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Articles: The Resident Christian's Personal Rant |
Posted by
Schizo on Friday, July 27, 2001 - 04:04 AM PST
OK. Just to warn you, this is Schizo the Christian suddenly poking her head out of her cave. This is not an attempt at evangelization. This is merely a rant about all the arguments people throw at me about how mean God is. I figure, if people can post things that are anti-Christianity, I can post something in defense. So don't say I didn't warn you!
OK. One of the biggest arguments I get against God is that He's a big meanie because He makes bad things happen to people. That's bullshit. People make bad things happen to people. People rob people. People act cruelly to people. You might say, why doesn't God stop the bad people from hurting the good people? Well, define bad or good person. Where do you draw the line?
For one thing, every "bad" person has something good about them, and every "good" person has something bad about them. There is no perfectly good or bad person. And even if you could separate the human race that way, think what God would have to do to keep bad people in line.
Scenario - bad person about to mug good person. Raises knife, but a cosmic force field keeps the knife from stabbing. Or he trips over a crack in the pavement. Or he suddenly receives an irresistable urge to give the victim his own wallet.
What happens here? One person in the scenario has just lost his free will. That's what happens. And that's what God won't do. He won't steal anyone's free will. That's what made the mugger bad, after all, stealing the victims free will to decide what to do with his money! So if you want to be bad, you can! Your conscience might bug you, it might get into deep shit, but you can do the bad thing if you want. God won't strike you with lightning to stop you.
OK. Some things happen bad to people that other people didn't directly do. Like a genetic disease, or an act of nature.
Which means that God is supposed to somehow fix all genes in all babies before they are born, and control all breezes and slitherings of the earth's crust so no one gets a splinter. Well, I suppose He could do that. He could keep Mid-western Joe from having his house smashed to bits by a tornado. And who knows how many times He does that? I think God knows exactly who is in the path of that tornado, and has it all under control.
Ooooh! Do you know what that means? It means that God let something bad happen to someone DELIBERATELY! Well, what's wrong with that? Parents do that to their kids all the time! Parents take the training wheels off their kids bikes and let them fall and scrape their knees. If they left the training wheels on forever, that wouldn't happen! But you'd end up with a teenager that never learned how to ride a bike.
Maybe that's what God's doing sometimes. Teaching people things, helping them to learn lessons they otherwise would never know. Expanding their horizons. It's uncomfortable. It's difficult. But it needs to be done. And the people still have free choice. They can decide to learn, or they can figuratively keep pushing the bike with their feet so they won't fall over. It's up to them.
And believe me, I've been through enough shit in my short life to be able to say this. I haven't had an easy, coddled life. Obviously, there are people out there who have been through more than I have, but I've been through enough to see. And I'm sure there are a lot of you out there who have been through shit and let it teach you, and can say, like me, that now you are glad it happened, because it made you bigger, stronger, and better able to cope with other things that come up. That's part of life. It's what makes life real and not a game. If life were too easy, we'd all kill ourselves from boredom, rather than a few from pain.
And don't say I'm making light of suicide, either, because I've been there too. And even that has taught me something.
And about the people that die, and you may say, what have they been taught?
Why is it such a tragedy to die young? We all have to die sometime. Sure, it hurts more for those who loved the person, because it wasn't expected. But does it really make a difference to the person who died? If you believe in an afterlife, then the person just went there a little earlier. If you don't, and believe that you just end, then that person doesn't even know it died.
And as for those who mourn, it's pain, and it teaches, if we let it. Why should God shelter us from pain? His job is not to shelter, but to support. He doesn't throw shit at us, but helps us through and teaches us when it comes.
And that's what I think, based on my 24 years of gritty experience. That's my rant.
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The Resident Christian's Personal Rant | Login/Create an account | 42 Comments |
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Re: The Resident Christian's Personal Rant
by Maranda (saboneta@aol.com)
on Jul 27, 2001 - 06:23 AM
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The issues you describe aren't specifically related to Christianity. The book of Job in the Old Testament was an examination of the same question-- why do bad things happen to good people? Hinduism declares that it is a person's past-life bad karma that brings on the misfortunes of the present life. Buddhism, which doesn't have a sentient God in its worldview, espouses the same concept. Many of the world's pre-Christian Pagan religions are filled with mythology that attempts to answer the same questions.
I believe it was F. Scott Fitzgerald who said-- and I'm perhaps misquoting here-- that the mark of an intelligent species is the ability to hold two contradictory, irreconcilable points in the mind at once. One should, for instance, be able to accept that the world is filled with evil and yet be optimistic about its chances to improve itself.
