Lately I see so much evil inside of me. Wrong motives. Gross desires. Selfishness. Pride. I see it in everything I do.
But I don't get it. I know it's stupid. I chase after things that don't matter and don't satisfy. I chase after the very things that destroy me and tear down the people around me. I go for attention and praise when the very thing that would give me life is giving it up and gaining God instead, focusing the attention on Him.The very thing that would give me contentment is surrendering control, and the very thing that would fill me with joy is looking after someone else instead of myself.
It all comes down to the lie that we need something other than God, and that He is not enough.
Spirit of Truth, invade us.
"And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites,
for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street
corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received
their reward in full...When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites
do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting.
Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only
to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done
in secret, will reward you." Matthew 6:5, 16-18
"What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get
what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do
not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures...Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up." James 4:1-3,7-10
Or maybe the idea that you should be surrendering control to God is the lie. Maybe you're not evil or sinful in your motives and desires; maybe your religion is simply punishing and disdainful towards what it means to be human. Maybe your religion teaches you to hate yourself and doesn't align with reality and human psychology. Maybe religion is the real lie.
ReplyDeleteOh, also, I am sinful. You would know this because I have hurt you in the past. I have be arrogant toward you (for no reason other than sin in me). I have been selfish and rude to you. Our desire in themselves are not bad but when we look to things other than God to fulfill them, they get distorted and that is when we start hurting the people around us. And to be rid of sin and depend on God gives us life in such a way that we are more fully human and fulfilling our intended purpose.
ReplyDeleteI know you made this comment a while ago, but I did not see it until now as it was not made as reply to my previous one. I feel an appropriate response is to show you this video, the relevant part being from 2:30 to 7:15.
Deletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=wjEC3DTUyxs#t=150s
The fact that you have made mistakes does not imply that you are a sinner. You have hurt me in the past, I admit, but it was largely due to ignorance on your part. Being good requires secular knowledge. To elaborate on that point, I refer to the part of this video that concerns Stella Liebeck (about 2 minutes in total):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=S-BQVmvulmQ#t=209s
I also recommend this dialogue concerning The Moral Bankruptcy of Faith (read it all the way through):
http://www.socraticmethod.net/morality/page1.htm
I also recommend this video on morality as an excellent follow-up to the above Socratic dialogue:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNWqvEIcJpo
Indeed, I strongly recommend watching that particular video series by Evid3nc3 from beginning to end. It's about 3 hours in total, but each video is only 10 minutes, so you can watch it in segments easily enough. I think you'll find a lot in there that you can relate to and a lot of new information that will benefit you. But you probably ought to start from the beginning.
I just hate to see a good mind vandalized by religious indoctrination.
...name one bad thing about me believing what I believe.
ReplyDeleteWell that depends entirely on what you believe, which you've so far failed to clarify. You have not responded to any of my messages or comments with information on the specifics of what you believe, despite my requests for such information. I can identify certain aspects of religious belief that are harmful, but without knowing whether or not you subscribe to them, I cannot say for certain if they would affect you or be relevant to you specifically.
DeleteFor example, I think creationist propaganda does a serious disservice to the goals of education and furthering the knowledge of mankind, but it appears unlikely to me that you, as an intelligent and educated person, would believe in such bronze age fairy tales in the face of such overwhelming evidence. Then again, I could be wrong. You have never stated to me explicitly whether or not you buy into young-earth creationism or disbelieve evolution.
Dawkins gives a succinct answer into what problems he has with religion in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDxPfoDKQUc
It does not address what I think is bad about YOU believing whatever it is you believe, but I think Dawkins makes some valid points about the harm that can and oftentimes does result from religion, even if this is not something that would necessarily occur in your case.
But to answer your question, in the best way possible without knowing the specifics of your beliefs, I'll say that believing in the divinity and truth of the bible requires either ignorance of what is actually in the bible and its history or doublethink. Doublethink means simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct, which is the only way to reconcile the evil that's in the bible with its supposed message of love. The only way to maintain such a state is to deny reality or to shut down the cognitive capacity of your brain to reason, neither of which I'd like to see you do. And I don't like the idea of you wallowing in ignorance either. Religion has a way of stunting intellectual growth, and I think that's harmful. I think it would detract from your ability to achieve happiness in life.
(For an elaboration of how religious indoctrination leads to denial and distortion, watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyE8wUteFA4)
I have seen the effect of uncritical and fanatical devotion to religion in mom, and I think it does her a great disservice. It is clear to me that she clings to her beliefs out of fear, but she also makes a point of being informed rather than ignorant of the contents and history of the bible. Unfortunately, the knowledge of all the valid arguments and evidence against the truth of her beliefs is met with such an unconditional and close-minded devotion to her religion that it produces such a level of cognitive dissonance that it requires that she reject reality and evidence, and in doing so sews into her a great distrust of anyone with actual knowledge or expertise on a subject. This leads her to favoring instead crack-pot conspiracy theorists and pseudo-science in lieu of an honest investigation of truth that might actually lead to an improved quality of physical and mental health for her. Furthermore, her strict adherence to her particular set of beliefs and uncompromising nature ends up alienating her from the rest of society, which does her further psychological harm.
