I’m not trying to sound haughty or God-hating, I don’t even know if I believe what I wrote – But tell me what you guys think about this: How are we, as individuals and a species, to grow into what we want to become unless we are first burned by the fires of lesson? How can we see our faults unless first we experience them, then, by contrast no longer live by them? The harsh reality is that in order to overcome ignorance we must be first fooled by it so that we may be intimate with it. When we are deceived we can rationalize our beliefs in God and higher powers and portray them in any way we choose in order to comfort or blame ourselves and others. The actual attainment of the greater good is not the process of learning or being tricked to evil but the aftermath, the contrast at the end and how we use it. It is not our fault we are ignorant, but it is our fault if we remain that way. For mankind to evolve into what we desire we must have the resources to evaporate what makes us dissatisfied. The resources being knowledge of evil or bad things. Humans need evil, lies, and deception -- not to blame and cast as our opposition and enemy until death -- but as a tool to refine ourselves and to grow. You may fool me once, shame on you. You may fool me twice, shame on me. It is our own outlook and choice to castrate and curse or to embrace and change the evils into lessons from which a greater good may come. Is there really a better way? Is salvation from darkness a way to teach us to become independent creatures?
Sacrifice must be made if we wish to attain something more than the state we are in. Everyone knows that getting something takes work and sacrifice. The sacrifice is the movement itself through the perils in which we suffer to gain the prize of knowledge at the end. Blood must be let spilt for the greater good and the acquisition of knowledge that leads to surpassing any intellectual, emotional, or moral darkness we may have. To overcome evil we must experience it for however long it takes. People say that history repeats itself and the world seems to be controlled by “the evils” that plague mankind. People say there will always be deception and killing until some device saves us from it; THIS IS OUR DEFEAT because we believe it and objectify evil as not of ourselves. It’s otherworldly, not human. On all levels we create a creature, thought, idea, or concept that is the epitome of wrongness and thus never take the responsibility into our own hands. What we have done wasn’t done by us, it was the Devil. By shouldering the load of evil onto another person, or an idea, or groups thereof we will ALWAYS BE WAITING for the day that someone saves us from it because it does not belong to us. We have become stagnant in growth in the idea that we are not responsible, or that someone or something else must take the blame. Let me repeat. By excusing ourselves from sin by means of Satan we can not see the fault in ourselves and thus can not change it.
The question remains: how much sacrifice must we ourselves choose to make before we wrap our hands around the idea at the end? How many lives are we willing to give before we grow and no longer need deception and violence? The lesson is still being learned, and has been repeated to us time and again with history books full of fighting, hatred, and ignorance. This is the light in which we see, not only our faults, but also our potential. If we can control ourselves to doom, we can control ourselves to betterment. No one is forced to take any action. We make CHOICES and we live by them. EVERY INDIVIDUAL is responsible for what mankind has been and will become. We must first stop shifting the blame to the Devil, communism, drugs, or criminals and swiftly realize that the evils, lies, deception, abhorrent violence and all such things are of our OWN making and are our own responsibility. Only then will we ever have the hope of possessing the desire to change. Is this fancy utopian world really possible or just a daydream?
Maybe, perhaps, there is no salvation from evil but by our own making. And maybe this is God’s way (if he exists). This taking of responsibility into our own hands does not imply a denial of these greater powers or redemption; it only implies that we took, perhaps in vein, the responsibility for our actions? And isn’t an attempt to help, even if unfulfilled, more respectable than blaming something else and sitting idly by? While we wait for Jesus to whisk us away what are we really doing. Would He accuse us of not trying? Will we have anything good to say of ourselves if we should ever really stand before the Court of God? Am I full of crap and on the brink of becoming one of those crazy nut-job prophets? Eh, who knows.
Is religion dangerous and do we really NEED saving?
by Morocco 10 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Morocco
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stillajwexelder
? OK
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Morocco
yes that is what my therapist says a lot... jk :)
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Green Chille
NO, we are all going DIE!
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sammielee24
Think I've heard this more like 'when you are given lemons, make lemonade'. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. In order to appreciate the good times you have to suffer the bad times. We are the sum of all our choices. Well - you get the drift.
