It’s not racism if it’s the natural order of things. And if it’s ordained by God, it’s the natural order.
Those who pine for heaven and preach of hell are the ones who create hell on earth for those who cry foul and abandon the ranks of the heaven-seekers.
No wonder the myths of religion have endured so long. We indoctrinate our children, tell them what to say, and when they repeat it back we act amazed at their spirituality and revelatory capacity.
If God is truly unchanging and all knowing and, by the decree of a prophet he can have all disciples fall in line, his policies should be the apogee of progression and goodness. They should not wait on culture to catch up before he decrees equality for race, gender, or nationality. To suggest that he would not prohibit racism because the people were not ready for equality it is to say that either His morals evolve with people or that the devotion of his disciples is in question. But if you can get people to refrain from coffee, tea, alcohol, extramarital sex, and Sunday commercialism by a simple decree from their prophet, God ought to be able to induce those disciples to accept human beings as equal regardless of the color of their skin. With a true prophet and faithful disciples, a truly just and all-loving God should, through his disciples, lead the charge toward equality in every facet of cultural discourse.
It is an interesting dichotomy that those who praise the founding of America and its secular constitution, and who claim the rights guaranteed in the founding documents, feel justified in denying them to others. They do this without apology seeming to feel it is their right as a numerical or vocal majority with the sanction of their God behind them. It should come as no surprise that these are the same people who most yearn for a theocracy with absolute control over their lives.
On tribalism:Listen to a religious zealot recount the harrowing experience of their fore bearers then watch them listen with indifference to the sufferings of Jews under the third reich, refugees in Rawanda, and other oppressed and tormented groups. As they feign remorse you can rest assured that they will return to their tribal concerns and escapist entertainments easily and with no more thought or concern.
We feel only for those with whom we can identify. Childhood indoctrination that creates differences in their minds among various groups–prophetically declared and sanctioned differences including mandates to exterminate or marginalize the distasteful–are at the core of this problem whether explicitly declared or explicitly denied though regularly demonstrated. Trust only those who show concern for the oppressed and marginalized in word AND deed.
Speaking of stem cell research, abortion, genetic engineering: the only people who were playing God in this are those people who claim to speak for him. Or to know his mind and will.
I think I understand feminism a little better than I used to. I’m trying to clean my mind to make full acceptance of LGBT individuals instinctive. Yoda got it right with Luke when he said, “You have to unlearn what you have learned.” I have learned a significant distrust for those who claim to speak for God.
The Bible and the Koran should stand on their own accord. The fact that they require so much apologetic rhetorical gymnastics to try and explain them to me is a huge condemnation against them being holy books revealed to us by a condescending, merciful God.
For Mormons in particular, we are taught that every good emotion or inspirational feeling is a testament to God and Jesus. Any pop song, movie, or book that inspires us MUST be testifying to Jesus. We look for the analogy, straining to make a connection until we make it conform to this paradigm. And when it comes from a source that had obvious non-Christian intentions and message we say, “oh look at how wise God is! He is so powerful he can make the worst message testify of him!”
Matthew 25: Seems like Jesus was speaking of a genuine, moral action having nothing to do with the benefactor thinking about God in any way but simply on the good of those who would benefit from the action.
At the judgement they won’t be asked, “did you accept Jesus and the church?”God will look at the individual’s life and show them the good they did or did not do and a truly good person will speak honestly and say that they saw a person in need and helped them NOT because God expected it or that they thought they were serving God by helping others.
Set up an environment of high expectation and perpetual sinning where everyone is made to believe they are constantly failing. Make them thus dependent on forgiveness by their deity. Create so many rules and commandments and conditions of covenants that no one, though commanded on pain of eternal suffering to be perfect, could ever be so. Make them dependent emotionally on feeling forgiven.
God creates race wars. He struck Cain’s seed with a black skin to mark their difference from the “chosen” people. He marked the Lamanites with dark skin that would become white and delightsome if they returned to the fold of God. If dark skin is natural and should not be looked down upon, why did God cause it? He didn’t because he doesn’t exist.
If atheists are correct, then all they blame god for is really the fault of men. Can humanism and philosophy really improve us? Only when we get god out of the discussion. His history is one of creating racism, promoting sexism, commanding genocide, and excusing them all.
Those pious zealots who relate to others through a rosy lens of humble, ethical and moral superiority derived from years of positive self talk–external and internal–are oblivious to their own misery.
I feel like we scrape for meaning out of the confusion that we experience in the church. And we think we have some understanding but all we really have is a band aid on a gaping wound.
Religions and ideologies need defined separations with others that give them a sense of something to fight for. This is true in politics, social, and religious organization. Hate crimes, propaganda, fake racial divides rise out of this enmity. This comes from focussing on differences rather than similarities and with it comes zeal and fervor to drive growth of our cause. How can we derive such zeal from universal acceptance without conditions or requirements?
I feel like going to a Mormon church is like going to a support group for people with a compelling need to be martyrs.
When you have given another person power to make decisions for you, to determine what your weaknesses and sins may be, you are consenting to those weaknesses. You are conditioning yourself to be subject to weaknesses, giving them power over you because another person told you that you would be addicted to something, overpowered by something, or could never measure up.
Some cultures don’t notice nudity. Much like spicy food, the children were raised to be accustomed to exposure without shock. Does exposure to nudity or violence guarantee titulation or impure thoughts? Do we pass on to our children those attitudes to which we are conditioned because we gave another person power to tell us how to feel?
Most people you speak with on either side of the same sex marriage argument will support the notion that there are far more important components to a relationship than sex. But then ask a person–who will argue this point and complain that there is too much emphasis of sex in relationships–what they think about same sex marriage if they are opposed, and their first point and usually their only point, is that it’s unnatural. Why? What is unnatural? Only the sexual part of the relationship seems contrary to nature. But isn’t that what the person just argued was a peripheral component to a mature and healthy relationship?
Those who aren’t confused are either arrogant or haven’t questioned the status quo. It’s easy to sound sure of yourself when you swallow the dogma without taking a moment to taste it first.
I believe that sins and struggles are often clandestine affairs that need open, public admissions and assistance.
Is religion is a placebo that only works as much as you think it does?
Why should death separate us from God if a spiritual form without body was able to dwell with him before mortal birth?
Why is the change within that leads you to believe the gospel more powerful or more important than the change that occurs within an individual to lead them out of and away from the church/religion?
We each have an innate desire to be about some journey that we feel has profound meaning. We each pine to feel of great importance to the happenings of this world. For those who believe in God, this journey is determined for them already. Others choose this for themselves in accordance with what they feel will help them meet whatever standard they have set.
Nietzsche discusses Christianity, one of the major topics in his work, at length in the context of the problem of nihilism in his notebooks, in a chapter entitled “European Nihilism”.[27] Here he states that the Christian moral doctrine provides people with intrinsic value, belief in God (which justifies the evil in the world) and a basis for objective knowledge. In this sense, in constructing a world where objective knowledge is possible, Christianity is an antidote against a primal form of nihilism, against the despair of meaninglessness. However, it is exactly the element of truthfulness in Christian doctrine that is its undoing: in its drive towards truth, Christianity eventually finds itself to be a construct, which leads to its own dissolution. It is therefore that Nietzsche states that we have outgrown Christianity “not because we lived too far from it, rather because we lived too close”.[28] As such, the self-dissolution of Christianity constitutes yet another form of nihilism. Because Christianity was an interpretation that posited itself as the interpretation, Nietzsche states that this dissolution leads beyond skepticism to a distrust of all meaning.[29][30]