Okay, so my friend, Bethany, has been talking about morality, human nature, judging, and responsibility over at her blog. I wanted to respond intelligently, so I have devoted a whole post to it. Namely, this post is responding to her "The Cider House."

Concerning human nature: I do not believe that we fallen, as such, but if we are, I completely agree with her - our behavior only plays out what we are (rather deterministic, though, isn't it?). My previous post dealt a lot with this subject, so I refer all of you to it.

As for the rest of her post, I actually seem to agree with most of it. Though, my reading of it might be off. We cannot judge one another, because we cannot actually see themselves as they see themselves. We can try, and as we grow further in our view of us-as-them, we empathize and understand, and, as in my experience, refrain from judgment, but offer an invitation of living life together, differently, if we believe that action to be harmful, perhaps not necessarily to them, but to the community to which we are inescapably tied. I find her statement, "Knowing human potential prevents me from placing myself above another," very interesting, because she has already claimed that we are fallen and there is nothing we can do about it. Is that what prevents her from judging? Knowing that human potential (thus, hers as well) is only destruction?

I reproduce her final paragraph in full here:

Nietzsche wrote in Twilight of the Idols, "We deny God, we deny the responsibility in God: only thereby do we redeem the world." But the problem with shirking responsibility is that the kind of forgiveness and redemption offered is not recognizable forgiveness or redemption at all. Instead of making clean, the effort is abandoned and experience is made insignificant. If our wrongness should be overlooked, and reconciliation is not possible for what has happened on earth, we might as well be done with it. Heaven, an eternity where there is good, maybe. We only hope. Our existence here, however, cannot be justified; life is endured futility.

In this, I am perplexed. First of all, I am perplexed with Nietzsche, for what is he redeeming the world to? Using a very religious, a very Christian term, he inexplicable turns it on its head, probably intending the renouncing of God and Christian morality, to becoming only an affirmer of whatever happens in life. And this, like Bethany says, makes experience insignificant, even sustained madness. Secondly, I am perplexed by the outcome of all this - life is endured futility. I guess if our experience is insignificant, if our wrongness should be overlooked, and if reconciliation is not possible, life is futile. Those are big 'ifs'.

Another offer.

What if we really are able to do good? Tragedy only exists if there is another viable solution. I cannot offer anything but a meaningful, tragic existence. The consequences of an inherent 'fallenness' are evident - futility, meaninglessness on Earth. But what happens when we embrace the human, immediate story that is filled with tragedy, suffering, and the like, because we have made it so? We are faced with the most tragic realization of them all - we are able to change things, but we have not. Yet. Lastly, a response to the Cider House: when legalism becomes the guiding light for any life, it also becomes futile, for it also denies the responsibility of choice. The power of the law is death. The dying of a free choice, and the responsibility that that entails.