Thoughts

 What can I conclude from this life experience? All my life I have read this Bible, and, I don't know what to think. It contains within it the only reasonable hope, but I start to wonder, is it a delusive one? From what we read, things once, a very long time ago, went sort of terribly, but occasionally well for a group of Jewish people. On this, it seems, hinges the hopes of the entire world. Well, the entire world of faith anyway. 

We read of a time when God was actively, at least for a small group of people, enforcing His laws and interacting with a small group of failed people. On this experience we base the Bible stories that inspire basically everything that we teach our children today. A series of events, with a climatic end that seems to basically have ended 2,000 years ago when Jesus left back to heaven.

From there, things seem to get sketchy. 

What can I say? Can I say that God has never acted in my life, I cannot say that. Surely every good thing is from Him, including these past 2 years. 

But though there are these punctuated mercies that inspire hope, I still look at the entire miserable situation. We are born into this world where everything is sick and dying. Even the most healthy things are only beautiful and vibrant briefly. It is this brief span that we call "life" - and it is fraught with survival anxiety. When one is a child, childhood is sadly cut short by the need to learn. This cannot always be made fun, or, at least I think it can't; perhaps it can and I'm just not able to make it so, or creative enough to do so, or perhaps I just haven't put forth enough effort in that area. Then, as childhood approaches adulthood, life inherently becomes this seemingly ruthless competition. Sometimes for money and food to survive, sometimes for a "place in society" so that one can have a family, sometimes simply for a desired spouse; everywhere there seems to be, at least, scarcity, even if this scarcity may be artificial from a lack of maturity of people to share or adequately distribute resources. This is another question - is there actual scarcity or is this too just some kind of disease on this place - a delusion that could be avoided with better group effort? It appears there is always land scarcity, but then again this could be hoarding on behalf of people. It appears there is adequate spousal scarcity, but this could be avoided with people doing a better job of raising children with different values; it could simply be a societal disease not an inherent part of this world. 

Even if all these failed human factors were removed, would that change the fact that this place is sort of a giant death pile, with animal predating animal, and after a brief span, all creatures declining into illness, death, and loss? I just cannot waive this observation off as "that's just part of life!" Since we believe in a God, there must be an explanation. 

The Bible says this horrible reality is caused by our sinning against God 6,000 years ago. But then it says "God is quick to forgive." So then has God borne a grudge for 6,000 years allowing death to continue, sickness, illness, etc.? The Bible says it is not for man to question God, but the question of course is still there, festering, and it is quite a feat to daily ignore it. It is easier to ignore this question when one personally is not sick, poor, downtrodden, or otherwise spat out by society. But actually, I would not say it is easy at all to ignore it - it takes a feat of constant distraction - but perhaps this isn't such a feat because it's necessary to focus on what one is doing to just get through the day anyway, to just secure one's small piece of survival. So I would say most people just "accept what they can't change" - and go from there, without asking, why is this the case? We have a forgiving God, so why are we still on a world of death, suffering, and all of this? Is this forgiveness something that can only come after 6,000 years? 

The alternate conclusion is that truly the Bible is as it says, and the forgiveness is in fact quick, but it is only quick and effective for those who are "righteous" and "holy". This starts a long permutation of continual self examination and self blame, where one continually wonders why God has damned them personally, and one is constantly trying to "get more holy" in the hopes of being "heard". It also starts the frantic side struggle to "find a holy person", who is "good enough", to be "heard by God". The search for prophets always seems to be running through the Christian community, as each person hopes that, at last, someone has been holy enough to have "effective prayer". Alternatively, some people just revert back to the self blame route saying "well prayer can be heard by anyone, but it is neither that we are not holy enough to be heard, nor that God is not forgiving enough to hear, but simply that we are not asking anything in His will." While this is very easy to grasp if a person is asking for a million dollars or some materialistic bauble, this becomes harder to reconcile when one is actually continually sick, or ailing. One inevitably must fall back to "there is unrepentant sin" and just continually be chasing a person's own tail trying to figure out why one is not properly capable of "true repentance" or what the "hidden sin is". Inevitably someone has sin in their lives. Indeed it seems that "perfect people" would be selling everything they have, and then what, shortly, probably, dying on the streets. We would never hear back from these perfect people whether this strategy of selling everything worked or not, because, presumably, they would have no resources left to survive, so this cleans up a possible mess for the church quite easily. Ultimately, people who are "truly following God", quickly die. This could still work out in the Christian framework, but then it really is as Mona said - a religion of death. For the celibate person who has this awareness of the world, it might actually just be a logical conclusion and not a horrific one at all. But for a person invested in the world through children, it's not so easy to say - "well, the only beauty to this world is religion, and so, I'm going to go all the way, and hey, if my children all starve on the street, it's just the price we're going to pay!"

