Video Games Do Not Promote Violence, Lag Does.

I thought long and hard about what to write my blog on this week. I'm eating up Augustine. I debated tackling theodicy, but it seems that was a favorite of in-class discussion and is already being talked enough of  tonight. I wrote down about half a page on the nature of sin and how sin is only a perverted painting of God's perfect image. However, I could not get to a point. Finally, after much deliberation, I settled for something we seemed to skim right over in class discussion. However, I think it is worth bringing up. Augustine writes in the fifth chapter of his first book, "What indeed am I to you, that you should command me to love you, and grow angry if I do not, and threaten me with enormous woes? Is not the failure to love you woe enough in itself?" That concept astounds me! The failure to love God would be living a life driven by selfish ambition. Without loving God, one would basically reject morality. The reason this is justified is although people do believe they can be moral without God, their foundations of morality would likely still follow Biblical principles or model someone who follows those principles. Without Divine guidance, the foundations the world has been built upon would be stripped away. This quote seems to point towards a essentially harmless punishment in Hell where the only real consequence is separation from God. Is not the thought of missing paradise with the creator of the universe punishment enough without having to bear the pain of fire and brimstone? Not to spoil the book for anyone, but Dante's Inferno contains a good example of this type of sinner. The first circle of  Hell is called Limbo. These souls did not succumb to the other sins, but their only fault was that they never accepted God. Dante writes in his fourth canto: 

and thus he made me enter

The foremost circle that surrounds the abyss.

There, as it seemed to me from listening,

Were lamentations none, but only sighs,

That tremble made the everlasting air.

And this arose from sorrow without torment,

Which the crowds had, that many were and great,

Of infants and of women and of men.

To me the Master good: "Thou dost not ask

What spirits these, which thou beholdest, are?

Now will I have thee know, ere thou go farther,

That they sinned not; and if they merit had,

'Tis not enough, because they had not baptism

Which is the portal of the Faith thou holdest. 

The only reason for the people in the first circle to be in Hell is because they never knew God and because of that were not baptized. Because of their ignorance, they do not suffer anything accept the thoughts of what might have been.

P.S. I commented on Tyler's "The Desire To Know".