Guilt vs. responsibility

One of the problems with religion in general, and Christianity in particular, is that it tries to use a sense of guilt to motivate people to behave better.

But that does not work, and physically can not work.

Because guilt triggers the emotional part of the brain. And the primary thing that the emotion of guilt motivates us to do is... to stop feeling that emotion.

Worse still, the emotional part of the brain is also the threat response part of the brain. And that part only knows four ways to solve a problem - fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. 

So if a person starts to feel guilt, they can respond with fight - get defensive, refuse to acknowledge they did anything wrong, even attack the person pointing out what they did wrong; or flight - avoid the person or situation that made them feel that way; or freeze - do nothing; or fawn - submit to whoever told them they did something wrong and accept whatever abuse is heaped on them in hopes of preventing something even worse.

And so you get Christians who scream at us that we're the racists, really, for talking about systemic racism. You get Christians who avoid have uncomfortable conversations about the role of Christianity in harming people all throughout history, including the present moment. You get Christians who shut down and "don't do politics" when it's revealed that the people they voted for in the name of "Christian values" are the sex offenders that they thought they were voting to protect their kids from. You get Christians doing penance or sobbing at altar calls as they ask their imaginary friend not to torture them for eternity for their imaginary sins... and never actually changing their behavior or even understanding what their ACTUAL sins are.

You even get Christians justifying abuse and defending abusers.

If instead you were to instill a sense of responsibility, however, THAT is an appeal to the thinking part of the brain, and the thinking part of the brain can actually come up with ways to address problems. The thinking part of the brain can say "It's not my fault that the system defaults to favor me and harm others, but it's my responsibility to do what I can to change that". "It's not my fault that children were harmed on that island, but it's my responsibility to do whatever it takes to bring the perpetrators to account, even if they're people I thought were on my team". 

The primary thing that a sense of responsibility motivates us to do... is to behave responsibly.

And religion can't do that. 

But humanism can.

On Jesus and Kermit

 

A Muppet page I follow on Facebook posted this:

 

And of course, there were lots of people pissed about it, calling it “grooming” and other such bullshit.

I responded by posting this:

“It's weird that so many people raised on the Muppets are mad about this. Miss Piggy is just Frank Oz's drag persona, Bert and Ernie have been ‘roommates’ for half a century, and the entire cast of the Muppet Show was a bunch of singing dancing animated fur suits, who put on a musical with Elton John once. And every episode they told you to be kind to everyone no matter how different they were from you. Kermit wanted you to understand that it's not easy being green in a world where most of your peers aren't. How did so many of you fail to get the whole point of the shows?”

 

Any reasonable person would have recognized that the first half about “roommates” and “fur suits” was tongue in cheek, while the second half about “treating people kindly” was serious. But of course, bigots aren’t reasonable people, and there were lots of people jumping in to “well, ACTUALLY” the thing about Bert and Ernie.

 

I should have foreseen that a bunch of people would jump on the joke about Bert and Ernie and take it literally, while ignoring the part they were SUPPOSED to take literally (about being kind to those who are different.)

 

But it’s not really surprising, given how many people take the Bible literally in the half dozen verses where it says awful things about LGBTQ people* but ignore the thousands of verses that tell them to be kind to everyone, even people they see as enemies, and treat people as they'd want to be treated.

 

If Jesus of Nazareth can't get his fans to follow the Golden Rule, I guess Kermit the Frog never had a chance.

 

 

*Note- the verses where the book supposedly condemns LGBTQ people are based on questionable translations, while the verses where it tells people to be kind to everyone are unquestionably translated correctly.