I'm about 110% Protestant, but for whatever reason, I love Catholic radio. I don't believe I'm getting bonus points with God when I listen to the "Hail-Mary", but it's always good for me to expand my horizons, even if only to a similar worldview.
The other day I was listening to an apologetics guy who essentially tries to use a combination of philosophy and Judo to put atheists and agnostics into submission. I used to love this kind of thinking. The atheist was making the common case/view that if there is pointless pain and suffering in the world, there cannot logically be an all-powerful loving God. After I watched the Walking Dead finale I thought he was right (How in the world do they expect humanity to survive 7 months without new episodes of the Walking Dead? I'm clueless). Anyway, the Catholic Judo master started making some points about how suffering can be beneficial, how it only appears there is no point to the suffering, and how pain and suffering create opportunities for grace, for courage, for justice.
I think he's right, obviously. Otherwise I wouldn't be listening to Catholic radio.
Then he made one more point that seems super relevant given the current state of affairs in Indiana.
He introduced me to a philosophy of "competing goods".
I'll do my best to explain it as well as he did. If there are multiple limited beings existing in a shared space, what is good for one being might very well be bad for another. For example, if a lion eats a gazelle, that is a good exchange for the lion, but a bad exchange for the gazelle. I think this happens all the time. If I go to an interview and get a sought-after job, then that means someone else didn't get that job. This philosophy of competing good makes the case that not everyone can have their cake and eat it too.
Indiana
Indiana is kind of crazy right now.
Let's walk through a scenario and apply this philosophy to it. If a Christian Southern Baptist (because that's the "right one") owns a bakery and is asked by a homosexual couple to do a wedding, this may create a dilemma (to say nothing of Jesus' and Paul's approaches to culture). If the baker has a moral objection to participating in the event, there most certainly will be a dilemma. Either the baker will say "No," which has reverberations in our nation's history of discrimination. Or the baker will say "Yes," creating a situation where a person may be forced to choose between God or country.
I'd make the cake and tell them about Jesus...
But I can't get past the baker's conscience. If he really believes his God doesn't want him to do it, how can we make a law that says he has to?
And on the flip side, nobody should be discriminated against. How can we not make a law that stops discrimination? That's exactly when laws work at their best!
In a world of competing goods it is important to remember almost no situation is black or white. People are the most complex things on this earth, and we're trying to create societies where a melting pot of human history can co-exist, there's going to be friction.
