Tag spirituality

Angels Vs. Devil

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Man’s history on earth: 6,000,000 years.  Well, 200,000 if you only count modern man.  6.000 if you take the Bible literally.  No matter.  In the recorded histories of man, there are cycles of peace, and cycles of wars, stories of great sacrifice, and stories of the most outrageous horrors perpetrated by man against man.  “Celestial” grace against earthly destruction.  Religions, mighty in their power over people, and those long forgotten, trying to make sense of the human condition—to rectify the urge for domination with the urge for justice and “holiness”.  Angel vs. Devil.

I’ve always questioned myself (and sometimes asked others as well); “Which side are you on?  That of the angels, or that of the devils.”  And I don’t mean that literarily (I’ll leave a discussion of whether angels and devils are actually real for another time).  But what I am asking is “Is your basic makeup to do good in the world, or to do evil?  To leave the world a better place for your having existed, or to make the most out of your opportunities to satisfy your own needs and wants regardless of their impact on others?”

At the end of my novel “I’m God and You’re Not” (PLUG: available on Amazon e-book, as well as soft or hardcover at Amazon and through major book retailers worldwide), God concludes that, despite the “devilish” acts that seem to full our history and our daily news, it is the striving for good, the unselfish acts of humanity, that redeems us, and makes Him love us. 

In moments of despair, we need to remind ourselves that the majority of people in the world strive for the good and reject evil.  But, perhaps, we just aren’t clear what we mean by each. Knowing that followers of Ann Rand will object, I will hold that to be an angel is to promote that which leaves the world better and increases understanding and acceptance among people, and to be a devil is to promote that which divides and separates us from one another.

Some peruse the pages of their holy books, selectively pulling tidbits to support their “holier than thou” attitude which allows them to put themselves in cult of the selected few geared to future rewards in some next life or in Heaven at the side of God—and to condemn the vast majority who do not share their beliefs to damnation.  They imagine the worst tortures and find them justifiable merely because of a difference of belief, taking a perverse glee in contemplating the screams of the “damned”. Some would even condemn innocent babies to a Hell merely because someone did not sprinkle some water on them or made the necessary holy signs, or neglected to perform a rite of circumcision or otherwise mark them as chosen or unique?  Is that idea, of itself, not evil? Meanwhile, they carefully ignore other tidbits that would condemn themselves.   And they call themselves the “good.” Others, in turn, may see these self-elected ones as increasing evil in the world.

 “I’m God and You’re Not” is full of sections where God Himself points out this basic hypocrisy.

The very nature of Good and Evil would be so easily defined in an ideal world.

But our world is far from ideal, and there are areas where what constitutes evil and what constitutes good can be debated.  Abortion is just one area where differences of opinion seem to condemn each side to eternal damnation[1]. Each side sees its position as the good, the other evil. But which one leads to the greater good?  In an ideal world, would there even be a need for abortion?  

We indulge in our own self-righteousness while mocking those who disagree with us.  We go so far as to regard others as sub-human because they look different, they talk different, their culture is not ours, and see them as a threat where the vast majority only want to live in peace, dignity and hope just as we do. Regardless how you may feel about illegal immigration, how does the forceful separation of children and babies from their parents be anything but an increase in evil?  Go on a social media site such as Facebook and you can be overwhelmed by the pure hate that gets expressed there—threats of civil war, wishes for the death of those who disagree with our position, a sickening spiral that springs forth the worst in us and demeans ourselves and corrupts the souls of our children, the future of our human race.  How does this hate make us better? Blind hate can only bring us closer to the side of the Devils.  It corrupts us.  It takes us further away from the potential of greatness that is in each of us.

If we seek “the kingdom of God”—whatever we think that is, a literal coming of God’s kingdom lead by a Messiah (Jesus or otherwise), or a great awakening in the human spirit–and we can disagree about which it perhaps is—we need to stop!.  We won’t bring that kingdom closer; we repel the very thing we want in our deepest part of our soul. 

