"What The Hell? Vatican Scrambles To Correct Pope" Rush Limbaugh

"What The Hell? Vatican Scrambles To Correct Pope"

Rush Limbaugh

https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2018/03/30/hell-vatican-scrambles-correct-pope/

Limbaugh Excerpt: "I know this is gonna sound really old-fashioned and dated, but the existence of hell in religious doctrine and teachings is as a deterrent. For believers, the last place you would ever want to end up anywhere is hell."

Alan: There are two kinds of people in this world (in addition to "those who divide people into two kinds" and "those who don't"). There are those who want to see evildoers punished (if not tormented), and then there are those who want to see the broken healed. 

The former are enthralled by a Bronze Age error which assumes that "sparing the rod will spoil the child."

Next time you see a parent "whoop" a child in public, examine the parent's face and the chances are overwhelming that you will see someone who is unable to control "his" own anger, and -- given the lopsided power dynamic between parents and children -- the kid is brutalized if only by "getting the message" that violence is the default solution to interpersonal problems.

On the other hand, loving parents who have created peaceful homes are much less likely to perceive "need" for punishment in the first place because children who grow up in loving, warm, affectionate environments are much less likely to "act out" in ways that impel parents to punish their children. 

The evident success of "love" as a teaching tool -- and the evident failure of "the rod" -- in molding kind, caring, loving, compassionate children -- is a two-sided lesson teaching us that humans who believe in the primacy of punishment, torment and torture cannot admit (no matter how lucidly the "case" is made) because in the end we are all ruled by identity politics, and if one's identity is that of a punitive enforcer, punishment and force cannot be called into question without risking the loss of one's identity.

Since "loss of identity" is co-terminous with "loss of religion" very few people have the courage to "go there."

Furthermore, to "lose one's identity" (like loss of identity in dementia) is customarily conceived as a fate worse than death.

Being a fate worse than death is why so many humans -- particularly those who believe in punishment as the primary (if not sole) moral motivator -- march off to war with such regularity -- wars that in hindsight almost always seem egregiously stupid.

"We are not punished for our sins.

We are punished by our sins."

"Virtue is its own reward.

Vice is its own punishment."

(Note that the word "vice" is the etymological root of "vicious.")

Compendium Of Best "Pax" Posts On Punishment, Torture, Vice, Viciousness And "The Good"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2018/04/compendium-of-best-pax-posts-on.html