Potty training

Shasta had an entry the other day about "The Witch of Alexandria." In the story, the woman says...

"Oh that I could burn all the blessings in heaven, and douse all the flames in hell." When asked why, she responded" so that people would serve God out of love, rather than out of a desire to gain rewards, or fear of punishment."

All of us are psychologically hard-wired to respond to consequences. Pavlov's dog and all that. A good example is money. Money is just like Pavlov's bell: it's arbitrary by itself yet we attribute meaning to green bills and it causes us to salivate. Classical behavior modification. It's been argued by behavioral psychologists that our entire behavior is based on that single premise.

So it could further be argued that religions' use of heaven and hell are the theological equivalent of a carrot and a whip. If you view it in that light then, sure, it's distasteful. But I think you need to look beyond that. You train a child in the same way as a dog: toilet training, cleaning up, doing their homework, etc. You reward and you punish.

Hopefully, eventually the child moves beyond that. No longer do you have to give the kid a Cheerio for peeing in the toilet; instead, the child gets to the point that he/she understands the benefit of going to the bathroom in the toilet instead of in their bed. Does that mean we shouldn't give the kid a Cheerio in the first place? No. Otherwise, they might not have learned the lesson as quickly or as well.

In the case of heaven/hell -- the fact is that none of us really knows if the reward is really there or not. That's the beauty of the system. You hope that there's a reward. In the meantime, you learn to enjoy living well. You can even act out of love. I think that's the point of it all: not for you to learn "If I'm a good person I get a reward" ... but to learn "The reason we should live well is to live well."

So to focus on the possible reward/punishment is kind of missing the point.