Choose your Beliefs or Someone Else Will Choose Them For You
"Be sure to choose what you believe and know why you believe it, because if you don't choose your beliefs, you may be certain that some belief, and probably not a very creditable one, will choose you." Robertson Davies,'The Deptford Trilogy ' (p477).
Early in life, people believe what they have been told and taught to believe by those who have been also so taught before them. For better or worse, most humans on the planet still believe what others have taught them from the beginning as if, by chance, they just happened to luck out and end up being born into a family that absolutely had the final truth on most topics already understood. Of course we know this is not really likely.But humans are mostly content not to look out and wonder if what they have been told is really true. Most humans, it seems, are not so much interested in truths as they are with comfortable beliefs. Comfortable beliefs don't really have to be true, but they are satisfying as long as one does not think too deeply about them or question the facts or their presentation.
Truth on the other hand can be very uncomfortable and yet while true, pushes the person away from that set of beliefs they were given at birth and expected to abide by. This causes no end of drama, as those who are content with beliefs, do all they can to punish and coerce those who opt for truth over belief.
They may over talk to them about how wrong they are, or not speak to them again to punish them for straying outside the tribal beliefs. In some pathetic cultures, they simply kill you and solve the problem of you're influencing others to rethink their own beliefs, given by the tribe. It is not nice to fool Mother Nature, but it is even worse to buck the tribal beliefs and wonder if maybe you have not been told everything.
Today we see that discomfort over beliefs vs. truths in the rancorous debates over evolution vs. creationism. While the facts of evolution are generally true, details to follow, creationism is falling quickly out of favor as the explanation of how life and mostly humans came to be on this planet. The people who defend creationism do so to defend their belief on how God did or didn't do something. Their belief is based on an ancient text. It is also based on the absolute need to defend the inerrancy of the text and reality of God as we have been taught "him" to be in Sunday School.
Science defends evolution based on evidence that there might be more to life than what is contained in ancient texts. They don't claim to understand it, but are willing to step outside a box that creationists aren't, because there is so much evidence that contradicts the Biblical account.
Now creationists are endeavoring to defend the text as being good science, but it simply can't be done anymore. Showing animals in Old Testament stories spotted and stripped poles before birthing so that they produce spotted or stripped offspring is something even they will have to admit is not how it works. That's really bad science on the part of the Bible, but made perfect sense to them three thousand years ago. Modern genetics really is the answer to really bad biblical "science."
Other beliefs, based on biblical texts are falling out of favor due to overwhelming evidence that contradicts them. Most honest pastors and theologians know that the birth stories of Jesus are not literally true. Most know, the story of Jesus is not all that unique in human history and the archetype of a dying God/man, persecuted, crucified, dead three days and risen again is not a once told story of Jesus.
Most recognize that the Old Testament did not spring out of vacuum, but rather out of the pagan cultures and Egyptian influences that preceded it. Most who take the time, realize the concept of God evolves even in the Old Testament right on through the New. The simple Christian, "loving father God" of today is not how it all began. Today we have a difficult time thinking an all knowing, all caring, all forgiving, all everything God would define himself as a "jealous God" who punishes generations of people for the sins of their great great grandfathers. Although literalist christians are very comfortable with that because, "God says, I believe it, that settles it for me." Whatever is not comfortable to even a literalist is dismissed as your not really understanding the text, or that God, while jealous, is all the other good stuff too. I think if I hear, "for the wisdom of man is foolishness with God", "My ways are not your ways", or "God does not see as a man sees", one more time as a way to bale the literalist out of a pinch, I shall scream :)
With just a bit of time today researching a favorite topic on the internet, one can find that there is much much more to the story, the facts and the implications of a topic than what they simply had passed on to them from mom and dad who got it from their mom and dad, who got it from ....
Many today are coming to realize that the entire drama played out in the New Testament as the literalized story of Jesus was first played out in the heavens and still is today as the earth rotates around it's axis and around the sun. The rising and setting of the Sun of God in the heavens, which is literally the "light of the world" and literally as the sun, delivers us from darkness, and "in which is no variableness nor shadow of turning" is a type that literalists christians will someday have to come to terms with. It is no coincidence that when Jesus is said to have been born of a virgin on December 25th, at the end of the three darkest days of the year, Virgo, the Virgin precedes the sun rise and thus literally "the Virgin brings forth the Sun."
It is no coincidence that the Lamb is crossified in April when the Sun is in Aries,the Lamb, at the junction of the celestial equator and the sun's path across the heavens at the spring equinox (equal night). Humans have seen this story acted out for thousands of years. The entire circle of the zodiac, and the path the Sun/Son takes through it, tells the identical story of the life and death of Jesus and every other God/man in all cultures. The names have been changed to protect the innocent when it comes right down to it.
It has only been since the corporate and literalist church and church fathers demanded the allegory be believed as literal history upon pain of death that all the conflict and heartache of religion began. Taking an allegory and making it literally true is why the Bible seems to have so many problems and is not the harmonious piece of work that the Church would have one to believe. Many of them know it is not, but won't tell you because it does not keep the system alive if people think for themselves.
It is not to a literalist church's advantage for you to realize that a real God does not require you to go through anyone and certainly does not need you to show up at a specific building at a specific time where you learn specific and contradictory truths from the one true minister, and lose about ten percent of your annual income to boot. That's religion.
True spirituality is an inside job. What we see today in literalized Christianity is crowd control and a demand that people stay put in the box and reject any contrary facts in the name of Faith. Faith is what is demanded when the facts start to scare the powers that be. In truth, Paganism = truth when one understands Christian origins. The Christians met the pagans, and inspite of appearances, the pagans won.
