Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
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Notes -
How do Faiths and Philosophies Deal with the Convert who is a Satiated Sinner?
We all know Augustine’s famous formulation: Lord, make me pure, but not yet. How should we deal with someone who applies this strategy successfully: they sin for as long as anyone would reasonably like to sin, then with perfect timing they find religion, live an ordered an righteous life, and tell anyone who will listen that their prior life was bad and sinful. And on the one hand, I might agree that they are correct: their prior life was sinful, their current life is better ordered; but on the other hand there’s something annoying about someone “having their fun” and then turning around and telling you not to have yours, or claiming their objectively enviable life as some form of tragedy they were forced to endure rather than a result of their own choices.
The classic, Augustinian example is the born again Christian who sleeps around when they are young and then finds Jesus right around the time that most people get bored of sleeping around anyway. Inasmuch as one can point to anything like a secular liberal life-path it looks something like HIMYM : date and sleep around and party from college through your mid-late 20s, at which point you’ll be ready to settle down and switch your tax light to available. As the joke goes: how do you find your soulmate? Turn 27, it’ll be the next person you date. Most people, even without finding any religion, tend to get tired of sleeping around, and get married. But the difference is that the born-again Christian goes through this process, attributes their change to finding religion, and lectures everyone in range about how they should never do the things they did. And it’s hard to take them seriously and not say: You had your fun and now you want to keep me from having mine.
The feminist example was one brought up by my wife: women who earn celebrity exploiting themselves in ways that they later write oh-so-thoughtful-thinkpieces with all the right feminist verbiage self-victimizing and finding all the ways that the thing they made money off of was horrible; conveniently right around the time when they can’t exploit their ill-gotten hotness anymore. Emily rat-polish-nonsense is trying for a second career as a feminist crusader, starting with getting angry about the modeling career that helped her net a rich man that would enable her to pay to play in publishing. But my wife brought up Callista Flockhart, who has tried to do advocacy around the eating disorder she had throughout her early 2000s acting career, without really reckoning with the damage that starving herself did to girls watching to benefit herself; Bella Hadid who says she regrets her nose job because it took away her Palestinian nose, while living off the results of the plastic surgery she’s gotten; and [the Kadashians]](https://people.com/kylie-jenner-regrets-getting-breasts-done-7565553) of all people try to self victimize about the “pressure” they felt to get Darth-Vader quantities of plastic surgery, pressure they themselves have done more than anyone else to create. And my wife’s feeling is that these women want to have their cake and eat it too: hit “betray” on feminism when their young and exploitation pays, then find Feminism when their career is starting to flag and cry a river of tears about how they were mistreated when they were making money.
The problem in either case being that while Augustine’s plea is deeply human, and fairly normal, the message such a convenient conversion sends is undermined, it’s at cross purposes, it will come across as “do as I say not as I do” to the young, who will take the whole story as permission to sin with an assurance of later acceptance after conversion.
Possible solutions:
There is no problem, they’re probably mostly sincere, you’re just jealous. This might be accurate, I have a teacher’s-pet personality and an autistic focus on fairness in some things. The first time I remember thinking this was as a virginal high school junior-senior, when I went through a weird phase of dating like five girls in a row who all gave a variation on the same story: she wasn’t a virgin, she had lost it to a boyfriend she thought was forever some time last year, but she didn’t want to do it again until she got married, and she was willing to give me a try out for that job. And as an immature seventeen year old boy, I would have probably happily dated a fellow virgin who wanted to wait until marriage, but working toward marrying a girl who had sex with other guys before but made me wait was out of the question. Looking back, I was immature, my analysis of the situation was incorrect, and my jealousy was asinine. Maybe I’m just emotionally wrong about this.
They might not really be sincere, but this is the best case scenario path for them. We want to encourage conversion to our religion, and that means accepting converts where they are. The Prodigal son and all that. Though I find this mostly dissatisfying, in that the Prodigal Son comes home after eating pig slop, rather than having a great time and just sorta coming home one day. His conversion from rock bottom is sincere, it doesn’t tell us what to do with insincere converts.
