This is not about the individual Jon Jones and the goal is not to prompt a discussion on him and his various bad choices. He is solely an Avatar for the sentiment he captured in the sentiment below which I have personally known many Christians offer some version of.

Since some context is needed Jon jones is arguably the most talented MMA fighter of all time and many consider him the GOAT of the LHW division, and some believe All of MMA. He however has a deep and recurring history with various abuses such as steroids, illegal drugs, drunk driving including accidents with innocent people (pregnant woman, etc) and fleeing the scene, Spousal abuse and many other issues.



The question I want to explore is whether people see the sentiment contained in the above as:

- something a reflective and humble person coming to terms with their fallibility would say

- something a person, looking to not own full responsibility for their actions and needs to find reasons to not accept full culpability. ('God made me this way!')

- A little from A and a little from B

Vote!

For me the tipping point on this question is the public display of the sentiment which appears to me to be an appeal for understanding and forgiveness from the masses.

A humble person seeks that through a change in their actions over time. Showing they are a different person FIRST and then accepting the sentiments of that sentiment as backward looking reflection "i was a mess. My actions show me to be a different person now.", 'WAS' being the operative word there.

For a person still engaged in the exact same patterns it seems far more likely to me to be a way for them to eschew some of the responsibility for who they are and the actions they take by saying 'if God is good and I am a vessel of God I am therefore not fully at fault and all the bad things i have done in the past can one day not matter'.


(FWIW I consider myself an Agnostic Atheist so i am not asking anyone who replies to do so as affirmation that a God exists. This is an examination of a person who does believe a God exists and should be answered from that context)

When you stop seeing morality through a religious lens, any of the thousands of religions, it's worth noting, then you can gain a framework for it, morality, that is not supernatural, superstitious, mythological, and itself immoral.

The dude, Jones, is both a hero and an extremely dark character. Par for the course, just more extreme than the norm of EVERY human being. Light and dark, knight and shadow, good and bad ... always a mix. With none of the proposed thousands of gods, say Thor, or Odin, having a thing to do with it, other than the misdirection and hijacking of the whole subject of morality.

Makes me think of:

In Samkhya philosophy, a guṇa is one of three "tendencies, qualities": sattva, rajas and tamas. This category of qualities has been widely adopted by various schools of Hinduism for categorizing behavior and natural phenomena. The three qualities are:

Sattva is the quality of balance, harmony, goodness, purity, universal-ism, holism, construction, creativity, positivity, peacefulness, and virtue.

Rajas is the quality of passion, activity, neither good nor bad and sometimes either, self-centeredness, egoism, individualization, drivenness, movement, and dynamism.

Tamas is the quality of imbalance, disorder, chaos, anxiety, impurity, destruction, delusion, negativity, dullness or inactivity, apathy, inertia or lethargy, violence, viciousness, and ignorance.

In Indian philosophy, these qualities are not considered present in an either-or fashion. Rather, everyone and everything has all three, only in different proportions and in different contexts. The living being or substance is viewed as the net result of the joint effect of these three qualities.

According to Samkya school, no one and nothing is either purely Sattvik or purely Rajasik or purely Tamasik. One's nature and behavior constitute a complex interplay of all of all three gunas, in varying degrees. In some, the conduct is Rajasik with significant influence of Sattvik guna; in some it is Rajasik with significant influence of Tamasik guna, and so on.

The balance of Gunas of everything and everyone can change and does. However, change in one quality faces inertia from other two qualities in Indian worldview. Change needs internal or external influence or reinforcement, as knowledge and force to transform. The force to change comes from the Rajas guna, the Sattva guna empowers one towards harmonious and constructive change, while Tamas guna checks or slows the process.