First read this.
Any shred of belief I might have had before that we are children of a loving God just went out the window. All this about the natural man being an enemy to God unless he yields to the spirit is crap. We are specifically designed to not yield. What a cruel joke an omnipotent being would play on his billions of subjects, especially when the stakes are so high.
Global warming is a hoax.
Gay people can be ‘cured’.
Raping a virgin will cure you of the ‘thinning disease’.
Tax cuts stimulate the economy.
Giving people unemployment doesn’t.
Reagan ended the cold war.
Obama was born in Kenya.
Black people are inferior.
Fluoride in our drinking water is a communist mind-control plot.
Elvis is still alive.
And so on.
And so on.
What does God do with the unrepentant? Throw them out because they’re no good? Says something about God’s ability to create something, then, doesn’t it?
If I sound angry, it’s because I am. I was sold a bill of goods. So were you, in all likelihood. I was raised to believe in and hope for the Kingdom of God (Zion) to come someday, and it looks pretty hopeless right now. The predictable future for humans is not Zion. We aren’t on our way there. We are on our way to 1984. Humans would rather lie to themselves in order to be right about something–“we have always been at war with Eurasia and in alliance with Eastasia”–than to confront the truth and build a utopia. We would rather die than tell the truth.
This is why we don’t have any utopias. Humans don’t want utopia. We want the pain, misery and conflict that comes with believing things that are demonstrably untrue. We love suffering. We wouldn’t trade our suffering for anything in the world. And that’s not hyperbole: we really could have anything we want in the world if we just gave up our stupid lies, and we don’t! If we wanted to, we could, and we don’t, therefore the only logical conclusion I can see to draw is that we don’t want to live in Zion! We want to live in hell, and we’re doing a damn fine job of making that way for ourselves! Damn us all!
David… I'm glad you're angry. It means you're paying attention.
Erin C.
You have laid out very well (as did that wonderful article you linked) exactly what that condition of being in the natural man looks like.
Did the writer of the article know that we aren't actually a democracy, but a rebublic? Did he know the difference? Does it make an iota of difference in the outcome of the research he outlined?
The natural man is an enemy to God precisely because he values his story versions and judgments more than what's so, and honestly believes that moving more things from being things he knows he doesn't know to things he knows he knows is the path to salvation. It is the path to hell, welcome aboard!
This is precisely where ancient Israel failed, and why they got saddled with over 600 sometimes contradictory laws – in the hopes of getting them to where they would see that laws couldn't save them from this natural man. End result? Additional thousands of very important rules designed to make sure that they couldn't fail to keep the laws perfectly, while guarranteeing they couldn't keep them at all.
How do we put off this natural man? I submit that it has less to do with our sobriety or God-given sexuality or strict adherence to somewhat arbitrary laws, and more to do with being humble and broken-hearted enough to give up our foolish pride and our insistent need to be right. Only then, in the submissive state of a little child, can we submit to the spirit and be open to correct "what's so" information about the here and now, and more importantly the then and forever.
But then, I could be wrong.
BTW: Happy Bastille Day!
You and Eric seem to be on the same page today. There's a good reason why I love you both so much.
What I would say is that people do not *want* suffering. The very issue is that people are trying to avoid suffering by clinging to their beliefs over facing truth. The irony is that by avoiding the difficulties and suffering involved by facing truth and growing/maturing/evolving they end up causing themselves and others even more suffering. This is central to the theory M. Scott Peck put forth in his book _People of the Lie_. It also reminds me of a quote I once read: "Do not contribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity."
As for Hell, yes it is created by people. I do not believe, and have not believed for many years now, that Hell is created by God. The pain, suffering, and all the rest is a result of the people there and how they treat each other. Also, the concept of Hell is not far off from what you are describing here. It is not a place of physical fire or whatever else. The torment comes from the inhabitants forcing each other to act and think all the same and no deviation at all is allowed.
@Ryan: Saying that people *want* suffering is definitely being… antagonistic about it. M. Scott Peck is one of my favorites. Bottom line: people prefer the hell we're living in to the paradise we could be living in, because here we never have to admit that what we believed wasn't so. And the exact quote is, "never ascribe to malice that which can be justly ascribed to stupidity."
@Dono: I'm sure the author got his job at the Boston Globe without any detailed knowledge whatsoever of our representative form of government. And, you are now on notice that KSL / Fox News talking points will be snarked upon. The rest of your comments are tautological in nature. Thanks for playing.
Snark away little buddy. It wasn't a talking point, and it wasn't even sincerely submitted, in case you missed my own snark in the third question, since it doesn't matter an iota. (Being "right" about that IS tautological to the rest of what I had to say.)
I get that you read the rest of it as being tautological. I see how you arrived there. I invite you to give that up, at least where the paragraph on how to put off the natural man is concerned, and read it again with new eyes. (I said read, not skim.)
Of course, I could be wrong about that, so I apologize if reading it again is a complete waste of your time.
Are you really attached to being "right" about any of this?
Reading what you posted reminded me of a conversation I had with a friend in high school. He asked me if I knew what the purpose of life was. I told him the standard mormon answer of coming here to be tested, and therefore prove ourselves worthy to go back to God. He cut me off and said, no, I don't want that answer, I want to know what you really think the purpose of life was. I was confused, thinking, "I was answering the question, wasn't I?" He told me that I gave the answer I just said because it was what others told me. He just spent the summer vacation in Cambodia, his mother's homeland, where he spent most of his time talking with Buddhist monks about their beliefs. He said he felt the same way about their explanations as he did about Mormon's, JW's and other religions: We simply repeat what is told to us. If I was born in Cambodia, he said, I would probably think the same thing as those monks.
He's probably right.
A fun quote relevent the referenced article:
Faith, fanatic faith, once wedded fast
To some dear falsehood, hugs it to the last.
— Thomas Moore (Irish poet), Lalla Rookh: The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan (1817)