Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"Up to a certain point it is good for us to know that there are people in the world who will give us love and unquestioned loyalty to the limit of their ability. I doubt, however, if it is good for us to feel assured of this without the accompanying obligation of having to justify this devotion by our behavior." -- Eleanor Roosevelt (b. 1884-10-11, d. 1962-11-07), This Is My Story (1937)

[Rereading this quotation, the first example that came to mind was conversations with other Christians, who see the threat of hell as a crucial element of moral behaviour and a functioning society. I usually wind up pointing out that my own behaviour is not constrained by fear of Divine punishment. I was taught, and believe, that once the gift of Salvation is accepted, God doesn't yank it back later -- I am promised a place in heaven -- so I have no fear of hell^[1]. I can't have any fear of hell if I truly believe in a "born again" model of Salvation. So I have no fear of eternal punishment. What I do have is an internal obligation, a sense of duty and gratitude within me, that motivates me to (try to) be worthy of God's unconditional love. (Also, beyond fear-of-God and love-of-God, I can come up with probably a half dozen ways of arriving at what I would recognize as moral behaviour without invoking God at all, starting with what I saw someone point out recently, which boiled down to, "I don't want to steal or murder; if that makes me a good person, how convenient!" and proceeding to a classic existentialist argument that if one imagines the kind of world one would like to live in, one is obligated to act the way everyone would have to act for the world to be like that (I'm skipping some steps; it's been a while), so the "without belief in God people can't be moral" argument is at least trebly bogus. But I digress ... the point I mwant to make was that my own sense of duty-to-God seems connected to the quotation.)]

[1] At the risk of digressing even farther^[2] ... Rob Bell makes an argument that I find compelling, that a God who wants everybody to be Saved, and is all-powerful, will get Her way in the end, and we'll all be saved -- just probably not in the same ways / by the same methods. Which in turn meshes with another aspect of my belief: that Christianity is the only religion it is correct for me to believe in, but for somebody else a different faith / different path may be just as valid and just as "only" as Christianity is for me.]

[2] Sorry, Easter gets me thinking about Salvation, y'know.