On bio-ethics, sacrifice, and facebook ettiquite.

In bioethics, we were discussing thought experiments and doing some, which is always fun.  One of them was what we would be willing to do, if asked by religious authority (ranging from second councilor to God himself).

First of all, it worries me how many people would be willing to do apparently bad things because their second councilor, or bishop, or an apostle asked them to, because that's just not doctrinally sound reasoning.

It gets a little trickier when you're asked what you would do for God.

For example, if God asked you to kill your son, would you do it?  Most Mormons (and 100% of Abrahams) say yes. At least those in my bioethics class.  Hopefully this won't ever come up. But then our professor asked what if God asked you to kill your son but then told you that if you did, you would go to Hell for it.

It's still what he wants you to do, but you'll be punished for it.

That was a more interesting question, for a lot of reasons. Most of us said no.  (As it turned out I left my iClicker at home, so I didn't have to commit).  Why do we say no?  Doesn't that suggest we're really just motivated by getting our reward rather than doing what God asks us to?  Or does it suggest there's a higher good that supersedes what God asks.  Obviously, setting up impossible hypothetical scenarios sometimes leads to issues. (I believe God is good, and so I hope that if he did ask me to do something so directly, it would be good, and so forcing it to be bad makes it sort of difficult, which is the point, of course. I've been reading through the Old Testament recently.  A lot of stuff seems pretty bad on the surface, so it's hard to say.)

This is sort of all over the place, we'll see where this goes.

This brings me to tonight.  So I'm sitting here, reading through facebook, and I see this:

Let me tell you why this is everything that hurts me.

First of all, I think reposts on Facebook are the worst, always.  As a rule, I don't post anything that asks me to repost it, even if it's something I agree with.
Second, I think this is just a superstitious chain letter masked as something faith building in order to be more popular.
Third, I think this sort of "test" is superstitious and not conducive to real faith.
Finally, I think the design is a little extremely tacky.   It's not even in comic-sans!

So I was reading this, thinking about how I didn't like it, and then I thought, "But what if it were true, maybe I should post it.  Why not?"
And I said to myself, "because it's tacky and everything I hate."
But then I thought, "What if God wanted you to post it?"
And then I said, "Well yeah, of course, but I don't think that God wants me to post something that is tacky and I hate."

And then I went back on forth on it for a while, and it became this sort of deeper issue of if I'm willing to sacrifice my pride and whether I'm capable of doing so, and how much I care what people think of me, and if I'm actually willing to do things I don't want to for God, and whether or not we should expect to have to sacrifice things, even things that are central to who we are.

Eventually rational thinking took over:
I thought to myself, if I do, and nothing happens, then I can say, "See!  It's tacky and unsound and I don't have to do stupid things on facebook as some sort of test of faith."

And if something were to happen, then my life is better!  and that's cool. (This is sort of a reductio ad absurdum of Pascal's Wager.)  Regardless, I can say, "Look, I'm a Perkes, and Perkes can do hard things."  And then I can make a blog post about it and ask people what their thoughts were.

And that's how I slipped from my impression of myself.  

So there you have it. I still don't think there's any real value in ill-conceived, barely religious posts on facebook, nor do I think I had to post that for some divine reason, but I'm not sure whether or not there is real value in doing things we don't want to, if only to teach ourselves how.  And I'm wondering in what ways sacrifice is an important element of religion, and whether it needs to be hard to be powerful.

Any thoughts, mysterious* readers?

*I have almost no idea who reads my blog, I see that lots of people do, including many from other countries. Let me know who you are, mysterious russian audience.  дайте мне знать, кто вы, загадочной русской аудитории.


Afterward:
So I wrote this whole post between 11am and 1am, amidst some other things I was doing, as such it is one of my less careful posts and I may have been a little out of it for a lot of the time I spent writing, but I don't want to edit it too much because I think it captures what I was thinking pretty well, maybe better than most.  Here is some good context that I think helps:

If you don't know me fairly well you probably won't understand why this was such a big deal for me. It really does go against almost every instinct I have.  The thing is, I care far too much about what people think of me, especially on the internet (you probably do too).  Which is, I think, why posting this appealed to me in a strangle, slightly masochistic, or more accurately ascetic sense.  We I care so much about what people think that the thought of doing something which disrupts the normal flow (on facebook or in public) is nearly painful.  Posting that was much harder for me than giving away money, or time, or vice; I do that sort of thing all the time, it's practically second nature.  Heights and depths and animals and pain and death have never really scared me much, but social judgement always has.

I'm not saying everyone should go post annoying things on facebook because it will make you better (most people already post annoying things on facebook, and the rest of you are what give me hope for the world), but I think it might be worth considering what it is we're afraid of, what it is that we can't give up, or can't do, and give it a try.

PS - On review of my somewhat hasty post, I realized it could be fairly offensive.  If anyone actually posted that (or something like it) with good intentions and is now incredibly offended, I'm really quite sorry; that certainly wasn't my intent.  I'm sort of particular and judgmental sometimes usually, and I tend to articulate small things so that they sound like a big deal, you probably shouldn't take it too seriously.  You just keep doing what you're doing. I'll be over here figuring out my life.