It saddens me to see what religious indoctrination has done to her, and I'd hate to see the same done to you. Although I don't think the particular beliefs that you appear to hold are as likely to produce such an extreme degree of damage to your reasoning capacities or well-being, the apparent fanaticism with which you subscribe to your religious convictions is frankly disturbing and worries me. If you took your religion less seriously, I probably wouldn't care as much what you believed.
I also feel that the doctrine suggesting that having a single flaw makes you unworthy and that you are somehow entirely responsible for all of your own shortcomings in spite of the fact that your omnipotent and omniscient god supposedly knowingly made you that way, is a recipe for psychological harm. To lavishly praise a being who has a warped sense of love and justice can corrupt one's sense of morality and what it means to be good. A potent example of such mind-warping effects of religion is a study mentioned in Dawkins' book, The God Delusion. It's a particularly revealing study demonstrating how religious indoctrination clouds moral judgment. It would take too long for me to describe it in writing, so here is a short video detailing the study: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=LMQ5zqMsQJI#t=399s
DeleteIn addition to the moral problems of trying to justify the apparently malevolent behavior of your supposedly benevolent God, there is also the problem of victimless crimes and impossible standards. The bible condemns as sin many behaviors which are not inherently immoral, most of which pertain to sex (while curiously abstaining from condemning things like rape and slavery). The bible also condemns "thought crimes" such as "looking upon a woman with lust in your heart." It is absurd as a moral concept (as it hurts no one) and also impossibly unrealistic, as men have no control over their sex drive or the kind of mental and physical response that would occur as a result of seeing an attractive woman. Such doctrines as these place and undue level of guilt on the individual and are psychologically unhealthy.
This type of guilt is something that I experienced when I was a Christian, and it was very troubling for me. Later when I abandoned my religion, I thought more closely about what really makes behaviors moral or immoral and have since lifted this burden of guilt from myself. For that I am extremely thankful. I don't know how much of this type of guilt you experience, but I suspect from some past conversations with you that it is at least not entirely absent. This is an unnecessary psychological burden that your religion places on you, and that you would be better off without.
Moreover, this particular blog post of yours is an indication to me that you do, in fact, buy into this "I am inherently bad and sinful and need God to forgive me" creed. If you have done wrong, it is not God whom you need to apologize to, but the person or people you have wronged. If you have "sinned" in such a way that your actions had no victim, then you have not done anything morally wrong. You may have done something unwise and damaging for yourself, but that does not pertain to morality. It is something from which you should learn and improve upon in the future for your own sake, but is no cause for experiencing guilt. God's forgiveness does not "wash away your sin" in any meaningful sense. It will not undo whatever damage you may have caused. It merely represents that God has chosen not to punish you for it, which is a highly questionable moral practice in the first place. It ought to be apparent that this particular attitude towards morality, one of a dichotomous punishment and reward system, is a profoundly immature approach to morality and not befitting of an omniscient and benevolent being.
When it comes to your religious beliefs, I have no problem (or virtually no problem) with you believing in God, or believing that he is a loving, divine creator, or even believing that such a being is logically necessary, even though I don't agree myself. The problem arises when you assume without reason (and contrary to reason) that this being is the Christian God/God of the bible. To do so requires that you be ignorant of or deny the overwhelming evidence that the bible is NOT divinely inspired. That it is not the work of God is illustrated by its factual, doctrinal, and moral contradictions, its historical, geographical, and factual errors, and the suspect history of the scriptures themselves (the anonymity of their composure, the censorship and manipulation by the church, their emergence over a century after the events supposedly occurred, the utter lack of corroborating evidence for much of the contents, etc.). I can provide you with a multitude of resources if you'd like to investigate these claims further.
DeleteBy all means, believe in God. And feel free to mine the bible for moral insight (though I don't think you'll find much of it worthwhile). I don't even mind that. As long as you have a well-calibrated *external* moral compass, it's not going to hurt you. But don't assume that this piece of bronze age garbage is the inspired, infallible word of God, because it's not, and believing it is, is a path towards intellectual suicide. And to further ascribe to the bible the role of a moral compass is either barbaric if you're honest about its content, or ludicrous if you choose to cherry-pick whatever parts suit you and conveniently ignore the rest. I strongly encourage you to watch this video and think about its message.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXO26pObTZA
I know I'm writing a lot and linking you to a lot of videos here, but I honestly believe it's important for you to view the matter from multiple perspectives. It's important to think critically about why you believe what you do, so that you are not opening yourself to be manipulated by the books and people making unfounded claims to religious authority. What is it that supposedly makes them religious authorities? Think for yourself and follow the evidence. Do not allow loyalty to an archaic scripture to blind you to the truth.
I know that your religion has its benefits too, and I'm not trying to deny that. There is great comfort to be found in believing that God cares about you and is looking out for you and answering your prayers. But I think it is more important to be honest than to be comfortable. And based on a previous discussion I had with you, that appeared to be your position as well, that it is better to believe according to what is true than to believe according to whatever makes you feel good. And that's why I continue to bring up this matter of religion. I want you to see truth. So keep looking.