This is the actual path for converts, growing up. Not everyone is a saint from day one, and really a life path where you have your fun and then mature is the ordered life path we’re aiming for. We don’t actually expect to convert young people, they’re too busy having fun, we just want them to wander back when they’re old. This I find dissatisfying, in that nobody actually preaches this, and accepting it from converts undermines the message to the young by observed example.
Is there something I’m just not seeing here?
This is based on a misperception.
The sin and degeneracy I was mired in for a decade wasn't really fun, if it were I wouldn't have needed to be so drunk to do it.
The truth is I was deeply unhappy and unfulfilled. I wouldn't tell you not to have fun, I would tell you that sexual degeneracy alcohol and drugs are a false fun. They cannot lead to a lasting happiness, peace or fulfillment. They're distracting and numbing.
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As some of the other comments have already pointed out, it's not man's place to determine whether someone has truly converted and repented, it's God's.
In the Gospels, there are two parables (that I can recall of the top of my head) that deal with this issue - The Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32), which is relatively well known even to non-Christians, but also the perhaps lesser known the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard (Matthew 20) where, abridging siginificantly, the workers who were recruited later and did less work on the vineyard were paid the same who were recruited earlier.
Regardless, there certainly should be a degree of prudential judgement and healthy dose of scepticism about a convert like the one you are describing. That is, someone who seems to be converting merely because it is convenient and beneficial for themselves and not a genuine conversion. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be welcomed by the community broadly, but that they're not necessarily going to get 'benefit' of finding a tradional spouse.
The Catholic perspective on this (I don't have time to go find the supporting sections in the Catechism/other sources) is that God will forgive you of your spiritual sin, but that doesn't mean you're immune from the temporal consequences of your sin. This is fairly obvious when talking about a sin like murder. You still have to serve your prison sentence (and Catholics would broadly support that even if you repented), and when you are released and try to integrate back into society people would rightfully be wary of you even if you became a Christian.
Similarly, a formally promiscuous man or woman may struggle to find an always traditional, virginal woman or man to marry. That's just a temporal consequence of their sin. Maybe if they are sincere then someone may accept them and marry them regardless (perhaps even someone who was in a similar situation!). But quite possibly not. In some sense, it may effectively be penance for their sin. They're not guaranteed marriage, it may not be their vocation.
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At least from a Christian perspective, it's not your job to distinguish sincere converts from insincere ones, it's God's job. He can tell the difference, and if someone goes around doing sins, and then pretends to repent at the last minute for reputational gains but is insincere, then you can treat them as a legitimate convert and then when they die they go to hell anyway because God is not deceived.
That said, someone repenting of their sins, regardless of whether they are genuine or not, should still be made to face the consequences of their actions and do their best to make whole anyone who they have harmed. If a murderer repents while in prison, you can forgive them for their murder while still making them carry out the remainder of their legal prison term. If someone has stolen from you and repents, you still make them return what they stole. If someone has wild sex and ends up with three children with three different partners, they still have to raise those children and deal with the burden that places on their future relationships. Repentance should be a thorough and life changing experience that either requires someone to be sincere in order to actually choose to commit to, and so burdensome that nobody will want to do this fake get out of jail free stuff.
If the mass murderer wants to repent on his deathbed and God wants to forgive him for free, that's between the two of them. You can still put him in jail regardless of whether you believe him or not, because the insincere murderer deserves to go to jail, and the repentant murderer can go to jail as part of their repentance.
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You were emotionally very right about this. "I have this very precious thing that I'm demanding a high price for but yeah I totally gave it to someone else for free" says something about how much you're valued. You were right to walk away.
Sure, but my analysis was entirely off base. I didn't understand that it was ultimately somewhere between a statement that she just wasn't that into me, and a shit-test in the classical sense. I took the statement seriously as "I no longer want to do the thing I previously wanted to do."
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Something has always seemed intensely, deeply distastefully unfair about the “mafioso is forgiven on his deathbed” thing. You can be as awful, as cruel, as nasty to your fellow man as you want in life, as long as you “checkpoint” after major sins by asking for forgiveness. It’s a completely consequence-free life unless you’re unlucky enough to die before asking for forgiveness the last time. That’s almost double unfairness - the elderly don / rapist / warlord is almost certainly forgiven since he can spend his early 90s praying, while the young sinner both dies young and goes to hell.
