Judy, true you said Christianity but my personal experience is with Catholicism. I still think it's unhealthy to think that humans are defective by nature and I don't believe that Jesus taught that.
On Saturday, January 18, 2014 3:50 PM, "authfri...@yahoo.com" <authfri...@yahoo.com> wrote: I do believe I said "Christianity," not "Catholicism," Share. I'm astonished you weren't aware that it's Christian doctrine across the board. As I said, if we weren't defective, there'd have been no need for God to send Jesus to redeem us and make us acceptable in God's sight. I'm not saying you or anybody else should believe this. It was just an aside, a reminder that this is what Christianity says. The story about the pope and the Portuguese fishing industry is apocryphal, BTW. Days of penitence, including the practice of abstaining from meat, had been established long before there was a Portuguese fishing industry important enough for a pope to be concerned about. << Judy, this is where I part company with Catholicism, the belief that people are defective at their core. I don't think this is a healthy belief and I doubt that Jesus taught it. I left the Church when they said it was no longer a mortal sin to eat meat on Friday. I realized how arbitrary their rules are. Later I heard that some Pope made that rule to help the Portuguese fishing industry! >> On Saturday, January 18, 2014 1:51 PM, "authfriend@..." <authfriend@...> wrote: Did you not read what I wrote, Share? The distinction in terms of words is arbitrary. Shame isn't inherently toxic, and guilt isn't inherently healthy. You can redefine the words all you want, but all you're saying is that one shouldn't feel that one is fundamentally wrong, bad, defective (or at least no more so than anybody else--it's a basic doctrine of Christianity, of course, that everyone is fundamentally wrong, bad, and defective; otherwise we wouldn't need redemption). << Judy, contemporary psychologists find it useful to distinguish between guilt which is healthy and shame which is toxic, where shame indicates feeling that one is fundamentally wrong, bad, defective. >> On Saturday, January 18, 2014 1:31 PM, "authfriend@..." <authfriend@...> wrote: It's still an arbitrary distinction, Share. Shame need not involve the sense that there's something wrong with you rather than that there was something wrong with what you did. And anyway, the sense that there's nothing wrong with you is delusionary. If there were nothing wrong with you, you wouldn't have done anything wrong in the first place. It's just a faux distinction. Psychologists don't want you to beat yourself up endlessly about what you did, and that's fine, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't feel shame at all, ever. My last sentence is what I mean--and what most people (including the dictionary) mean--by "shame." Judy, my distinction between shame and guilt comes from contemporary psychology and I agree with your last sentence. On Saturday, January 18, 2014 1:03 PM, "authfriend@..." <authfriend@...> wrote: That's your personal definition of "shame," Share. You're making an arbitrary distinction between feeling guilt and feeling shame. My dictionary says shame is: "a painful emotion caused by consciousness of guilt, shortcoming, or impropriety" I'd say if you are unable or refuse to feel pain about having done something wrong, there's something wrong with you. << emptybill, I think it's appropriate to feel guilt about wrong doing and to make amends. But imo shame is toxic. It says that there's something fundamentally wrong with the person rather than that they did something wrong. >> On Saturday, January 18, 2014 12:42 PM, "emptybill@..." <emptybill@...> wrote: > Judy - it was a play upon and between words and meaning. You should've gotten it. And finally, I find the notion that one should never feel shame for one's mistakes contemptible. I feel shame that your mistaken notion is contemptible.
