The Unpardonable Sin is Pride

The Unpardonable Sin has haunted believers for more than two millennia, at least until recently.  I remembered this while reading one of the “Master and Commander” novels.  The ship’s doctor visits an insane asylum in early 19^th-century Europe. At that time the two most common delusions were those who either believed they were God and capable of forgiving sin or those who believe they had committed the unpardonable sin and were waiting for hell to open up and swallow them.

Even 50 years ago I remember people deeply worried about having committed the unpardonable sin. At the time exactly what that sin is seemed to be a mystery. After I read “Inferno” by Dante I assumed that the unpardonable sin was pride. Dante puts pride in the bottom of hell. Pride is the central sin of Satan recorded in the Bible. If you are proud you have no need for forgiveness putting you either equal to God or better than God. That sin cannot be pardoned, because you could not be pardoned if you have no faults.

CS Lewis says the doors of hell lock from the inside. If this is true it is because the proud person could never ask for forgiveness, the admission to heaven.  So rather than admit wrong that person locks himself in hell forever.

Until 2016, I thought I believed with Rabbi Jonathan Sacks that the line between good and evil runs through each human heart. The rabbi says all believers in monotheism believe this.  The alternative is to believe the line between good and evil is between us and them. In Game of Thrones the Lannister queen is identified as evil when asked by her son if someone is an enemy. Her reply is, “Our enemy is anyone who is not us.”

For decades when I heard someone say, “I will never forgive…” I would have moment of pain thinking, ‘Oh please don’t say that.’  Sometimes I would imagine I could smell sulfur when I heard those words. But now I live in a country in which believers worship a man who says, “I have no need for forgiveness.” In Trump’s America the smell of sulfur and brimstone is everywhere.

Racists Hate Science and Destroy What They Love

Berlin 1945, the end of a racist empire

I just finished a long book about the Holocaust.  The author, Timothy Snyder, begins the book showing that Hitler used the Jim Crow south as a model for the racist state he dreamed of. Hitler also admired America’s long history of betraying and murdering native Americans. He saw the Volga River in Russia as his own Mississippi River and the Slavic people of eastern Europe as the native population to destroy. He would make Germany great and has rich as America by taking over all of eastern Europe and Russia as far as the Volga and getting rid of all the Jews in the process.

Hitler believed that conquest of these lands was necessary because the German land could not support the population of Germany. It is one of the terrible ironies of his anti-intellectualism that he held back the green revolution that would feed all of Europe and much of the world after he was dead, and the fascists were out of power in defeat. By the 1960s every free democratic country could not only feed itself but had surplus food to export. Part of that food surplus went to the Soviet Union because the green revolution there was stopped by the perverse biological beliefs of Joseph Stalin.

In 2016 Trump took control of the Republican Party by being openly racist instead of pretending not to be racist as the party had done since Nixon. Trump has spent three years destroying the environment and laws protecting the environment. He attacks the green new deal and all environmental initiatives as socialism. Like Hitler a century ago Trump is an idiot who could make America better, but his prejudices and hatred of science rule his third-rate mind.  Stupid people are always the most stubborn.

Hitler took control of Germany with the votes and the backing of Evangelical and Catholic Christians by making them so afraid of socialism they embraced Hitler’s racism. The southern churches that backed slavery then Jim Crow laws are now the state church of Trump. They are anti-science, anti-intellectual and they want an apocalypse not a living planet.  If the resistance to environmental progress seems crazy in America it’s because people with vile beliefs and vile goals really are looking forward to Armageddon. 

Snyder’s book: “Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning” traces the history of the Holocaust in every country that the Nazis controlled. Throughout the book the terrible suffering that racism brings to the world is clear. Also clear is the terrible irony that some of that suffering is because racists are anti-science and anti-intellectual and their a thorough stupidity ruins even their own world.

Out of the Cast, Therapy Begins Today

My high-tech arm brace

Today I had went to see my surgeon and to get my first physical therapy session.  The cast came off shortly after I arrived at the office. I got x-rays. The technician doing the x-rays explained very carefully what the doctor needed to see and did her best to make sure I was not in pain. She could see from the previous x-rays that I was a mess or at least my elbow was a mess.

After the x-rays the surgeon came to the exam room. Even with a mask on he had the look of someone who is very happy with their work. He told me that everything looked very solid. He showed me the plates and screws holding it together my humerus bone and my ulna. He told me he had to break the ulna to fix the joint. So, my broken bone count is 40.

The surgeon said the break in my elbow was not because of fragile bones. He said the break would have been the same in a 20-year-old who hit the ground in the same way. That was good to know.

After the doctor left, two medical technicians put me in the device you see in the photo. They said I should keep this on except in the shower. I was happy to know I can take a shower now. It won’t be comfortable sleeping in this, but it won’t be any worse than the cast and the sling.

After the doctor visit, I went to another part of the building and had my first physical therapy session. I will write more about that soon.