I mean, the Catholic solution is purgatory. A sinner who doesn’t do penance for his sins will have penance done to him before entering heaven, no matter how sincere his repentance. I believe orthodox toll houses are also a solution here, but I don’t understand them well enough to not straw man.
Of course it gets complicated in unfair-seeming ways.
They are not. Mytarstva are there to tally your forgotten sins and measure them against your virtuous deeds. Confession eradicates your sins completely as long as you sincerely repent, that's why it's a sacrament. I don't know the doctrine well enough to talk about the efficiency of the anointment of the sick, which is supposed to facilitate the absolution of your forgotten sins.
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I wouldn't need to go that far, to me the obvious one is the Hollywood Me Too movement. It was a masterful effort to frame the situation in a way that was maximally charitable to the women. What from one side looks like "actresses being forced to have sex with sleazy producers in order to not be blacklisted from the industry" looks a lot like "actresses getting roles by sleeping with producers" if you look at it from the perspective of a struggling would-be actress who maintained her integrity and rejected sleazy producers. Sure, I imagine most of them didn't go proposing sex to these producers to get jobs, but they didn't walk away in disgust (until the Me Too movement); Hollywood needs actresses in movies, if all of them refused to sleep with sleazy producers, actresses would still be hired and movies would still be made. People who stayed in that industry and put up with sex pests because they were "afraid" of losing paychecks higher than the average person has to retire get very little sympathy from me.
Anyway, to your main point; like with Pascal's Wager I don't think there's any "meta level" you can hide insincerity from omniscience. Sincerity requires your whole mind and soul to be behind it. You can't plan when you'll sincerely convert because if you only convert because of your plan then it's not sincere. If there is no real regret for your past, if you look at it fondly like it was the good times and now you're just doing the upkeep to not pay any price for it, then you're not being sincere. The sincere convert truly regrets what he did, he hates what his sin did to his soul and dreads having to account for it after his death even after his conversion. Everyone else is not going to fool an omniscient god, they're just fooling themselves.
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Im probably ignoring the spirit of your post, which is Christian. But I'm curious. What happened to those 5 girls after you broke up with them? Do you know if they actually abstained from further sex until marriage?
If they didn't, I think they refused to put out for you because they just didn't feel lustful passion for you. There was no repentance involved. Of course, it is awkward for them to say that. Once is happenstance and twice is coincidence, what do you think five times is?
I think your conclusion, that you were jealous, is correct by the way, regardless of their sincerity.
Man, I have a birthday and a wedding anniversary and then you ask me to reminisce? Buckle up boyo.
One I lost track of entirely. We honestly had nothing in common except her best friend was dating my best friend.
One, A, I never talked to much after high school, but a couple years later I heard A married some Russian guy during undergrad, which unkind rumors called a green card marriage, and then he more or less abandoned her while refusing to divorce her. I don't know how that ultimately ended up.
One, B, would have a great deal of drama senior year with my childhood friend Chris as he wanted to have sex with her and she didn't want to have sex. Then we graduated high school and B went off to a southern party school and had what I understood to be a lot of fun. Funny how what was so important and dramatic in high school was meaningless by second semester of undergrad.
C would start dating a friend of mine from track a week after rejecting me, they would be inseparably hot and heavy all of senior year, talked about forever. He had gotten into UMichigan, and C chose to go to Michigan State so they wouldn't be too long distance, despite having never been to Michigan. The week before we all left for college that summer, my parents told me to invite a bunch of my friends to dinner at the country club we belonged to. C and I had remained close, along with D who was a good friend of hers, and so I invited both of them, along with several of my Brown and Jew crew friends from AP classes. Dinner is nice, it's the fireworks from the summer church festival down the road and you can see them from the balcony, when suddenly C leaves the group to take a phone call. Then she comes back, upset, and grabs D, and they go off to talk. We all plan to go back to my parents' house and shoot pool after. D asks me where she can take C to be alone, they go back to a spare bedroom in the basement. Turns out, C's boyfriend, the one she was moving 12 hours away to Michigan to stay with, had dumped her via text. After that she's cycled through a pretty standard serial-monogamy process. POSTSCRIPT: Years later, Mrs. FiveHour, who I met in undergrad, would go to law school, and in one of her 1L classes a guy would walk up to her afterward and say Hey, your last name is FiveHour, do you know FiveHourMarathon? And she'd say yeah he's my husband, and the guy would FREAK out holy shit FiveHourMarathon got married I knew him in high school. And she comes back and asks if I knew him, and I said yeah that's C's old boyfriend, I've told you that story before, you know the one who dumped her via text 72 hours before they were going to move to Michigan together? And Mrs. FiveHour looks at me with horror and says, C was so upset over HIM? All that drama over THAT GUY? Mrs. FiveHour was not impressed. C laughed until she choked when I told her this story after we ran into each other at the diner back home.
