In thinking about Christianity, one of the issues that has consistently bothered me is what I call the “Aura Salve” problem. What I mean is that I think in some ways that Christianity, or at least some approaches to Christianity, offer what feels like a made-up solution to a made-up problem.
It’s like you’re walking along the street, minding your own business and getting along okay, when some stranger approaches you in the park and flags you down with something important to tell you.
“Oh man,” he says, “You can’t see it, but you have holes in your aura! That means you have Aura Rot, which is a horrible cosmic disease! If you don’t do something about it, your aura will totally rot away and you’ll have no aura left, which could have Big Ramifications.”
You are shocked, of course. You can’t see your own aura or anyone else’s, and you never really felt like you had holes in your aura or anything.
“It’s a good thing I saw you,” the man says, “because I have exactly what you need. It just so happens that I deal in Aura Salve, an invisible, intangible ointment that you need to spread all over your aura every day. Every day. You have to trust me.”
So here this guy is, offering a wonderful solution to a problem you didn’t even know you had. In fact, he has to convince you that you even have a problem. Even if this guy really sincerely beieves you have Aura Rot, you didn’t feel like you had it before, and you had no independent reason to believe you have it now. All you have to go on is the testimony of him and all other Aura Salve salesmen like him. They’re offering a made-up solution to what is essentially a made-up problem.
In a like manner I feel like some approaches to Christianity offer made-up solutions to a made-up problem. These approaches tell you that God is mad at you for the bad things you have done, and that he is going to punish you with an eternity in Hell because it’s what you deserve.
Leave for a moment that logical problem with this, which is that a “just” God is going to dish out infinite punishment for a finite quantity of sin. I’ll get to that in a future post. Theproblem for me is that when I do something wrong, I feel bad because I feel like I did something wrong, not because I fear God’s punishment. The guilt I feel is a lot of torment on it’s own, and what’s more, most things that are sins are somehow violations of the two great commandments- love God and love your neighbor. In other words, committing sins carries its own punishments in terms of fractured relationships, inner guilt, and ultimately a spiritual hardening. I’m not worried about going to a Hell that may or may not exist anyway, I’m worried about the stuff that happens now.
And to that “stuff,” add all the other pain and suffering that are inherent to human (or at least my) existence: depression, alienation, anger, insecurity, cynicism, despondence over the state of the world, feelings of powerlessness, etcetera.
On the other hand, there are plenty of things that many would consider sins that don’t seem like they’re honestly very bad. For these things I feel no real guilt or trouble in the here and now anyway.
So along comes the Aura Salve salesman who tells me that my actual problem is not the pain that I really am in right now, but the Hell that angry God is going to condemn me to for doing wrong things, making bad choices, and making mistakes, many of which the Aura Salve salesman has to convince me are even mistakes in the first place. Nevertheless, the Aura Salve salesman is ready to tell me how lucky I am that he has done such a wonderful thing to save me from my Aura Rot problem. In fact, I am so lucky that I should dedicate my life to thanking him and using and promoting Aura Salve myself.
It boils down to this: I don’t necessarily buy off on the idea of “sin” as a list of misdeeds we’ve done and therefore need saving from. It just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
Sailing to Byzantium 
That’s sort of like Plato’s Cave Allegory. I never really considered it a figment of Christianity — I suspect most major religions (Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, etc.) have an element of “Aura Rot” and “Aura Salve.”
I completely agree with you that “sin” aren’t misdeeds. Today, Sean and I went to the church where his friend Randy plays in the band. The pastor talked about how God is just and how we should celebrate this fact. I cringed at the thought of it, because if God is just, we’ll never be saved because of all the unrighteous things that every human does. It amazes me when someone can celebrate God’s justice. The way this seems to work is when someone has compartmentalized sin in such a way that only certain deeds are “sins.” Murder. Theft. Drugs. In this sense, then sure – sins are misdeeds. But I don’t believe that “sin” is such a narrow concept, nor do I believe that you only need saving from this list of “sins.”
I think this is a big part of the reason why Orthodoxy appeals to me. The concept of “sin” isn’t a list of things that you’ve done wrong, but anytime that you don’t act 100% like Christ would (which is pretty much 99.9% of the time). Sin is a state of being. Sin is our nature. This really resonated with me. I never believed in the concept of sin as the bad things we did because we’re terrible human beings, because I, frankly, can’t think of that many things I’ve done in my life that I would go back and re-do, or that I feel like weren’t good or necessary in the situation. If that’s the case, then why do I need a Savior? But I do feel like I’m not perfect, and therefore I need God. The Orthodox concept of sin just tied it all together and made repentence make sense to me. When I was in the LDS church, I never could think of anything that I need to repent of!
Peter- you’re probably right about most major religions having the same Aura Salve problem. I’m certainly not saying that Christianity’s Aura Salve problem is such that I would abandon Christianity in favor of something else. At present, I’m really only seriously interested in Christianity.
So the issue is with Christianity in isolation, or at best with Christianity as compared to agnosticism or atheism.
Well, one issue I’ve always had is this. I do good because I want to do good. I avoid doing evil because I don’t want to do evil.
I’m unimpressed by any suggestion of future compensation. Righteousness is its own reward.
Similarly, I’m offended by any threat of punishment because I don’t see why I should believe anything someone who threatens me says.
God can punish and reward me as he sees fit and there’s really not much I can do about it either way. Why worry about things we can neither predict or control outside of accepting one interpretation of doctrine or another which might just piss God off anyhow?
That said, I think there’s a huge disconect between doctrine and application that is largely at fault. Most people just can’t see how wrong they are to use those approaches. They want to solve other people’s problems and lack the patience and humility to let other people define their own problems.
By my reading of Acts and the Epistles, Peter and Paul were both harsher than Jesus seemed to be.
One thing I am fairly sure of is that if God can claim to be just in any way, he must be pretty lenient about doctrine since he’s unwilling to send regular, visible angelic visitors to everyone who asks questions.
David
Thanks so much for the comments, everyone.
I stumbled across your blog because WordPress said we were blogging about the same things. I came back because your post on prayer has stayed with me. But before I got back to that post, I found this.
I think you are right to reject the idea of any God who wants you to worship him because you are afraid not to. Fear of hell is hardly a helpful way to begin a loving relationship. But I don’t believe that that is what Christianity teaches (though I admit, it’s what far too many Christians claim.)
The starting point for Christianity (and indeed for Judaism) is that God loves us. God has plans for us. God want us to respond in love.
And sometimes that means that we learn how much we resist love, how often we fail to love — which is where talk of sin comes in.
But I don’t think that a healthy faith can be built on fear of sin. Rather, we start with some glimmer of God’s presence, some glimmer of goodness and generosity in this world that is beyond what we were expecting. If we can start there, then we build on gratitude. We build on curiosity. We build on what God is already doing in our lives.
I’ll comment on prayer in the original post, rather than confuse the conversation. But I hope you find people around you who can offer a different understanding of God… and that you can keep questioning and critiquing any vision of God that demeans you.
This is a good post, Kullervo. I really like it. I wasn’t sure what you were talking about over on Tim’s blog, so I Googled it. Well said.
Joining the conversation three years late, but…Kullervo, I love this. You are so right about creating a problem for people and telling them how to solve it. I also love Kimberly’s comment about questioning questioning/rejecting any vision of God that demeans us. That’s well said. I like thinking about things I accept and reject in that way.
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Apparently you can actually buy Aura Salve on Amazon for the low price of $12.95.