Defying the Deity
POSTED BY: AnthonyT
UPDATED: Tuesday, December 27, 2011 18:15
VIEWED: 9122
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Hello,
I posit this to my fellow forumites, because it is a problem that has troubled me for my entire life.
I endure as a Christian because I assume that some portions of the Bible are inaccurate or have incomplete information. In essence, I assume that some of the most heinous acts attributable to God are either fabrications, or lack the appropriate holistic information and context needed to understand them.
I work under this assumption because some of the acts attributed to God (or his commandments to his followers) are so terrible that embracing them as truth would imply a kind of God very unlike any I'd prefer to believe in.
As a believer, I have often drawn comfort from my perceived relationship with God, and I have been subjectively of the opinion that he has helped me at various times in my life.
But I worry that should I ever meet God, I may prove to be wrong about him in various particulars.
Most especially, I worry that God would ask me to do something against my principles.
What are your choices if a deity asks you to do something reprehensible?
You can assume the deity knows best, and perform the reprehensible action trusting that it will have a net positive outcome, and that God knows more than you do, and is uniquely suited to balancing moral choices.
You can refuse to perform the act, and presumably be cast out of the deity's grace. Depending on your interpretation of religion, this may involve being tortured for eternity.
You can believe the deity is flawed, and is giving bad orders... but then do it anyway in order to secure your hide.
I have to believe that any deity who asks me to do something against my moral code will know ahead of time the kind of conflict I will experience. Such that merely asking would place me in a kind of emotional torture.
I remember as a youth, someone was relaying to me the Bible story of a man being ordered to sacrifice his own son. At the pivotal moment of the story, I was asked what I thought the protagonist should do. I said, confidently, "He didn't do it. It's a test. Killing your son would be wrong."
Then, with some consternation, my Bible teacher gave me the end of the story. The man was actually supposed to go through with the murder of his son, because God said so. God sent an angel at the last minute to stop him, but this loyalty test and its implications disturbed me for the rest of my life until even today.
Have any other religious people been troubled by these notions?
--Anthony
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"In every war, the state enacts a tax of freedom upon the citizenry. The unspoken promise is that the tax shall be revoked at war's end. Endless war holds no such promise. Hence, Eternal War is Eternal Slavery." --Admiral Robert J. Henner
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I've been a Christian since I was 8 years old. My parents were sort of secular "buddhists," if there is such a thing. They didn't teach me a thing about religion my entire life.
When I was 8, I came across a very small skinny book about Jesus. I was immediately smitten. I thought he was the coolest person I had ever read of. At the end of the book, they explained he was still alive and we could pray to him. So I thought, "Yes, I want to be a Christian. I want to follow this very cool heroic person."
The problem was, I was living in a Muslim country at the time. No churches anywhere. So I was a Christian, all alone, for 3 years. I talked to Jesus, and I read my little book over and over again.
After that, I moved to a Catholic country. I met some Assemblies of God missionaries and started going to church. You could not imagine my excitement. I finally met other Christians!! I was no longer alone in my belief of Jesus as a wonderful hero. They could help me with all the difficulties I had with Jesus' teachings, like turning the other cheek and stuff.
I was immediately struck by the vast difference between Christians and the Jesus I thought we all followed. Never mind. I stuck with them for a while. During this time, I dipped my toes in some authoritarian practices they taught me, like chide my friends for "sinning" and stuff like that. (Remember I was still young at this time.) It made me feel dirty inside. Then about 10 years later, they kicked me out because I refused to ostracize someone they thought was the spawn of Satan. I couldn't cross that line.
I converted to Catholicism after that, cause they are pretty laid back compared to the AG. But pretty much only in name. So now I am back to being a Christian all alone, just me and Jesus. I like it better that way.
God and I talk all the time. I've done it since I was a kid. Think of him as an imaginary friend. Whatever.
God knows that if he ever tells me to do something against my principles, I'd tell him to fuck off. I'd still love him and all, but I'd tell him to fuck off. And if he wants to punish me for disobedience or whatnot, or send me to hell, he can heap it on. I'd rather burn in hell for all eternity, cause I'm ornery and willful and stubborn that way. But that is not the God I believe in, anyway.
The God I believe in is Jesus. The paragon of compassion and social justice I read about in that first book. That's why I call myself a Christian. If it's not something that HE would ask, then it's bullshit.
ETA: If you're asking a theological question of why a loving God would ask Abraham to sacrifice his only son, I don't know.
But here's a cheeky guess. I can only imagine that Abraham misunderstood God's request, took it too literally or something. Maybe God only said, "What if I were to ask you to sacrifice Isaac?" And Abraham, being not too bright, said, "Oh, let me take him to a mountaintop and do it to prove I am faithful." Then God had to send an Angel to stop him with, "No, you dumbass. Geez." And Abraham thought, "Oh, you mean this was only a test?" So the story got told wrong cause Abraham was getting a bit senile.