Of course, when C was crying over her erstwhile boyf, D was alternating between comforting her and stealing kisses with me. We'd been very close friends, and at some point it had turned into a doomed summer fling. She had decided that her wayward days were over, my wayward days had just begun, and we both kinda knew we weren't going to do long distance: I was headed to NYC for undergrad and she was off to Liberty to be a good Christian girl. But still, we talked about it, we flirted about it, we thought about it, even though ultimately we weren't going to do it; we had a lot of affection for each other, and I'd still rank her in marriageability top 5 of any girl I've ever known. She would meet a nice boy at Liberty, and still lives out there with her husband and kids. So I guess her repentance was as sincere as could be. I still can't over that her husband's last name is Dork. Not kidding, scout's honor, hand on the bible: his surname is Dork, D's name is now Mrs. Dork.
I'd imagine all four of them thought of it as sincere. A and D certainly put forth a best effort, to varying degrees of success. C, after her own heart, tried her best: I've remained friends with her and never once has she not been sincerely disgusted by the men who break her heart afterward and swears never again. B I guess didn't do that well, but that's more a change of circumstances and social contexts than anything.
My own negative reaction was a mix of jealousy, pride and a sense of entitlement to a life I'd consumed in media rather than in reality. Given, it worked out well enough for me in the end: all were nice enough girls, but Mrs. FiveHour is the Mrs. for a reason.
Thanks for the long recap! Didnt realize it was such bad timing
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I'm not religious, but you articulate the very human feelings on both sides very well.
What I would say, from a stoic perspective (and what I would say if I were still a Christian) is that it's not your job to decide if their repentance is sincere, and you're only harming yourself by stewing about all the fun they got to have before they found God.
That's not to say you need to take such conversions at face value. Sincerity (or lack thereof) will usually reveal itself.
I can understand being resentful of girls who slept with other guys but want you to put a ring on it first. Maybe she's just using you as an orbiter and fallback, or maybe she really does feel psychically damaged by her earlier experiences. I suspect Callista Flockhart really does regret her earlier ED and wants to spare other girls from going through that. But you can't know what's in their hearts. If you don't want to forgive people, well, you don't really leave open a path for redemption, do you?
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From a Christian perspective, what matters is repentance and not when it comes. If you truly repent of your sins, even on your deathbed, that's good enough because Jesus paid the price and he forgives you. Notice that wiggle room with the word "truly", though. Christians aren't idiots either, and we know that someone's repentance might not actually be sincere. But that also isn't something we are capable of (nor have the standing for) judging. God has to sort that one out.
From there, it gets more complicated depending on your tradition. From a Catholic perspective (and even some Protestants, e.g. CS Lewis), most people will go through purgatory. This isn't something we know much about, more something that we deduce from two points in the Bible. First, "nothing unclean will enter [heaven]" (Revelation 21:27), and second, "There is no righteous person, not even one" (Romans 3:10 but the sentiment appears many places). So, if nobody is pure, nothing impure can enter heaven, and if we are somehow to be in heaven anyway, that implies some kind of purification that happens. We also have reason to believe that this process is painful, as some people "will be saved, but only as through fire" (1 Corinthians 3:15). There are more verses but that's the gist of it.
So, from this perspective the answer to your dilemma about satiated sinners is that those people will not suffer damnation, but there will be consequences for them. They will have to go through the (likely painful) process of being purified from those things before they can enter heaven. Thus it's better to avoid sin (as much as you can), so that you won't need as much purification before you can enter heaven. To use a medical analogy (always a good source of metaphors for sin), the satiated sinner is like someone who has abused the hell out of his body, and then decides to get back into shape. It's totally possible, but it'll be harder and more painful than if he had taken care of his health in the first place.