No one is forced to take any action. We make CHOICES and we live by them. EVERY INDIVIDUAL is responsible for what mankind has been and will become. We must first stop shifting the blame to the Devil, communism, drugs, or criminals and swiftly realize that the evils, lies, deception, abhorrent violence and all such things are of our OWN making and are our own responsibility. Only then will we ever have the hope of possessing the desire to change.
If you hear this once you hear it a gazillion times until it has minimal meaning for a lot of people. I agree that we all make choices and while they might not be the wisest of choices or the ones that others might approve of, sometimes they are the only choices that a person may be able or capable of making. Rather than put people down we could ask ourselves how they got there and how to fix it.
If you happened to see the special on poverty in America - the dirtly little secret or the invisible people (poor), you will understand what I mean. Who cannot agree that as humans we collectively need to take responsibility for the society we have? As humans we help populate, nurture or destroy the earth yet collectively do little to change that based on many things including culture and religion. sammieswife.
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noko59
I am not sure I agree with your logic, one doesn't have to fool with evil lets say to know it. For example I don't need to kill someone to then experience what it is to kill someone and effects it will have in the long run. Maybe a drastic example but I already know. Choice is what we have, for good or bad which from different viewpoints maybe opposite as in what is good and what is bad. For example me defending myself from a thief which takes his life in self defense maybe good from my viewpoint but from the thiefs I don't think so. So then if there is a God with divine judgement then good and bad is more defined or should I say strict. Those that listen to the almighty if they make wise decisions would continue to make good choices (not forced). So the question is then does God really let you know what is good and bad so you can decide which path to take? Why do some not listen? How can one listen?
Now what happens when we don't have a choice in a matter? For example someone being tortured beyound their capacity to resist to divulge information which ends up hurting other people, is that person truely guilty?
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Navigator
I agree with you that we are, for the most part, authors of our own life script. The choices we make largely determine what we will experience. However, most of our choices are conditioned by A GREAT LIE that we have been fed from our youth. That lie is that we have successfully accomplished our separation from God and that HE (GOD) wants us to find our way back. Almost all religions teach this lie and are eager to tell us what God wants from us. The truth is that God wants nothing from us because HE IS US!. We act the way we do because we think that we are "doing our own thing" and in charge of our own destiny. Religion is dangerous in that almost all teach that LIE. We have never separated from God. We are merely dreaming that we have. The Hindus are correct. All of this is MAYA (Illusion). The story of the Prodigal Son tells us everything we need to know.
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Narkissos
Let us finally consider how naive it is altogether to say: "Man ought to be such and such!" Reality shows us an enchanting wealth of types, the abundance of a lavish play and change of forms — and some wretched loafer of a moralist comments: "No! Man ought to be different." He even knows what man should be like, this wretched bigot and prig: he paints himself on the wall and comments, "Ecce homo!" But even when the moralist addresses himself only to the single human being and says to him, "You ought to be such and such!" he does not cease to make himself ridiculous. The single human being is a piece of fatum from the front and from the rear, one law more, one necessity more for all that is yet to come and to be. To say to him, "Change yourself!" is to demand that everything be changed, even retroactively. And indeed there have been consistent moralists who wanted man to be different, that is, virtuous — they wanted him remade in their own image, as a prig: to that end, they negated the world! No small madness! No modest kind of immodesty!
Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of Idols -
noko59
Navigator I too agree to a certain point, now if God is us "HE IS US" and I do something evil, does that mean God does evil? I do believe God is in us because true freedom of choice can only be a gift from God that allow us to go beyond inanimate matter that surrounds us. God's spirite that animates all life so to speak, as children we are with choice which is basically Life or Death. If one goes against the spirit which sustains them, it will depart.
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Woodsman
You use the word "we" alot as though "we" are all on a big bus collectively deciding which direction to drive. That isn't my observation of life on earth. You could have 5,999,999,999 enlightened people who have experienced lifes lessons and have grown to from them but it would only take one A_Hole with a machete to kill them all. And thats the best case. The truth is there are alot more A_Holes with machetes down here.