Why It’s Useful to Think of Yourself As a Sinner

one of the strangest ideas bequeathed to
us by religion is the notion that it
might be wise and socially beneficial to
think of ourselves as being everyone of
us sinners
this seems at first glance both patently
untrue and deeply unhelpful the vast
majority of us have committed no
egregious crime and might feel
understandably targeted and shamed to
have to carry such a dark and archaic
title furthermore a burden of
nonspecific guilt seems like a sure
route to a damaged morale and a hounded
personality but the counter-argument
runs like this simply stated the only
people who can count as good are those
who are modestly and openly prepared to
acknowledge their potential and active
tendencies to be less than perfect and
the truly bad and dangerous among us are
those who have never suspected they
might have such things it is in other
words a sense of innocence and purity
that renders people properly unpleasant
and dangerous for it removes their
capacity for introspection moderation
guilt and atonement the ingredients upon
which true goodness is founded nice
people aren’t without flaws they are
just unusually aware of them and
unusually committed to overcoming them
only with an ongoing degree of self
doubts and self-reflection can we check
our myriad tendencies to native
arrogance and cruelty we need to accept
the grace that we are geniuses fixating
on the wrongs of others and at alighting
evidence of our own less than ideal
natures we can see the lies of others so
clearly our own manasa t is frankly
always a real surprise
the aggression stupidity and sheer evil
exhibited by them
the target group of our anger renders us
in
idiot li incensed and impassioned the
cardinal sin here is a feeling of
righteousness being right and being
righteous are painfully different
concepts when we are right we are so
within a specific context on one
occasion but we have no guarantee of
being so again the moment of rightness
has to be earned never assumed however
when we are righteous we feel ourselves
to be right not only on this occasion
but on all others too we trust ourselves
to be above being evil and therefore
become so with particular insidiousness
a sense of purity is a particular error
of the adolescent and the adolescent li
minded because they are as yet more
likely not to have sinned or only in
ways that are hidden incipient and
tentative they look only at the evidence
of the sins of their elders and
superiors how normal to conclude then
that they must be good in and of
themselves and that it is the rest of
the world that will always be corrupt
and wicked it is no coincidence then
that in revolutionary armies it has
traditionally been the youngest soldiers
that is the soldiers most convinced of
their own purity who have shown the
greatest ruthlessness to the enemy
a good community isn’t one way there is
a feeling that everyone can one day be
pure but rather one with a sense of how
close everyone is to being bad which
breeds a group commitment to increasing
the amount of self observation
confession productive guilt tolerance
understanding and kindness in
circulation good people know never to
allow the rightness of a specific cause
they’re involved with to function as an
excuse to abandon manners tolerance and
modesty people who think they are good
on no such thing they just lack
imagination and self-knowledge the
evidence would be there if their eyes
were open enough to see it
far from demeaning us the idea that we
are all sinners is the surest guarantee
of virtue did you know we also have an
app to help you meet people with whom
you can have deeper more meaningful
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