This tension is noted in the gospels as well. See Matthew 9:
Believers go through all sorts of mental gymnastics to convince themselves that actually they are indeed super evil and thus deserving of the title "publicans and sinners", as satirized in this Matt & Trey parody of Mormonism where the main character envisions his damnation in hell with Hitler and all the other Bad People because he stole a donut when he was 5.
Of course, actual Protestant theology is even better: you’re condemned not because you ate the donut, but because Adam ate the donut. Err, apple. Well, okay, we don’t know it was an apple, it could have been any fruit (but was probably a fig since Adam and Eve used fig leaves to hide their nakedness). So, let’s say a Fig Newton. Anyway, the point is you inherited this Original Sin by your birth: you were born fallen.
Now that we’ve successfully self-flagellated, we can take our place at the table with the publicans and sinners and Jesus.
——
You can see why actual publicans and sinners find these people a bit insufferable at times.
Speaking of which, can someone turn this water into wine? I’m not a drinker, but I hear it makes these people go away, so that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.
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Very relevant sketch: https://youtube.com/watch?v=UEp3zUR9YAM?si=SRup9sUqO_0OFNUX
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I immediately thought of Russell Brand, who has made a hasty conversion to Christianity just as numerous allegations of sexual misconduct were beginning to come out. Cue all the jokes about him giving up "preying" for "praying".
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This is an interesting question. It’s complicated in subtle ways. You can see the Satiated Sinner Question as a balancing act between justice and mercy. Justice says that errors deserves punishment and righteousness deserves reward. Mercy says that each person must be lovingly motivated to pursue the good regardless of their past, and rewarded in doing so. If you choose justice at the expense of mercy, then a longterm sinner has no motivation to pursue righteousness. The mercy-starved sinner’s future outlook would lack any appetizing reward, and they would be unmotivated in their journey toward betterment. But if you lack justice, then everyone (sinner included) has reduced motivation to pursue the prescribed righteous conduct. Being justice-heavy means that the repentant sinner never obtains the status they otherwise would have had. Being mercy-abundant means that the repentant sinner can easily make up the status they have lost with little effort. The balance is that we must optimally motivate a lifelong sinner to pursue righteousness, and yet optimally motivate the righteous person to pursue even more righteousness!
We can consider a classroom. A justice-heavy teacher allows for no assignment to be made up except for serious and valid reasons. A mercy-abundant teacher allows for poor-performing students to make up an assignment to get them back on track and reinvested in the work. What’s interesting to consider is that the focus with the most utility depends on which student you are dealing with. I can easily imagine a student with a bad home life, dealing with personal issues, who is on the verge of giving up on his class because of how far behind he is. Emphasizing justice does not help him, neither will he “learn” from failure, as his issue stems from motivation and emotional distress. Lovingly allowing him to hand in something simpler, and reducing the standard for him particularly, can result in new motivation in the class, and more importantly a new attachment to the teacher and school generally. A school that cares about him as a particular human with particular issues is a school he can love, which is clearly better for his particular development.
On the other hand, we can imagine a student who ought to have more justice and not more mercy. This is for a student who is lazy and uncaring without excuse, and especially for a student who violates important rules in a selfish deceptive manner. The failure is important so that he learns his behavior is truly punished, so that hopefully he doesn’t repeat it again. Showing him mercy would be counterproductive, whereas in the distressed student it may be productive. My intuition is that this difference is deeply tied to an individual’s health, IQ, spirit and status.
So how do we solve this universal problem?
One solution is to know them, in that “subjective” sense of having a long conversation and trying to determine whether they are an earnest repentant or a satiated sinner. I do believe that human intuition can tell us this. LLMs and AI show us that the most sophisticated technology available to us is often no match to human intuition. While judging someone is a subjective judgement, it’s probably the closest we can get to an objective judgment, because everything else can be gamed, but human intuition is hard to game. Do we give our significant other a test if they violated our trust, or do we instead trust our intuition? Intuition rules over everything here. If it is impossible to fake, then the motivation to be a satisfied sinner is reduced: “what if I can’t fake it when I’m done?”
