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COMMUNAL SALVATION 761128
The world-view which requires personal salvation is a
view which is promoted by people who stand to gain by
providing means for achieving personal salvation. Out of
a desire for personal gain they promote a desire for
personal salvation by treating with ultimate earnestness
and sincerity the conception of reality within which each
of us will suffer unimaginably unless proper steps are
taken to save our souls. Of course those who promote this
view stand ready to prescribe the proper steps to be taken
to save our souls, and stand to gain in one way or another
by providing proscriptions. They even offer suggestions
about how we should show our gratitude for our salvation.
They appeal very effectively to an ultimate sense of self-
interest and fear of the unknownwithin each of us. They
urge us to make our ultimate concern be the salvation of
ourown soul throughconformity to some set of prescribed
beliefs, rituals, ethical or moral do's and don'ts, and/or
lifestyle elements. This idolations worships of one's own
soul is promoted to the advantage of those who preach that
it is part of the worship of the one true God. Those who
become compulsively preoccupied with the salvation of
their personal soul tend to become alienated from those
who do not share their preoccupation. This alienation
tends to create the conditions which the theory of
original sin seeks to explain. How ironic and tragic!
There is no means to salvation. Personal
individualistic salvation is not an appropriate goal.
Approaching life in terms such as these promotes
confusion. They are notions which promote the asking of
misleading questions and so block the communication of the
truth about real living. They obscure the nature of love.
They replace hope with planning and striving. They
undermine faith by requiring proof. They fragment society
by focusing upon individuals in an ultimate way which
fails to recognize the way in which personalrelationships
transcend the individuals which are created by them.
These effects create the conditions which the theory of
original sin seeks to explain. The theory is thus acting
to confirm its own validity at the expense of those
victimized by it. Its supporters need to be saved from
the world-view which makes them feel that they need to be
saved.
(c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in
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(On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy)
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