October 15, 2009
Playing God
I hate those email chain letters that tell me I have to forward the message to all my friends and then I’ll experience God’s power within five minutes. Or, an email blessing telling me to pray for the sender and if I don’t, my left leg will fall off. Often the inspirational message is good, but when I get to the tacked on blackmail-ending it’s hard to hold back my frustration. These emails make threats and promises that they can’t deliver. God does have a considerable amount of ‘if-you-do-this, then I’ll-do-that theology’. But that’s understandable…He delivers.
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2 comments:
Gail;
-----Everyone is made of the same substance - body, brain, and soul. So it is easy to extrapolate from this that everyone basically thinks the same. To a small degree, that extrapolation is correct. Everyone experiences his surroundings and the events happening within them and formulates conclusions about life from those experiences. Conversely, everyone’s conclusions are limited by what they’ve experienced and learned. But to most, limitation is not fun; it is like confinement and subservience. Therefore, the basic conclusions they can draw from their life experiences are in turn treated as information, emotional reaction is thrown into the mix, generalizations are formulated, beliefs are accepted, and from that we get most of the uniqueness in every individual.
-----It is easy, then, for each individual to loose track of the line dividing the contributions to his fundamental beliefs between those of actual experience and those of formulated perceptions. But that is an important line to attend. For we all exist on the sane/insane dichotomy never at one end or the other totally, but somewhere in between. And insanity is the product of belief so formulated from perception alone that both the perceptions and beliefs have become far removed from reality. We all take a step towards insanity when we believe we know who God is, what He likes, and what He’s doing without paying the greater attention to all the who and what He is that we really do not know. Failing to pay attention to the fact we know much less than we do know about what we know, especially God, slowly develops the shell which will eventually encapsulate us from reality into a minuscule world of our own.
-----I see people who have formed such an important aura about themselves as facing that sneaky danger. Certainly God loves us and is concerned about our physical difficulties and impairments, and certainly He has given each who looks to Him from even a somewhat humble heart some uplifting thoughts to share around. But one must be careful to not misperceive this fact as being an imperative for our thoughts to be spread into everyone else’s lives, and a need for our ailments to be upon all hearts, lest we run the risk of becoming elders, preachers, theologians, lawyers, or worst of all, politicians.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
Gail, I hate those emails, too. Sometimes I'll refuse to forward them, just to be rebellious and prove their warnings untrue! But sometimes it's something worth sending, so after hitting the forward button, I just delete from the message all the unwanted stuff about having to send it on, etc. etc. I really dislike the superstitious beliefs on which those remarks seem to be based....
Arlene
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