A Ramble about the Threat of Punishment

 

    I have seen now a couple of times on Facebook a meme which declares, "If you need the threat of eternal punishment in order to be a good person, than you were never a good person to begin with." Or something to this effect.

    While there's a number of issues to be explored with this statement, the one which strikes me most is the assumption that some human beings are just "good." Human beings in general are, as I have said many times before, malfunctioning. We as a species are deranged and unstable. One needs look no farther than the morning news to confirm this, and a more prolonged observation of human behavior over long stretches of time will drive the nail into the coffin as to any notion of human beings being anything other than a neurologically ill species.

    The threat of punishment is used to coerce positive behavior from deranged subjects. If human beings were without a malfunction, there would be no need for rules to follow or consequences if those rules are broken. We would all just be willing to look out for everyone else's best interests as much as our own. But we're not, are we? If we were, there would be no need for penal codes or a justice system. We have these things because we recognize that human beings will act selfishly and in a deranged fashion if left to their own devices.

    This is why part of the New Covenant as written in Jeremiah explicitly states "I will write My laws on their hearts and minds..." The inherent and inherited malfunction of human beings has to be bypassed in order to produce right behaviors. We cannot rely on our own brains to tell us what right and wrong is. The human brain will always screw it up because of a malfunctioning and over sensitive threat/survival system which hoards whatever it deems "good" and tries to destroy whatever it deems "bad."

For this reason, Jesus Christ came to join us to Himself so that we would have another mechanism or source of behaviors and decision making, that is, His own Spirit, life, or energy as long as we disengage from our own responses and behaviors and enslave ourselves to His. This is His laws being written on our hearts, and Jesus Christ acting and speaking through us because we can't trust our own brains to not screw it up and hurt ourselves or others.

    The threat of punishment for the violation of a rule is a training tool meant to keep the immature or deranged from hurting themselves or others. Is it inefficient? Yes, but it can be effective at least in the short term. The training tool is no longer necessary however if the person has come to maturity and no longer commits the actions which are harmful. All those who voluntarily submit (and He will not force this submission) to the Spirit of Christ with whom they are joined are those who have been brought to this maturity, because the Spirit of Christ within them will not produce those behaviors which will harm themselves or others.

    This is the biggest issue I have at times with some forms of "progressive" Christianity, because some of these systems seem to ignore or forget the evidence of their own eyes that human beings are not getting any better left to their own devices, but are destroying themselves, each other, other species, and this planet as a whole.