ETA2: Apparently Jewish scholars have been wrestling with the "Binding of Isaac" for a long time. Interesting reading.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binding_of_Isaac
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"Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want - and their kids pay for it." - Richard Lamm
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Quote:
Originally posted by AnthonyT:
Have any other religious people been troubled by these notions?
Nope.
Ok, I'll spare this much - although I am not overfond of discussing my personal beliefs.
The "Gods" of the pantheon I follow are not by any means considered all powerful, onmiscent or even anything remotely close to infallible, a practice followed as long or longer than christianity, the greeks, the vikings, shinto, voodoun - many beliefs consider their "Gods" to be in many ways as flawed as themselves, from Zeus humping everything in sight, to Thor being a tempermental jackass, Ti-Malice being a complete slacker, so on and so forth.
I really reccommend you watch The Mothman Prophecies as it might provide a lot of insight into those notions, insights like this.
Quote:
If there was a car crash ten blocks away, that window washer up there could probably see it. Now, that doesn't mean he's God, or even smarter than we are. But from where he's sitting, he can see a little further down the road.
Why assume the infallibility of your "Gods" ?
There's certainly no cause to, and some of the things in that book seem to all but admit it.
That, to think about.
-Frem
I do not serve the Blind God.
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First I should open with how inadequate is my own experience and knowledge of the subject for me to comment, and hope you will forgive this trespass out of my depth.
I am jewish by birth, but taoist by choice. I've given some thought to what people say here about taoism being a philosophy. While I do not agree, it has lead me to think that it is not inconsistent with taoism to consider it non-exclusive. Many asians carry multiple faiths, as wicca did in old europe, prior to the celtic revival of the 19th c.
Still, such a matter isn't taken lightly. Any other faith would have to be consistent with the tao in order for me to believe in it, which largely means for me more specific interpretations than general tradition (chistian, muslim, buddhist)
Judaism, I'm not sure of it. Some of it will be with me always, but I cannot devote myself fully to the support of only other jews, but I can't break with it without first actually going to Israel to find for myself. I'm not sure where me an judaism stand or will stand.
All of that said, I've also thought about god, and the voice of god, and have done a lot of searching over the course of this past year on that topic.
The thing I was most alarmed to learn was that we have radically different structures of internal voices from one another. Around 10% of us have no internal voice at all. Most of us have a "reading voice" and for some of us, we have a conscious mind thinking voice which is different.
For myself, I have a reading-thinking voice, I know it is one voice, even though it sounds different, because the two cannot talk at once. It speaks when I consciously do something that causes it to speak.
Additionally, I have an unconscious voice. It is not connected to the other, as it can speak at the same time as the other is speaking. I have no control over what it says. I find this voice to be unerring in its analysis, and figure it is drawing conclusions from the sum of my unconscious mind which holds far more information than I could ever be aware of. Still, I would hesitate to think of having to take orders from it.
I don't know where this fits in to your perception of God or anyone else's. I tend to refer to the texts when I am in question on what to do. I don't admit this, because people tend to prefer that we be rational and independent and not referring to religious texts to make our decisions, but I do it because I believe that others who came before me were wiser than I am capable of being, and this is the principle idea that I have faith in.
As to the bible, I've done a lot of research on it, in part because though I am not a christian, your bible is my bible. I've read it through twice, from a very old leatherbound king james. I was distressed when I went to read it a third time, online, to discover that the text was not the same.
Some digging into this topic revealed that the bible has been edited many times, even under the name "KJV" there are many editions, with radical differences. The books included in the canonical common text have changed, as well as those in the apocryphal hidden text. The translations of prose and verse and conversions of data and names has also changed.
I suspect each of these represent someone else's version of what the true word of god is, which means that the concept is open to individual interpretation. Rather than some being true and others not, I would think that some was true for some people, an idea furthered by the revelation of how different we are, internally.
I also shudder to think that the Israelites who slaughter the children of the nonbelievers are of my faith, and so I resolve that they are not, or rather, I am not of theirs. This was what god meant to some savage thousands of years ago, but not to everyone, not even then.
That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.
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Hey Anthony,
See, now you're following my old religious teachings. In the Celtic tradition, winter is a time of introspection, when Nature recedes into Herself to find the coming spring. We humans, as the conscious element in Nature, therefore must express this introspection in our thoughts and actions.
In my understanding, the story of Abraham and Isaac, like the story of Job is not really a treatise on how we puny humans should comport ourselves, but more ruminations on the nature of god. The nature of god is definitively mysterious, but stories like these can help to tease out at least enough meaning to work with.
O' course, like so many bible stories, this Abraham and Isaac stuff is way overstated, like trying to teach moral ambiguities using flash cards. I have a personal story on what I believe to be the same themes but in a much smaller context.