 Ask a simple question: Will the future commend or condemn us?

 I refuse to believe that there is anything but a very small minority of people who choose consciously to side with the Devils. If we look inside, our beliefs make us imperfect, we all have areas of contradiction and conflict. But these grey areas do not prevent us from trying to be on the side of one or the other, of the Angels or the Devils.  None of us are perfectly one or the other—perhaps that is in the nature of being human. Our words and actions ripple around the world, touching each other in ways we cannot foresee across time.  How does what I do invoke the best in you?  And how does what you say inspire me to be a better person?  Equally, could we not bring forth the monster that is buried deep inside by a careless word, a glance of contempt, the silence of indifference?

A normal lifespan is less than a century.  What does that small period of time that you are here mean to you? When you have left this life behind, will they say of you that the world was made better (“may his/her memory be a blessing”) or more hopeless (“may his/her memory be blotted out”) as a result of such a life? 

[1]. Disclaimer: As a man, I have mixed feelings, and am not arguing one side over the other here because I surely don’t have an answer. Is the great evil the act of abortion? Is it ignoring the rights of women to control their own bodies? Is it holding that the potential life of the unborn is sacred yet ignoring the welfare of the child once born—failing to provide the means to give that child a future other than poverty, sickness, and despair? In an overpopulated world, is the act of given birth moral or immoral? And what to say to those that are against abortion or even birth control methods, but also say that if you can’t afford a child, you shouldn’t have them—absolving themselves of any social or human responsibility? Even the Bible does not solve the issue—in Numbers, even providing the priests for forcing an abortion due to adultery, and yet hear the commandment “Thou shalt not murder.” There are innumerable passages where God condones or even orders the murder of unborn children and pregnant women in towns conquered by the Hebrews and others supposedly serving as His agents. If the fetus is sacred, why does God allow miscarriages? Is God a hypocrite?

Go(o)d and Evil

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This post was inspired by an article written by a very dear friend for her local paper.  If you are interested, her article can be found at No Evil.  The original is in Greek, but an English translation by the author is included


So this post may go somewhat off the usual topics, but I felt the need to write it.

Our world.  How can anyone look at the world presented to us on cable news, the Internet, newspapers, etc., and not be horrified at what seems to be daily occurrences of evil:

  • wars between countries that are enemies today, and will becomes allies in the future against some other perceived common enemy
  • the slaughter of innocent children, babies barely out of their mother’s wombs
  • the murder of parents before their children’s eyes.
  • the willful starvation of those caught in man-made Armageddons
  • the sadistic cruelty that justifies the torture and maiming of  our fellow humans
  • the destruction of children’s innocence

And so much more can be added to this list that the heavens should cry out in agony.

But they don’t!

And millions read their Bibles, their Qur’ans, their Gitas, their Surtras, in some attempt to answer their despairing question:

Why does  God allow such evil in this world?

It’s the wrong question.  Yes, certainly we use our religions as weapons to justify our hate of those who think differently.  We can pull passages from our holy books where our God seems to order us to commit terrible sins in His name.  But a God who needs men to perform such deeds for Him is no God at all, just a pathetic and weak reflection of the worst of us   A good part of I’m God ands You’re Not explores this, possibly to the point of ad nauseam.

Okay, you say, let’s take religion out of it.  You still have earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, volcanoes, floods.  Aren’t these evil?  Certainly, these cause terrible tragedies and suffering to all living things,  but unless the planet is intelligent after all and is trying to wipe out the human plague that infests it, no, these are not evil.  Arguments about global warming aside, these are the natural phenomena of the planet–there is no intent, no thought behind them.  We just happen to be here when they occur.

For Evil requires intelligence behind it.  The earth is not sadistic, humans are.  It is we  who intentionally blow each other up, cause the loss of arms and legs (sometimes physically performing the act, sometimes through our war machines where individuals only exist to be counted as the enemy dead), we who send back boats of desperate refugees while we suppress the knowledge that we are most likely sending them back to living hell or death, we who built concentration camps and tolerate the Holocausts of the innocents.  Only an intelligent human being  can be so insanely stupid as to hate another human being merely for where he/she comes from, the clothes they wear, the way they worship or don’t worship a God.

