What role does redemption play in American society? Is purity a requirement, or can bad people turn a new leaf?

14 comments

1. …what? Those are some pretty extremes. Purity to “bad person”. What makes a bad person? Jail? Prison? Behaviors not illegal that some deem unsavory?

2. I don’t know that this is an “America vs. other places” question. Some people, religions, and philosophies celebrate conversion of heart and changing of one’s ways, others don’t. I think most people in America probably have some belief in a person being able to change and become better.

3. I mean of course bad people can change. But I’m not really sure this question has an answer, at least one this sub is equipped to handle.

4. Oh good lord, are you tempting me into a rant on Catholic theology?

   Redemption is fundamental to American society. It is baked into the religion, national ethos, and cultural lore. We love a redemption arc in any story or real life situation. So much of American lore centers around redemption.

   I hazard to say that theme is universally common in the whole of human civilization. We have stories from thousands of years ago where a hero rises from being bad. We have stories of people who are irredeemably evil. We have stories of people who were pure sweetness and light from the beginning.

   But redemption stories are just fundamentally human.

5. It depends on what you mean by bad. In general, anyone can turn their life around, but a felony or sexual assault conviction is going to follow someone around forever.

6. We’re notoriously forgiving. I’d say redemption is rather easy here.

7. I know we Christians care a great deal about redemption, I’m pretty sure the rest of America also values it, maybe to a lesser degree.

8. I would like to see our justice system focus more on rehabilitation, but as a culture I think we love a good comeback story. People do make dramatic changes (such as addiction recovery), and that’s generally celebrated.

9. If you look at our current justice system, especially how many prisoners and jails we have per capita, I don’t think redemption is a major factor in American culture. If we were big on redemption and purity we wouldn’t keep non-violent drug offenders and other petty criminals in with and/or as long as actual murderers. The American prison is notorious for both its size and repeat offenders because the conditions can be so harsh, and that’s not getting into privatized prisons.

   Sure, culturally many Americans are big on purity and redemption because that’s a big part of our Protestant background, even if you’re not even Christian, but it’s not something that I personally see reflected in our policies and laws.

10. The redemption arch is a very powerful narrative in a lot of American culture, especially in evangelical Christianity.

11. The US is very decentralized in terms of standard codes of honor. This varies largely from person to person. There does not exist any one overarching social creed that mandates that people behave a certain way. It’s just not in our culture.

12. It doesn’t. Once you’re labeled as bad you can’t ever be good fully. Because the minute you make a mistake people will say things like “I always knew they couldn’t change.” “Once an X, always an X”

13. Sure, they can anywhere in the world. My son-in-law did.

14. Redemption and forgiveness are core concepts in Christianity. Christianity has always been the most impactful religion in the U.S