I spent most of my twenties involved with an abusive woman. My self-esteem was such that I thought I deserved whatever hell she dished out. The way I put it, even then, was that if she was a "control freak" I was a "controlled freak"--I enthusiastically signed up for all of it, largely, 'cause it was all I'd known up to that point.
Okay, so I started therapy and a year into it came to the conclusion that my relationship hadda go. I'd discovered things like self-respect and personal dignity and that relationship could not survive the cold, light of that dawn within me.
So, I was out in the "dating pool" after a 6 year absence and didn't know which way was up. I answered a personal ad in a local weekly and had a single, not unpleasant date with a woman named Raven which culminated in us actually making plans to meet again at her place where she would cook me dinner. I was new to dating and found all of this completely delightful in a frankly selfish and light hearted key. Whoohoo, meet people, compliment them, get a home cooked dinner out of it--what's not to love?
AS SOON as the date was over and I was walking down to the bus mall to catch a ride home, my intuition--which, since entering therapy had become extremely vocal--clearly told me to call Raven up and cancel the dinner date and never see her again. My more conventional awareness was a little bit shocked. I demanded to know why and my intuition flat out told me, "You don't get to know why--you just gotta do it." Basically the old parental dodge: Because I said so!
Now, I was already well-versed in the perils of ignoring my intuition, so I didn't need to be told a second time. Nonetheless, it bothered me greatly and I entertained every evasive pseudo-compliance I could imagine to please the intuition without being so rude or "irrational" as to call off a date I had no conscious reason to avoid. I have found in my life that "rationality" at such times is particularly useless.
So, after considerable dithering, I called her up and told her I hadda cancel. When she said, no problem, we'll reschedule, I took a calming breath and told her, no, sorry, I think it's best if I just say good-bye now and good luck to you.
Thing is, she was SOOOO gracious about it. Y'know, philosophizing about the mysteries of human communication and the fatefulness of meetings, etc. I mean, she said, to my mind at the time, ALL THE RIGHT THINGS.
I was all the more pissed off at my intuition, and confused. What the hell did I do all that for? What a jerk I was and what a saint Raven had been about it.
Well, the very next day, I came home from work to a lengthy message on my answering machine (I had an answering machine in 1992) from Raven in which she just ripped into me in foul, totally uncalled-for language, laying judgments upon my character, questioning my manhood, and on and on and on. But the creepiest, uncanny thing about it all was that she sounded JUST LIKE MY EX. She used the same phrases and she expressed the same emotions and hateful opinions of me. It was the Cliff's Notes version of my previous relationship contained in a single answering machine message!
So, I got
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HKCavalier
Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.
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A Anthony a chara,
Great question about Abraham and Isaac. I believe it was a test to see if Abraham was willing. I believe it was a one time test too, I don't believe that God will ever ask anyone this question again, it was something that only happened once. And I believe that God would _never have allowed Abraham to actually do the deed because God is very clear about what he thinks of human sacrifice, he doesn't like it. But yeah, this is something I've definitely done some thinking on. My dad and I have talked about it because we find it hard to understand and make sense of and this is the conclusion we've come to.
CTS, yeah other Christians can be a pain in the rear sometimes, it sounds like those ones you knew were kind of creepy folk, I don't believe in excommunicating people, that's cruel. If you don't want them around then you can say that they should try a different church or something, I don't know, it seems like if someone was doing something really bad they wouldn't want to hang out at church anyways.
"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya
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Too many voices.
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Too many voices? I'll second that... Couldn't begin to sum up my thoughts on the subject ta just one post.
I guarantee! I had a different religious upbringing than the rest of y'all, and that's all you get. You know the line where Mccoy says to Spock "So I have to DIE before we can discuss death?!!"
Yeah, It's something like that...
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Quote:Jesus was a person, real and whole. He was the best part of humanity IMO. Like Mother Theresa. An example of what we can aspire to in our own individual lives.
Originally posted by AnthonyT:
The man was actually supposed to go through with the murder of his son, because God said so. God sent an angel at the last minute to stop him, but this loyalty test and its implications disturbed me for the rest of my life until even today.
Lots of felgercarb has been heaped onto his legacy by co-scripters to influence the masses to particular ends.
God does NOT work in mysterious way IMO. God is direct. God might not let us know the overall plan, but that may be because it's all a work in progress, and no trailer for the finished product is ready.
Or it may be that God is US now, every living molecule. A walk in the skin of existence, so to speak.
I cry EVERY time I watch Book die in Serenity because his most important last message to Mal is to believe.
Believe in himself? In others? In God? All of the above?
Anthony, you know. Shed the doubt. Forget the old nonsense. You've already read between the added lines.
The atypically serious Chrisisall
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