Deconstruction ponderings:
When they tell you to believe what the Bible says about God, are they saying you need to believe in God -- or that you need to believe what the Bible says about him/her? When you pray and something good happens, is it because you believed God would do it, or was it going to happen anyway? If everything good is due to God's goodness, why aren't bad things due to his badness? I have so many questions......
@Oma_Trisha
Thinking off the top of my head here.
Last question first.
I don't think it works like that.
For believers, generally, we credit God with goodness occurring because that is the outcome of people wittingly or unwittingly behaving in line with God's overarching character of love.
"Badness" occurs when humans don't do that. When we act out of selfishness, greed, hatred etc.
As for believing what the Bible says about God, it's pretty tricky to do so if you don't believe in a God!
This is just adds layers to the layers I'm already dealing with in my brain. π€
"God is a good and loving father." I have no idea what the fuck a good and loving father is like, because my dad wasn't one, and my stepfather certainly wasn't one. How can I have faith in something I don't know anything about? Secondly, if he is a good and loving father, why didn't he stop the abuse so many of us suffered throughout our childhoods? What good did it do us to be mistreated?
@Oma_Trisha
I know *so* many folk, myself included who struggle with that.
I suppose, God is not *a* but *the* good and loving Father. The ideal. The perfect example.
God is also the good and perfect Mother.
Like the hen who shelters her chicks beneath her wings.
As for the other part. To be truly loving, is perhaps to not interfere, even when someone is doing something awful??
What good came of it?
cont...
Well, for one thing, had I not known the pain of abuse, I could not support my friend as I am doing right now with understanding of the torment it causes.
I'm not saying that's *why* God let it happen, but that God takes this broken vessel and makes it into something truly beautiful.
Like Japanese Kintsugi. We're not thrown onto the trash heap. We are transformed into something which brings blessing.
And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I don't believe. I'm struggling because I would sacrifice my own life to protect my children. End of story. If anyone ever hurt my kids there would be hell to pay. Here on planet earth, every single day children are neglected, abandoned, beaten, and brutalized, and very few perpetrators ever pay any kind of price for what they've done -- while victims will pay for those acts every day for the rest of their lives.
What is the point of allowing a child's innocence to be stolen by a selfish son of a bitch who can't control his hormones or urges? Why sit by as children are beaten and degraded and insulted and tormented by their caregivers? I don't see the purpose in it. It's cruelty. How can love be that cruel? It makes absolutely no sense at all. Where is the justice for ruining a child's life? What's the point of all that pain? It doesn't help anything or anybody. It's senseless.
I could have been anything. I'm smart. I'm really fucking smart. However, thanks to the treatment I received as a child, I grew up feeling like I would never be successful at anything, that I would always be a failure -- nothing more than a disappointment.
And then, when we fail to realize our potential, they call us lazy or unmotivated.
I just don't get the point. Where is the love in any of that? Why allow it to happen in the first place? Why not stop it before it starts?
How can the ultimate example of love and compassion sit there and watch all the ugly, hateful, disgusting things people do to each other, and not do a thing to intervene? I get the concept of free will, but is it really free will when someone can impose their will on another person without their consent?
Like I said. I have so many questions.......
@Oma_Trisha
It seems so counter-intuitive I know.
You see, God has never really *forced* anything on anyone. Humans do that. To each other.
Even with the Hebrews vs Pharoah in Egypt, Pharoah was warned of the consequences but always given a choice.
Oftentimes, those consequences are eternal, not temporal and I *know* that's of little comfort to those hurting *right now*.
I wish I had the answers you need. I pray that you find them.
Thank you. At this point, there are no answers. Giving all the credit to God when something good happens but blaming humans when things go wrong just makes no sense to me any longer.
Pharaoh really didn't have a choice. It even says in the Bible God hardened his heart so he could use him as an object lesson by punishing his entire country for something God knew he was going to do before he was even conceived. That's the kind of thing that blows my mind.
@Oma_Trisha @stueytheround It frustrates me a bit that people actually think there is a being that is the architect of all life and creation, and they also think such a being would come down and play toy soldiers with people that way.
I joke about my Dad not ever coming back from getting cigarettes and all, but the thought that a supreme creator being would make a pharoah be mean and hurt people so he could punish the pharoah and his people seems... stupid.
Two main things bother me.
First of all, the concept of free will is a copout if God is all powerful, all seeing, and all knowing. Are we really free to do whatever we want if he knows what we're going to do before we do it?
Secondly, why does he get credit for everything good, but we either blame ourselves or some invisible evil entity for everything bad when the good guy could have stopped it? It's almost like it's all built on guilt and shame.
And it wasn't just Pharaoh. Look what Hitler did. Look what white colonizers did to indigenous people when they came to North a
America. Look at how our government interfered in the governments of other countries for decades, leading to an immigration crisis those who claim to worship God blame on desperate people instead of the ones who caused it? It seems to be rather one-sided from where I stand.
@Oma_Trisha @stueytheround People like blaming god for their failings and decisions, or putting words into the mouths of gods they create, so they can claim their own authority somehow comes from god.
We don't need to buy into that narrative. And if there is a God, you can talk to them yourself, you don't need an intercessor.
Absolutely. I can pray by myself if I feel the urge. I can sing right here if I want to do so. I can read my Bible by myself if I have the urge to pick it up. I don't need someone else to intervene for me.
@Oma_Trisha @stueytheround I feel like people often miss the point of spirituality, even religion. They use it to replace their own will and ability and risk and responsibility, instead of using it to increase their understanding of self and find their own place in the world.
And I assure you, the being that made Creation didn't do it so you could stifle yourselves and pretend you're unworthy.
You were worth it before you were ever made.
Or you wouldn't have been.
@Oma_Trisha @stueytheround From my perspective, it's a little weird seeing people insist that you can't achieve your purpose without a book that didn't exist for the billions of years before it came out.
I was here before people made religions. Humans existed as humans for far more of their time without anything like religion as with. I note that during that time, there wasn't a lot of war and pollution, too.