Most ideas that have any real weight or consequence will only offer up their full blessings to people who are committed to them. And that's why they're so hard to describe to anyone outside. Belief in God, and Christianity in particular, has many huge benefits socially, mentally, and spiritually. But it also has plenty of repulsive traits...unless you're on the inside, at which point those often become positives. I think most things are like this. Eating gluten-free, living green, obeying the speed limit, donating blood, working out, raising kids - they all require devotion if you're going to reap the rewards. And inevitably some people become fanatics about them. It can appear cult-like to outsiders, or at least a bad case of Stockholm Syndrome, but I think that's the only way it works.
But I'm curious how you would respond to C.S. Lewis, who makes the point that Christians often have some hesitation or resentment toward Christianity, but they continue devoting themselves to it because they think it's true (https://www.mydailylewis.com/#date=2022-6-5). Do you feel desire toward your faith? Or is it more of a desire for reason and coherence, and faith is the framework that supplies this?
I think Chesterton said something to the effect that Christianity had not been tried and found wanting; it had been found hard and not tried. One of the key features of Catholic Christianity, at least, is the insistence that we will always sin and will always be in need of reconciliation. In effect, Catholicism say that living a wholly Catholic life is impossible -- you are bound to fail and must therefore constantly repent.
Looked at this way, we need to make a distinction between the traits of the doctrine and the traits of those who try to practice it. Christians have certainly displayed many repulsive traits over the years. We are all subject to original sin and to temptation. Of course, this same distinction has to be granted to every other religion and ideology as well. The bad behavior of adherents is not, in itself, an argument against the integrity of the doctrine.
None of which is to disagree with your point about the necessity of devotion.
I would agree with Lewis entirely. My appeal to desire is actually rather specific to the most basic of questions that are otherwise imponderable. Following personal desire into every nook and cranny, consulting it on every question or inclination, always turns out to produce a philosophy full of contradictions. As I intend to argue in a later post, if you are looking for a philosophy that you can accept as true, you must expect that there will be parts of it that you will be really uncomfortable with.
If desire provide a reasonable resolution where experience and logic fail, experience and logic can provide a reasonable resolution when desires conflict. If I allowed desire to dictate every moral or practical choice I made, I would not be behaving as a free and rational man. Fulfilling that desire necessitates suppressing other desires.
Most ideas that have any real weight or consequence will only offer up their full blessings to people who are committed to them. And that's why they're so hard to describe to anyone outside. Belief in God, and Christianity in particular, has many huge benefits socially, mentally, and spiritually. But it also has plenty of repulsive traits...unless you're on the inside, at which point those often become positives. I think most things are like this. Eating gluten-free, living green, obeying the speed limit, donating blood, working out, raising kids - they all require devotion if you're going to reap the rewards. And inevitably some people become fanatics about them. It can appear cult-like to outsiders, or at least a bad case of Stockholm Syndrome, but I think that's the only way it works.
But I'm curious how you would respond to C.S. Lewis, who makes the point that Christians often have some hesitation or resentment toward Christianity, but they continue devoting themselves to it because they think it's true (https://www.mydailylewis.com/#date=2022-6-5). Do you feel desire toward your faith? Or is it more of a desire for reason and coherence, and faith is the framework that supplies this?
I think Chesterton said something to the effect that Christianity had not been tried and found wanting; it had been found hard and not tried. One of the key features of Catholic Christianity, at least, is the insistence that we will always sin and will always be in need of reconciliation. In effect, Catholicism say that living a wholly Catholic life is impossible -- you are bound to fail and must therefore constantly repent.
Looked at this way, we need to make a distinction between the traits of the doctrine and the traits of those who try to practice it. Christians have certainly displayed many repulsive traits over the years. We are all subject to original sin and to temptation. Of course, this same distinction has to be granted to every other religion and ideology as well. The bad behavior of adherents is not, in itself, an argument against the integrity of the doctrine.
None of which is to disagree with your point about the necessity of devotion.
I would agree with Lewis entirely. My appeal to desire is actually rather specific to the most basic of questions that are otherwise imponderable. Following personal desire into every nook and cranny, consulting it on every question or inclination, always turns out to produce a philosophy full of contradictions. As I intend to argue in a later post, if you are looking for a philosophy that you can accept as true, you must expect that there will be parts of it that you will be really uncomfortable with.
If desire provide a reasonable resolution where experience and logic fail, experience and logic can provide a reasonable resolution when desires conflict. If I allowed desire to dictate every moral or practical choice I made, I would not be behaving as a free and rational man. Fulfilling that desire necessitates suppressing other desires.