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I don't think this sentiment is very uncommon. One of the most frequent IRL complaints I have about my neighborhood is the number of homeless/violent drug addicts that wander around it all day. It really bothers me that my kids can't use any of the parks in my town because they have become de-facto homeless shelters/injection sites.
And yet: the number of shoes, clothes, etc. I've given away to people walking through my front yard who need these things is not small. The number of times my family has noticed it's cold, and left boxes of blankets and hand warmers around places where we know these guys congregate is not small.
Love the sinner, hate the sin.
Jesus cured lepers, not leprosy.
Isn't a leper just someone with leprosy?
I think the distinction being made is curing individuals with a disease versus eradicating it from the population.
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There's something very David French about this, but I suppose that's just being Christian, and what makes them such frustrating fellow travelers. I think it's the sense that they would rather lose as long as they satisfy their own personal feelings of being a good person first and foremost. It's like a desire for martyrdom or something, they active want to lose while feeling righteous about their own goodness. Because if your goal is "live in a neighborhood without violent drug addicts", handing out free things to violent drug addicts directly undermines that. With allies like these, who needs enemies? Like, one could very easily donate to some kind of cause that aids the homeless without actively undermining one's own neighborhood. If there were actively violent drug addicts congregating outside my house and I found out my neighbor was giving them free shit I would be just about ready to kill my neighbor.
I think you will find that this is not in fact the goal of the poster you are replying to or any of the other related posters.
Your stated goal is easy to "paperclip optimize" away by, for example, killing all of your neighbors. After the massacre, you would clearly "live in a neighborhood without violent drug attics", but you would also be living in a much worse neighborhood.
To use proper RAT/utilitarian/machine learning terminology, I view Christian morals as a form of regularization on goals like the one you state. You already are applying a regularizer that prevents you from considering murdering all humans as the correct solution to your optimization. The Christian is applying a stronger regularization where the ultimate goal of "living in a neighborhood without violent drug addicts" is just as much about wanting to benefit the drug addicts as it is about wanting to benefit yourself.
I've lived in a bunch of countries that are very low tolerance of random antisocial behavior. Generally I've found my average neighbor quality skyrockets in Singapore, even if they grapple with having Singaporean energy.
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The one thing Christianity isn't about is your own personal feelings. If the God of the Bible is real, and his only-begotten son Jesus Christ died on the Cross for our sins, then this matters. Different strains of Christianity differ over the precise relationship between "being a good person" and faithful acceptance of the gift of Jesus' sacrifice, but the end goal is mutual love between God and Man, and "If you love me, you will keep my commandments". (John 14:15). There is a lot of moral and social teaching in the Bible (although very little about secular politics), and if you find that 100% of it agrees with opinions your allies have adopted for secular reasons, you are engaging in motivated reasoning.
Many people who are sincerely religious desire martyrdom. Read the lives of the Saints, or the sermons at your local Salafi mosque. The reward they seek is not of this world, and trying to point out the worldly unwisdom of what they are doing invites and deserves ridicule.
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For me the thought experiment is rather something:
Your love for the sinner also poses a negative externality upon your neighbors who may not share such a love.
You're still supposed to hate what God hates. God hates sin.
Loving the sinner doesn't mean helping or enabling them to sin.
Loving the sinner is calling them to repent and allowing them the benefit of the natural consequences of their sin.
What if the 'natural consequences of their sin' make them less likely to repent?
Do you have an example?
If they die on a park bench they're out of opportunities to repent.
Are the only options providing resources directly to the indigent and perhaps inducing them to remain in the area or having them die on a park bench?
Some individuals 'rock-bottom' is death.
Each individual act seems merciful in isolation, collectively, it creates an unofficial support system that makes street life sustainable enough to avoid the harder choice.
This is the same dynamic as the family who keeps bailing out the addict, paying their rent, letting them crash "just one more time." Each act feels like love. The pattern is death.
Higher-intensity services often require something in return, sobriety, curfews, accountability.
The street, subsidized by scattered charity, requires nothing. You've made the path of least resistance also the path of continued destruction.
This isn't cruelty. It's refusing to be complicit in their slow death while feeling good about yourself. The hardest part of love is sometimes not helping in the way that feels most immediately compassionate.
Still, if you see someone actually freezing to death, call for help.
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I am, by far, the most conservative person in my entire neighborhood. I live in probably the most liberal 1 square mile area of a liberal state. If anything my neighbors are upset I am not doing enough.
I'm not arguing that what I'm doing is rational, but I'm also a pretty devout Catholic and believe that everybody has intrinsic value. I want broad policies that fix these problems, but in the mean time also love the people who are suffering these things as individuals, and if they are in legitimate need, I will help them.
On a practical level, I want these people to understand that they aren't fully lost. They can come home if they want to and the world still loves them.
LOL. The world is at best indifferent.
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I’m an Orthodox Christian and I’m not allowed to leave a man to die, even if his existence is an annoyance. That said, I resist all attempts of people to use my faith to blackmail me to support suicidal empathy as a national policy. I’m firmly in the deport them all camp.
It’s called “the middle way” or “the royal road”.
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There may be a causal relationship between your second paragraph and your first.
Yeah maybe! It’s definitely a struggle to be upset at the general conditions, but also recognize the human suffering.
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