And now in America, the nation of immigrants, hate raises it head.  Follow on a  blog or on Facebook, you can read such insanity as threats of civil war because conservatives and liberals have different views–I have read death threats to both sides  on the Facebook pages of American politicians and political groups, where there seems to be a new vision of an America that cannot tolerate the very differences that it was founded on, forgetting the promise and ideals that made it the “Golden Land” of opportunity and a light to the world.

Is such sadism ingrained in us?  Is there some part of our unconscious that relishes the idea of such torture and cruelty, that contains a spark of evil in all of us?  Even though we would never condone such actions in the physical world, are we playing holier-than-thou and are unwillingly to acknowledge that under the right set of circumstances. we are blood-thirsty little gods and goddesses of vengeance?

To which wiser men than me have answered that you can have the thought, you are NOT the thought.  Throughout history, better men than me have stood up before evil and said “No!”, even at the cost of losing their lives to that very evil,  martyrs that lead the way to the best inside us.

Why should I hate you to the point of seeking your death merely for being different from me?  Why should I be so insecure, so little a person,  to feel so threatened that I become a betrayer of the ideals I hold sacred?   For what do I become less than the best in me?

What kind of world do you wish to leave behind?  One, better for you having existed, or one that only causes more and greater misery.

No, the question isn’t why does God allow such evil to exist; the question is why do we do.

 

PS.  Thanks to Angelina

 

 

Is God worthy of worship (part 1)

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I have struggled with my understanding of the nature of God for almost all my life — from my bar mitzvah days, through my teen years where my doubts about the Bible caused my father to often call me an “atheist”, and through my adult life all these years, as I explored different religions and philosophies.

Events in my life would often convince me that God didn’t like me very much and was often out to get me.  Among other areas were issues with marriage, my issues with my looks,  love life, and the sense of despair that hit when I found out that my only child was autistic.  Rightly or wrongly, I often felt like a fly captured by a schoolboy who delights in slowly pulling its legs off, one after the after.

And what kind of God existed that seemingly stood silent during the Armenian genocide in the beginning of the 20th Century, the Holocaust of the Second World War, the continued poverty and suffering of so many innocents across the world., a God that watches as madmen invoke His name as they kill those of different faiths or beliefs, a world continued to be bathed in blood.

And even in nature, there are horrors:  what sort of a worshipful God would come up with things like parasitic wasps that “impregnate” a caterpillar with its eggs.  The caterpillar continues to eat and grow while the larvae suck its blood and grow as well.  Then the wasp larvae use their specialized jagged jaws to cut through the tough, thick layers of the caterpillar’s skin that would otherwise present an impermeable barrier. The larvae also release chemicals that paralyze their host, rendering it powerless as they eat their way out.

Who comes up with elephantiasis? Bubonic plague? Ebola?

This is the creation of a loving God? Or is it the work of a sadist?

And do not say who are we to question the ways of God. If a parent tortures a child, is that okay because he is the parent?

No, if this is willful of God, than that God is NOT worthy of worship. That God is not worthy of us.

So, I am left to conclude that IF this is God, I have to disown him. I cannot believe in such a God

Or I must come to a different understanding of what God is.

Seeing God in the Third Millennium – Oliver Sacks – The Atlantic

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How the brain creates out-of-the-body experiences and religious epiphanies

Having myself having had both (an out-of-the-body experience as a child after a massive dose of penicillin), and a religious epiphany while walking on the top of the walls of Jerusalem  in 1990, I found this article by Dr. Sacks very interesting.  Does it preclude a genuine religious experience of God?  Personally, I think the jury is still out.

Seeing God in the Third Millennium – Oliver Sacks – The Atlantic.