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"Sometimes We Don't Listen
To Ourselves in Good Faith"

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Index to Essays on Religion
Index to Essays on Responsibility

California State University, Dominguez Hills
Created: July 9, 2001
Latest update: July 23, 2001
 E-Mail jeannecurran@habermas.org.

You Made Your Choice

Journal Entry by jeanne

Teaching Essay by Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors
Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors: July 2001. "Fair Use" encouraged.

We live in an adversarial environment, perhaps a part of our frontier heritage. We still have a fondness for John Wayne and his six shooter. And there is something good about feeling in control, feeling that we have the power, albeit a six shooter, to protect ourselves from bullying and harm. Many of the visual images by which we understand our society grow out of that heritage.

Many others of our visual images grow out of the strong commitment to relligious principles that led many colonists to seek religious freedom from European persecution. The recent discussion on PSN reflects the dilemma we face when these two sets of images clash in our language and in our feelings.

Gordon Fellman speaks of compulsive adversarialism. Sometimes right after we say "I love you", we add "You made your choice", and we fail to hear the odd discontinuities, unless we think that only one of those phrases was really meant. Now we must speak of forgiveness and easy forgiveness and the work of L.Gregory Jones, and many, many others today. Archbishop Desmond Tutu: There Is No Future Without forgiveness. I'll have to fill in references later. jeanne July 23, 2001.

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