Ste. Peter, arriving in the Old Nick of time...

Rat: So do I get into heaven?

St. Peter: No.

Rat: why not?

St. Peter: You were bad.

Rat: Hooey.

I include the above since it is about the level of discourse I have come to expect, whether it pertains to basic human relationships or to God (Jehovah --Elohim). To go beyond this is to encounter extremely stiff resistance which usually takes the form of premeditated ignorance and complete avoidance of taking the matter to any other level no matter how superficial. Metaphysics for Dummies, indeed! Yet this is so ingrained that it is found in virtually everyone regardless of culture, religion, education, and so forth -- which would account for its persistence in the face of facts to the contrary and even contrary to other basic human needs. People indeed will sacrifice almost anything and anyone to maintain their own self perception of being something vaguely designated as, "good."

Please note that in these St. Peter jokes, Jesus never makes an appearance, and he is never referred to even peripherally. For one thing, it would probably cease to be a joke.
Also note that when called, "good teacher," Jesus asked, "Why do you call me good?" How often do we dare ask ourselves this question? No, we are content to put our own "goodness" neatly into the category of assumables along with our basic basket 'o axioms 'o life.

Accompanying this assumption of, "I'm basically a good person!", Is the corollary that we can live without forgiveness because there's nothing to forgive. This allows us to self-justify pretty much all of our lives. When we think about that, however, one must admit that such thinking is not only out of touch with reality but is frankly infantile. This is what the baby assumes. Because he is by nature completely self-centered. By the way this certainly does describe the persona of Rat. A baby quickly gets over his idea that the world is a basically a good place; but he also quickly performs ego defense mechanisms that are basically just like everyone else's, in order to preserve our egotism but we practice our id-isms.

Apparently we think that we can live an entire lifetime with no need to be forgiven. Much less to forgive. When we are forgiven, we are superficially happy because we got out of some immediate predicament; but we do not accept responsibility and do not accept the fact that we actually needed forgiveness. Ask almost anyone in prison if he or she deserves to be there. This is what makes Camus' novel, "The Fall," so striking in that it strips away our pretenses that we are being good and kind and thoughtful for the sake of virtue being its own reward . Virtue properly defined is the result of judgment, not of self -- conceit. Virtue subjectively defined is probably oxymoronic. And besides, psychologically speaking, unless we can get at least one other person to agree with us about our being virtuous, what's the point?

Einstein once said that if he wanted real answers to real questions he generally turned to Dostoyevsky, not to scientists or science itself. Whether Einstein actually understood the essence of Dostoyevsky is another matter entirely; but there's no question that Dostoyevsky portrayed sin wearing its true colors. And was not afraid to call it by its real name. (Ironically, I had to train the Dragonspeak to type the word, "sin." It apparently is not included in its otherwise extensive vocabulary. Please see the book by Carl Menninger, "Whatever Happened to Sin?")

Rationalism and intellectualism, identified by Dr. Freud as defense mechanisms and little else, seem to be ever more popular and ever more irrational and anti-intellectual by stressing reductionism and erasing all moral distinctions, so that we may more comfortably live, as in, "Brave New World." Our chosen dystopia/anti--universe has arrived and it is a far cry from, "1984"!

I am in the middle of reading, "The Missing", by Tim Gautreaux, the closest thing I can find to Flannery O'Connor among living authors. Like most Dostoyevsky works it concentrates on guilt, grief, and the matter of forgiveness. So I will probably continue to explore this and the reader is as always welcome to contribute from their own reading and/or experiences.