Another solution is to reduce the reward for their lifestyle and also love them mercifully. This is actually a crucial part of the Parable of the Prodigal Son. The prodigal son did not recover the full status of what he previously lost! After his profligate spending and ruin, he aimed to become a servant in his father’s household. He remembered that even the servants were well-fed with bread (not exquisite meats). The father embraced his prodigal son with fatherly love (mercifully wishing for his good and loving him), and he celebrated his return with splendor. But the son no longer had a share in his father’s wealth. To his well-behaved son he says “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours”, meaning that the remainder of his wealth goes to the good son — the prodigal son does not deserve to recover the wealth which he wasted. (The word used when the prodigal son demanded his share of the “wealth” is actually “ousia”, which means property or being, and is used in the mysterious epi-ousia, the “super-substantial” or “above-being” bread of the Lord’s Prayer, translated somewhat retardedly as “daily bread”. How many of God’s hired servants have more than enough bread?).
I think this trusty old parable actually sheds a lot of light on this problem. Sinning should always reduce status; the righteous should be greater status than the recently-forgiven. But the return of every sinner onto a Godly path should be greatly celebrated, almost absurdly celebratory. They should be maximally hyped up about it, because that’s for their good. Because “it is fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.” But, hyping up and loving a homeless person who cleaned himself up is a lot different from seeing the formerly homeless person as equal in status to some longstanding community member who lived well. The longstanding community member must be respected and honored more in day to day life. (If the former vagabond lives very well for years, then his status should be greatly increased, but never to the height of what his status would be had he not vagabonded. But maybe close to it. I think that’s correct).
The deeper meta pattern of how to socially-prescribe reinforcement for previous defectors comes up a lot, I think. Someone used to say the N word? OnlyFans girl goes trad? Amber Rose speaking at the RNC? I think there’s an instrumental case for quickly rehabilitating defectors, but I think America screws up in how it valorizes and honors the returning defector. If you were a druggie profligate and then became an evangelical pastor, your previous life as a sinner should not be used to enhance your reputation. You can still be a pastor if there is no one better, but speaking about your past should make you feel nauseous, not excited and nostalgic (what it seems like for these people sometimes).
The rub is that hyping up and celebrating the repenter is also part of status. Ask anyone who was a well-behaved and diligent kid with a layabout sibling how they felt when their sibling was praised and hyped up for merely measuring up for once, while their own constant diligence was taken for granted and any lapses were punished much harder than the constant inadequacy of the sibling.
Intentional or coincidental, you’ve hinted at a plot point of the parable:
In our parable-world, the obedient brother never receives a celebration like this, but he did receive other things: the constant connection to his father, the share in his ousia (interpreted either as wealth to inherit or, spiritually, his nature), and lastly the return of his lost brother (and he gets to eat the calf too). Your experiences are somewhat different as you’re describing an over-strictness to the good sibling and an under-strictness to the bad sibling. But, it’s probable that our parable-patriarch was a loving father to his obedient son, advising him and hyping him on many matters. And it is probable also that if the layabout had stayed in his father’s estate (as opposed to defecting away from his whole “kingdom” so to speak) that he would be criticized or at least advised regarding his errors, in a loving fashion. Our layabout son had instead alienated himself from paternal authority altogether: true defection and true sin. And the celebration upon his return shows us the community’s greatest value: not in industry and correctness but in saving the lost and raising the dead (metaphorically), something better for the communal whole and better for emotional wellness. A spiritual social safety net. [you could, plausibly, tie this discussion to the “slack” topic you find in SSC and elsewhere… and how miserable a place like South Korea is, with their emphasis on industry and rank and not spending money lavishly on genuine welfare — competition of brother, not love].
But I don’t think that the parabolic celebration actually confers status on the profligate. It is a costly signal of the love they have for him as a human (and brother) despite his transgressions. And that love is best for him to have, and best for him to associate in his heart with his family, so that he can resume brotherly duties without shame or ill-will. After this celebration, he is not going to take over the estate of his father, and he has no more inheritance. So his status is effectively permanently lower in re wealth and role, but restored completely in re humanness. Today with our homeless crisis, how many profligates refuse to get help because there is no loving paternal figure to meet them halfway and memorably celebrate their return? Instead there’s efficiency bureaucracies, and competition, and status and status and status and status… cultures which promote family over everything have much lower rates of homelessness and drug addiction.
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