being unreasonable – may have seemed like rebellion, particularly to her mother, but were really about self-growth and expanding her world view.)
Yotomoe
Unless you count going to prison I guess.
Sue Aside
You think prison isn’t eternal punishment? Have you asked some of the folks incarcerated as teens and still there decades later, for literally no reason other than “they black”?
Sue Aside
Whoops, wrong account again ?
Sue Aside
Eh, fuck it, embrace the Sarah fan art
Anyway prison is an ADDITIONAL disincentive but not the ONLY reason not to do bad things
Felian
Yes, this!
I also grew up being taught that i can not be a good person without believing in God. Turned out that i met awesome atheists with way better moral compass than the christian people i grew up around. That was when i could finally let go of that belief.
FlyingFish
In my opinion, any Christian motivated to be good by the threat of hell has missed the point twice over. First, for the reasons everyone else is noting: empathy is a thing that doesn’t require awareness of God (or, at least, conscious awareness). But also, the threat of hell is supposed to be averted the moment you accept Christ’s forgiveness. Starting from that point, every good deed you do is not and CANNOT be to “save yourself from hell” because that’s already covered. So the only reason to do it is because you want to benefit someone else.
Doctor_Who
And that’s how Joyce dedicated herself to eradicating Feelings, and became a Care Bears villain.
(Try as I might, I cannot imagine any version of Joyce capable of evil greater than would be appropriate on Care Bears. Maybe with effort she could menace the Smurfs.)
Miri
Honestly, can you see her being a care bear villain ending any other way than her cuddling a bunch of care bears and crying while promising to do better in future?
Doctor_Who
Maybe she would be an enemy to the Care Bears like Elmyra was an enemy to the Tiny Toons? She just wants to hug them and squeeze them so much that she’s dangerous.
I wonder if Joyce was allowed to watch Care Bears growing up (one of the modern incarnations – she certainly wouldn’t give a hoot about the version I grew up with). Sure, it’s about love and feelings, but it’s also about supernatural creatures who live in a heaven-like realm while being completely secular, and wield magical powers.
Weird to think that the freaking Care Bears was probably considered a negative influence on her.
Miri
Pretty certain that other than Grumpy all Care Bears are infinitely cuddlable and cannot be over-squished?
Given how restricted her TV and film-watching experiences were before she went to college… Dang, yep, they were probably considered some sort of gateway to something bad… Unless it’s possible to argue they’re angels appearing in a child-friendly form and their Stare is divine light shining out of them and casting out evil from the world?
MatthewTheLucky
I’m not Christian and know almost nothing about Care Bears, but that sounds about right.
Reltzik
Aren’t they all the colors of the rainbow? I mean that’s a big red flag, er, rainbow flag right there.
Miri
But rainbows are biblical – a promise made at the end of the Noah story that the world won’t be destroyed by flood again… So this could be seen as rainbows in their correct context, symbolising the power of the divine?
Miri
(I mean personally rainbows in all contexts are great and I love that Pride is celebrated in technicolour coz if you’re going to bust out of the closet nuking it Becky-style on your way out is an awesome way to go, and people should most definitely not be ashamed of their sexuality etc)
Charles Phipps
It took me years to realize Care Bears were angels.
Makkabee
This feels very real.
StClair
I suspect Joyce is speaking more for Willis than usual tonight.
Doctor_Who
Joyce tomorrow: “And another thing, can you believe what Wilbur’s up to in today’s Mary Worth?!”
I kid, this is pretty heavy.
(And so is Wilbur)
DSL
Has Joyllis given up on Wonky Cancerbean?
ian livs
Great timing, I literally just told my spouse I’m an atheist. And also this is relatable af as usual.
Illithid
Yikes! Hope that goes well. I had some very tense conversations with mine a few decades ago, even though she knew going in. I think she’s drifted into near-agreement with me by now, though I’ve never pushed it. She had used faith to deal with some abuse, and it hurt her to encounter skepticism.
On a lighter note, I did indulge in some of that (fortunately) consequenceless debauchery, and it was great fun and I wouldn’t want to have missed it. But I did get lucky.
ian livs
I said it in email form, like the conflict averse person I am, but I don’t think it’ll go too badly. My spouse is one of those very progressive Christians who’s primarily a humanist, so we share our important values (human rights and all that jazz) in common, so I don’t think this will change much of anything between us in the long run. Still… conflict averse, as a result of a very controlling religious upbringing. So your nice words mean a lot. ^_^
ian livs
Update: all is well. I quote, “you act like you weren’t blatantly hinting at it already.” It’s probably gonna be one of those things where we just don’t talk about it much, on either end, but we’re good. Phew…
Miri
Phew 🙂 Glad it went well!
Kat
Not gonna lie, don’t see how you decided you knew enough about each other to be married without her knowing you are an atheist unless this is a recent decision. I know I specifically asked my partner about that and a good many other things before decisions were made.
This is not meant as a criticism or disparagement, you do you. It just seems like something that would come up in a deep relationship like that, and I can’t understand how it wouldn’t. I mean, I dated a guy for two weeks during which he claimed he was catholic (it came up for some reason.). The first time I walked into his house, I gave him a funny look and said “I thought you said you were catholic?” He said “I am.” I pointed to a particular arrangement of objects and asked “Then why does that look like a Wiccan Altar?” At which point he freaked out and admitted that he maintains an illusion of Catholicism for his parents, but was actually Wicca. I was more worried about the lying than anything.
Glad to hear it went well and I hope it continues, but this tends to be one of those things that comes up later. Mainly as children enter the picture and questions of how to raise them start coming up. So as simple friendly advice from one stranger on the internet to another, don’t let it go too long without talking about it.
Felgraf
It is entirely possible that they only recently realized they were an athiest/became an atheist.
This is rather different, but when my platonic partner and I got married, I didn’t know I was ace (nor did she know/realize she was gay. That wound up working well because I exist at a VERY weird point on probability curves). When we realized these things (neaarrr simultaneously), there was a lot of anxiety about how to tell the other. People’s self-knowledge can change.
(We’re still legally married and very close, it’s just a platonic relationship now!)
thejeff
Two weeks is easily understandable, in my mind. Especially for something they feel they need to keep from their family. Possibly with very good reason. Like any other major thing you need to keep secret from part of your life, it’s risky to reveal it casually.
Granted, as some flavor of atheist/agnostic, I probably wouldn’t have even mentioned religion two weeks in unless specifically asked about it or it came up in some other conversation. Not being religious isn’t a big focus of my life.
Moo
Yay! My husband’s an atheist and I’m loosely Christian/spiritual/theist. It’s a complete nonissue in our lives. ?
Miri
Agnostic Jew married to a Christian here… My relationship to religion is complicated in that it’s part of my identity, has shaped who I am etc, but it’s more the cultural side than the religious one that resonates with me… His faith seems a lot less complicated… But at the same time although it’s important to him and something he believes in, he also believes in scientific theory and isn’t hugely judgey mcjudgey about it so e.g. pretty certain he doesn’t think I’m a sinner who’ll burn in eternal hell fire because of my evil ways… Does think my parents can be overbearing and controlling, and prone to histrionics, but that’s based in reality (they’re loving and mean well, but they very much believe that their way is the right way, and won’t necessarily listen to any arguments or additional facts that might contradict this)…
CMasta
The fact that Joyce is autobiographical hits hard tonight
bearfuz