Sadly, with this mental illness, and probably my own preoccupation with making the promises of the Bible real in my life, this is the path I have tried to go, even if I have been thwarted in full completing it. Perhaps it was for the best that it didn't fully complete, because it seems like there are some dangerous people on the street, and, I would really not like to see my children starving to death. It is sort of a selfish thing to say "well, I need the Bible to be true, otherwise this world isn't liveable for me, so children, though I had all the comforts of the world, just go along with me on this one."

In fact the whole concept of having children seems strangely perplexing, and, were I not driven to it by an absolute desire to have them, and a loving fawning over them once having had them - if, like food and other things that I enjoy about this world, I were not "addicted" to them so to speak - but if I rationally and coolly evaluated this situation, what conclusion could have but with the "ethical" atheists that it not just wouldn't be expedient to have children, but perhaps that it would also be "morally wrong" to do so. It would really be bringing in a creature for "temporary enjoyment", knowing full well the predominant theme here, for many at least, is suffering. 

The one pocket of people who seem to avoid most of the suffering - well, at least some of it, they seem to get quite a bit too - is the wealthy. But this in particular we are prohibited from being lest our souls are destroyed or we be found guilty before God. And so the one thing that might cushion all of this existence, is forbidden. And, I guess even for "ethical atheists" this would make sense. Hoarding resources from others exacerbates the suffering of others, so actually the best "cushion" for suffering would seem to be humanism indeed, a well implemented communism. This would reduce the horror of this world to just bad weather disasters, agricultural fall out, sickness, and death. That's not much of a reduction, but it's a marked improvement. In this world of half-successes, I think it's an improvement worth striving for.

But it doesn't seem to say that that's what the point of this place is in the Bible, otherwise, the churches would basically be institutions of communism, with that point blank. No, continually hard and incomprehensible things are required. Constantly there is some kind of talk about "trust" and "faith" and how it's not good enough to just try to failingly follow God's law, or be concerned about the poor and share resources, or to simply act in a communistic way - loving one's neighbor as oneself, etc.; no it seems like even if a person were to try to act this way (and it is extremely difficult to do so because of short sighted people who feel like acquiring all the wealth of the world and hoarding it is in their or their progeny's - sometimes they don't even have progeny to spend it on - best interest) - it would not be enough. There must always be this area where one is inadequate unless one has enough "faith" in God. And then the ultimate whopper statement, the least palatable thing in the whole thing - as though it were not already hard enough to aspire to be the most decent version of oneself that one could hope to be - that "without faith it's impossible to please God." 

There you have it, the single hardest thing in there. This enables the church to go to the moral atheist, even if they have spent their entire wealth establishing a hospital or given away all their money to the poor; even if they are childless, intelligent, and acquired money solely for the purpose of giving it away - even if this person, should such a person exist - never had even intercourse with anyone, and were just indefatigably altruistic. A sort of successful other-centered Tibet monk of sorts. Well anyway the church could go to these people and basically spit in their faces and say, well, you know, that's nice and all but, you're actually not pleasing to God, even with all that. Because, you see, you've never expressed any faith in Him.

What can we make of this insanity? 

Who furthermore out of these two would one even want for a friend, or to have dinner with, or to have one's child marry? I can say one thing but it would be dishonest. I can say "well certainly the people of faith are more admirable, they are following what God has said; they are quoting verbatim what God said, and are following more faithfully." And yet if push came to shove and Banana was considering a man who had worked himself to the bone for the poor his entire life, versus this other one that had just prayed his entire life, with questionably unanswered prayers, and then furthermore, despite this lower level of accomplishment, come at the other one saying that he had faith, and that the other one was more deficient in the eyes of God than him, I don't know. What could I say here? 