So, back to original point.
Most of us had our truths preselected for us and we simply were expected to carry on the traditions. But we live in a world where information is much more available to show that most likely we have not all been told the truth of many things. Frankly, most won't even bother to look outside their given truths. I know that. Some will look and in horror at being wrong, will retreat back to where it is safe and comfy. Some will be intimidated for a time to not look, though they want to.
Some ministers today are forced to warn their parishioners NOT to go on the internet and research the real background of their church, religion or sacred story. Whatever you do, don't use the search words "jesus mythology", or "pagan Christian origins", or "Astrotheology", "Errancy", "contradictions Bible" or a host of other words combined in such a way as to open your mind and infuriate everyone else who does not want you to learn one bit more than the guy, and it's mostly guys, who is the provider of his truth to you.
"Be sure to choose what you believe and know why you believe it, because if you don't choose your beliefs, you may be certain that some belief, and probably not a very creditable one, will choose you."
Dennis C. Diehl
13 comments:
Bravo! I agree wholeheartedly.
Likewise. Good stuff.
Thanks, Dennis.
I think you're more honest than T D Jakes AND Creflo Dollar!
Dennis,
You have related the exact experience I faced when I questioned the Bible and found it is not the perfect will of God afterall.
It has taken quite a long time for me to even admit that I no longer trust the Bible and all the church doctrines connected with it. This journey has cost me those beloved friends and family who now feel that I am lost and in need of their constant prayer. They have used the methods you mention of scorning me and trying to force me back to former beliefs.
Reading your comments brings me to realize just how insidious religion can be.
Most societies make provisions for humans who are accused of crimes to have a trial before total conviction. No such allowance for God however.
He is accused of mass murder and many other atrocities including a plan to kill hundreds of thousands more at some future date. We have generally believed this of Him with no evidence whatsoever.
We are taught to believe this with all our being.
At this point, it is impossible for me to believe that God wrote His laws on tables of stone and then ....ooops, Moses broke them and they had to be re-written and then placed into an ark which ultimately disappeared altogether.
It really makes much more sense to admire and give praise and thanks for the everlasting works of God which do remain such as the sun, moon, stars and so much more beauty of the earth. These speak more of His character than the confussing words in the Bible.
Another improbability to me is the admonition for us weak humans to "forgive others". This is expected of us and we do this in many if not most cases.
Why then do we suppose that for thousands of years God was unable to forgive people without the sacrifice of millions of animals of various kinds to just temporarily forgive. Ultimately He would accept the sacrifice of His own child (this practice was said to be what the evil nations were doing) in order to forgive us. So we lowly humans are able to just forgive, but He could not?
This magic forgiveness can only occur if we somehow can work out the perfect formula and ritual in some timely manner.
I am amazed that I actually believed all this and much more insanity for as long as I did.
Thank you for using such sound reasoning in the things you have written over the years. This has had a huge part in freeing me from the prison of religion.
Reality
Dennis, don't you have thoughts backwards? It's your historical method that has the bible explicable according to the celestial objects you cite; whereas the bible has things
explicable in terms of an agent - God.
In other posts you have strongly implied the human individual or yourself, as a free-willing-conscious agent are more than an a empirical object (pain body) in the cosmos; then, why would human history be reducible in terms of physical things in the universe?
And another thing, it was the original sin denying fascists and communists who slaughtered nearly a hundred million people last century in pursuit of their perfect utopias. Not much forgiveness there.
Excluding the flood, exodus, sodom and such, the OT docuements God slaughtering, either by himself, or thru Israel on command, 1, 238,000 + men, women and children.
Satan gets credit for the ten children of Job, but with God's permission.
M.T.Cribs
Peter gets credit for knocking off two church members who didn't hand over all their stuff to the church.
It seems certain that no belief system has even a small part of the total truth.
What is important though is that belief systems extend our senses in practical ways. For example, a policeman can enter a dark alley and have a very strong belief that danger lurks there. Objectively, there may not much to do on. Subjectively, the policeman's belief system is useful because it has the potential for keeping him from potential harm.
The important thing about belief systems is to use the one which works for you in the environment in which you find yourself.
Remember though, even though some fantasy may be associated with any particular belief system, abandoning all logic and reason is not practical at all and negates any good your belief system may have had.
I wouldn't want you dead in a dark alley because you believed things were just fine....
Yes, M.T., It has always struck me as odd that Ananias and Saphira were treated so harshly for either not handing over all of the proceeds from the sale of their property or at least for saying they had given it all while withholding a portion.
At the same time Peter had denied Christ 3 times, and had been told by Christ at another time to "get behind me Satan". And I think it was the same Peter who cut off the servant Malchus' ear.
It seems an inconsistent response at least if not unfair for Peter to get lesser or no punishment at all- especially when he should be expected to be more of an example to others such as Ananias.
actually Reality, the A and S story was meant as a joke and slam against Peter by Paul and Luke who felt him unqualified to follow.
Here were two people who said they would do one thing, give all, and didn't, held back being condemned by a man who said he'd do one thing, not leave jesus, and held back, denied him.
It's an internal joke not lost on the original audience to not follow peter who was no better than Judas
Then, Anonymous, I must say that if this is the gist of the story, the Bible has even more problems than the obvious.
"Peter gets credit for knocking off two church members who didn't hand over all their stuff to the church."
Signed...M.T. Proceeds
MY COMMENT: How we gonna do the WORK if you people keep holding back and don't give us all your money from the land that you sell??
God loves a fearful giver.
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