This seems to me to be the message of the Christian New Testament, as well as the Buddhist search for enlightenment through meditation. I could even stretch the point and refer to the myth of King Arthur and Avalon-- is our fate decided by our choices, our predetermined destinies, or a combination of both?
I think your larger point is that you're tired of others insulting your beliefs. You have every right to be pissed off there. Nobody with real manners goes up to people at random and tells them they've got their heads up their asses about everything. This is just not a way for civilized people to behave. Why else do the Jehovah's Witnesses attract so much scorn?
Unfortunately, people who make it their mission to evangelize others are often the least secure about their own beliefs. If they can convince you to agree with them, they feel a little more secure. They're also not interested in a real discussion of beliefs: they just want their own theories validated. So trying to talk with them is usually a waste of time.
And this doesn't just apply to religion. Political parties, self-help groups, business management consultants-- the list goes on.
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Why should people die young?
by Comedian (comedian@callatg.com)
on Jul 27, 2001 - 08:04 AM
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And if that baby is born, who is sinless, why must the baby be forced to live life with a horrible genetic disorder? Go up to a child with cru-di-chet and tell them that a higher power is trying to teach them a lesson by making them look like a cat, and then explain to them that they probably won't be alive past the age of 8.
Explain to a Chernobyl mother that her baby was a lesson to her, and that she should have never been working in that evil plant to get by. Let this child, who lived for approximately 14 minutes, and then died because of entire myocardiac failure be a lesson to you, that god is the only power provider you need ever buy in to.
Explain to a pregnant Jewish girl huddled in a doorway in Palestine that because she was not right with god, she is being punished. Explain to her that god uses these things to teach us lessons, and even though your husband is dead and you will probably die from exhaustion or cold, she should remember to learn the lesson in all this.
Explain it to the world.
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Re: The Resident Christian's Personal Rant
by Kira (starchyld9@aol.com)
on Jul 27, 2001 - 11:49 AM
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Yay! Theological discussions!
Ok...before I get started a couple things have to be said for the record.
First off, (and this should be obvious) you have every right to post about your beliefs and also to believe whatever you want.
Second, I agree that you have every right to be angry for people attacking your belief system. No one likes to see something they hold sacred ridiculed. BUT...by your own logic you should be using those anti-Christian people as a reason to go deeper within yourself and your own faith. But it sounds like you may be doing that already...
Third, I'm definitely not trying to convert anyone. By responding to this I'm just offering up my own theories on religion and God. Now for my $.02
Ok, so we've established that bad things happen to good people and vice versa. There are several possible reasons that this could happen, but I'll focus on your theory and my theory only. Your theory is- there is an omnipotent God who knows when, where, and how "bad" things will happen to "good" people. He allows some of these bad things to happen because it teaches the otherwise good person a valuable lesson of some sort. My theory of the moment is that we live in a random, chaotic universe and sometimes through the luck (or bad luck) of the draw bad shit happens to people who don't deserve it, and vice versa. I know this is a hard pill for most people to swallow. Granted, there are plenty of bad/good things we bring on ourselves by making certain choices. But I'm talking about those things that are a case of being in the right/wrong place at the right/wrong time.
So, what are the similarities between our theories? In both cases, quite frankly, shit happens and you either learn to deal with it or you take your life, become a junkie, whatever. In both theories the person learns something (and hopefully grows and becomes stronger) from the bad thing happening. The big difference is the lack of any kind of omnipotent God in my theory.
So I guess what I'm saying is, if bad shit is going to happen, and you're still going to learn from it, then why do you need a God running it all to explain it?
IMHO, chaos is scary, but it sure beats the whole "God works in mysterious ways" explanation.
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Re: The Resident Christian's Personal Rant
by Shade on Jul 29, 2001 - 08:10 PM
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OK, I know I'm coming in rather late in the argument, and things are finally settling down, but I just have one question about your assertation that the christian god doesn't curtail free will. Wasn't the chistian devil punished (again) for giving free will (the knowledge of good and evil) to Adam and Eve who were in turn punished for wanting free will? Explain to me again how God just lets things happen?
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Re: The Resident Christian's Personal Rant
by gothvail (vail@gothicamateur.com)
on Feb 14, 2002 - 04:44 PM
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I am here to agree with you and be supportive. I, too, count myself a Christian. God does not make people do things, or make things happen, because that is not what God is about. Gid has given every last one of us the freedom to choose our own path and make our own decisions. If God makes us be good, how can it truely be good? How can we deserve punishment or reward in the afterlife if we cannot make choices regarding our actions? Yes, life can be hard and bad things can happen, but none of that matters because, if we do the right thing, and are strong in the face of all manner of adversity, we get to spend eternity in a good place. And THAT, my friends, is what it is all about.
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