Maybe this is a strawman scenario. I suppose it could be that both men are working hard, doing everything they can to the utmost of their ability to help others. Suppose both of them worked hard, obtained whatever they obtained in this world, and gave it away. Suppose both were equally hard working, equally ambitious. I guess then, the one who has faith would be more attractive than the atheist, and neither one would be hypocritical.

I guess it is an attractive thing regardless, that one has faith. Assuming whatever earthly morality could be gotten here was obtainable by both the secular atheist and the man of faith. I guess perhaps because the one who has faith would usually be more upbeat.

It would seem that the secular atheist would surely be more affected by people dying around him than would even an equally motivated man of faith - why, because for the former, this is all there is. That means when a child is starving to death in Africa, or when a coworker of his would be facing deathly illness, one would expect this person to work all the harder to save them, because, "this is the only life they will ever get." So one would expect the secular humanist to be an altogether miserable creature, full of surpassing sorrow. And ultimately, would such a person not go point blank insane?

I guess this is where the image of the ideal doctor comes in. Working some crazy long hours trying to rescue children in mindless, man made wars of outrageous insensitivity. Like the sole person with a remaining brain or heart, constantly scooping out the sand that keeps falling in on the sandcastle that is is his medical practice. Having dedicated his entire life, probably even having lost the chance to have a fulfilling family himself, just tirelessly working there to try to save another child for some destitute and seemingly hopeless starving family, starving needlessly from global greed or wars that even the best historians cannot find the original cause to. There in a hopelessly collapsing shithole, unable to comprehend what he is doing there anyway, some dazed, tortured animal trying to fight all reality, and, curiously, without any religion to bolster him, just for the very honest and unfeigned sense that "this is what is right, this is the only beauty that can be had in a place like this." I don't know how can this man come out less before God than the one saying "have faith, have faith, turn away from your sins". 

And yet, we read that according to the Bible this man has utterly nothing before God. Because he has no faith in God. 

Has he given God something that God could not have done himself? No, he hasn't. Objectively, we see he cannot "perform" his way into God's acceptance. I guess this is a point that came up on the radio that I just don't understand. But then again, I don't understand this world.

It seems to me such a doctor has done the best that any human being could do with this situation, and surely the most selfless thing. And yet I know it could not be said that "on his own merits" he would enter heaven. Surely he would have some hidden sin plaguing him, even if he were a vegan. Maybe he would grow to be prideful; but, assuming he wasn't. Maybe he would have lust, but assuming he were depressed enough about his existence so as to be without lust entirely. Surely such a person would not be drunkenly brawling in the streets, so that's out. What would he covet in this world? 

I don't know, I'm thinking about this. But perhaps it's just a rule of this reality that such an individual as I am imagining simply could not exist without faith in God. In fact, I guess, the world would be surprised to find such a person in a pure state, but at the same time "entirely without God." I certainly have never met such a person, and so perhaps this person I am imagining, and all the ideals therein wrapped up, by some universal law of this place, could not even come to this fruition without God. 

Anyway, these are idle thoughts, with no practical application to my life. Vain philosophies, I guess. 

Ultimately I am entirely confused about this faith thing. Why it is in there. Is it a patch fix solution the church created for the vast amount of problems for which there seem to be unanswered prayers to, so they could shift the blame to their constituents and say "you didn't have enough faith" and thereby avoid questioning people? I just don't view the church as psychologically cunning enough to devise some kind of system as this.

I think it is truly what God requires, for reasons I cannot understand. It has something to do with this world - this having faith, indeed, is critical, even if I can't understand it at all. Much less can I implement what I do not understand.

I guess it has something to do with trust. 

Anyway, I will place it in a category of things commanded that I cannot understand, that I must somehow do, that I have no idea how to do, that are probably underpinning all my current problems, but, sadly, I cannot figure out how to do, so I guess that falls into "failed requirements at this time." Hopefully it just works itself out because I certainly cannot force upon myself some kind of magical solution to this missing item.