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 Originally Posted by oskar
Wow that is very very very specific. I am very very impressed. Why don't you give the story of Job as an example?
Job is one of the most misinterpreted stories from the Bible as a whole. It's about not losing internal direction (eg: by giving up and mentally becoming a victim) in spite of external setbacks.
For anyone not familiar with the story, here's a quick summary:
God tells Satan that Job is an incredibly good man. Satan suggests that Job is only good because he has been lucky. God and Satan have a bet over how Job will react if Job becomes incredibly, ridiculously unlucky (though Satan cannot kill Job). If Job stays good, then God wins, and if Job turns bad, Satan wins.
Satan causes Job to be incredibly unlucky one day, and it basically means that all of Job's kids and livestock die on the same day. Job stays good, and Satan loses the bet.
Satan and God repeat the bet. Satan causes Job to be incredibly unlucky another day, giving him these terrible sores and causing his wife to turn on him. Then Job's friends come and tell him a bunch of bullshit useless advice, and he realizes that his friends are idiots. However, although he keeps being good, the conversation and circumstances make him realize how little he actually knows about the nature of God.
God shows up and shows pleasure with Job realizing how much he doesn't know. God also shows displeasure at the shitty advice of the friends, but he forgives them out of respect for Job. God has won the bet, and he rewards Job by making him healthy again and giving him twice as much shit as he lost and a particularly long life to enjoy it.
It's very much related to the concept Poop keeps carrying on with about luck and how to deal with the results of it in the other thread.
Originally Posted by spoonitnow
I know you're carrying on, but no, this is not what I'm saying. Sacrifice does not guarantee results, and that's a very, very, very important part of it.
Since you seem like you want clarity on this point, and it would contribute greatly to the discussion, so I'll give it:
The metaphor of sacrifice is the key theme of the entire Old Testament and some of the New Testament, particularly of sacrifice to God, to yourself or to the greater good. You immediately have to clarify three parts of the metaphor:
1. What constitutes a sacrifice
2. How the quality of a sacrifice is determined
3. What is God
Some quick explanations:
(1) What constitutes a sacrifice is anything of value given up or destroyed. You generally see something like a lamb or some other type of food being burned to the point that it cannot be used as an example.
(2) The quality of a sacrifice is determined by how much value is being given up. It's worth noting that this is capped by the amount of value that a person could gather up to begin with.
(3) God can be seen as a metaphor for chances of success, your own self, someone else, the greater good or a variety of other things, but usually one of these four or five. There's a lot of overlap between these concepts that is often referred to in general as God.
A few key sacrifice-centric stories and their meaning:
- Abraham and Issac: Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son Issac to God. Abraham went his whole long-ass life not being able to have a son, and it's all he wanted his whole live. God gave him one and then not long after ordered him to sacrifice it to test his faith.
The metaphor is about altruism and being willing to make the greatest sacrifice imaginable (your child as a metaphor of how great the sacrifice is, see #2 above) for the greater good.
- Cain/Abel/Seth: Abel makes a great sacrifice and has good things happen in life. Cain makes a sacrifice that isn't so good, but he can't figure out why it's not so good and why his life isn't turning out the way he wants it. God basically tells him to try harder and that making better sacrifices is the only chance he has of improving his own life (ie: the last thing you want to be told when shit isn't going how you want it is that it's your own fault). Cain lashes out in frustration and kills Abel (instead of continuing to try to make his own life better), destroying what is good because he can't get good things going in his own life. Cain is tormented by what he's done, and God creates Seth to sort of take Abel's place as the good son.
The metaphor is largely about what happens when you get jealous and frustrated over your life not turning out like someone else's when you think you deserve more and the choice you have to make between lashing out or investing in yourself. The role of how sacrifice does not guarantee results ties into this story strongly as well because Cain has the perception that he's making particularly good sacrifices when he's really not, and it's both unclear and irrelevant as to whether that's his own fault or the fault of "luck."
- Jesus: Jesus sacrificed himself to all of humanity for the greater good and then rose after death to ascend to heaven (resurrection being a common metaphor for improving as the result of self-sacrifice). Knowing what was going to happen to himself ahead of time is one of the keys to this story because he walked into it voluntarily while turning down the temptation to not have to do that from Satan.
This is a metaphor for the right way to live, showing that you can sacrifice yourself for the greater good and still benefit as a result.
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