Why all the FORGIVENESS in the universe doesn't solve THE REAL problem.

by Terry 4 Replies latest watchtower child-abuse

• 

  Terry

  A wife who forgives her husband for beating her preserves the marriage. But, forgiveness doesn't solve the real problem.

  A victim of molestation who forgives the molester earns our awe eases their burden of anger, but, once again it doesn't solve the real problem.

  FORGIVENESS SKIRTS THE REAL PROBLEMS.

  For thousands of years mankind approached God for pardon for various sins, crimes, misdemeanors and--through rituals of sacrifice actually obtained forgiveness.

  But, forgiveness didn't solve the REAL problems and it resulted in the deaths of millions of animals.

  Inefficient and not very accurate.

  Before we put our finger on the REAL problems let us examine what price we pay for NOT addressing the REAL problems.

  An analogy first:

  If your roof is leaking while it is raining and you place various pots and pans and buckets under the leaks you prevent damage to your floor, mildew, rot and water damage. So, by analogy, putting buckets under a leaking roof is like "forgiveness".

  The damage is temporarily abated but the SOURCE of future damage had not be addressed: the hole in your roof!

  How do we identify the REAL problem that needs to be solved with humans and their bad behavior IF:

  Forgiveness is a smile at the wife beater and a pat on the back to the molester?

  CHRISTIANITY is obsessed with smiing at the wife beater and patting molesters on their back and not losing the relationship with them.

  i.e. SALVATION for the bad guy! After all, we sure don't want to lose the bad guys, do we? No.

  Why don't we want to lose the bad guys? Christianity convinces us we are ALL equally bad. So, don't you be judging!

  What Christianity does is REDEFINE the meaning of "bad guy" into "potentially forgiven sinner."

  So, how's that workin' out? Hmmmm?

  Adam and Eve, (had they been put to death) would not have produced billions of wife beaters, child molesters, murderers, rapists, terrorists, sadists and various limitless bastards of malevolence.

  Can we agree on that?

  The immediate execution of the failed human pair would have solved THAT problem.

  God did NOT immediately execute them.

  Now, instead of containing the contagion, God allowed it to spread, multiply and run riot for a few thousand years.

  Adam died just about the time Noah would be born. Remember NOAH? Yeah, sure you do!

  Let's move very slowly....

  God allowed contagion to spread so that...He could just turn around and WIPE THEM ALL OUT (except for Noah and family.)

  Since Noah preached and warned to no avail for 120 years and everybody drowned anyway we pause to ask:

  DID GOD SOLVE THE REAL PROBLEM YET?

  Nooooo?

  WHY NOT?

  Here is where you and I get into a fist fight in the streets. You cannot and will not accept what comes next. So, go sit in a corner AND THINK

  before you move on and really consider what's been said up to this point.

  Ready?

  God didn't JUST have a "problem" with humans. Nope. God also had problems in heaven. Yep.

  No human imperfection to be blamed there!

  Spirit beings have exercised the option to piss God off, too!

  Wherever we see or read about or hear stories of something or someone God has created there are strong warnings of FAILURE of the peace!

  The blame game ensues. Red flags are tossed on the playing field. Arguments are made. Apologia ensues. Books are written and prayers are

  sent heavenward. But, the REAL PROBLEM doesn't ever get solved.

  WHAT IS THE REAL PROBLEM?

  Should we blame the rain? Should we blame the hole in the roof?

  Or.....

  Should we blame the builder, the roofer, the shingle manufacturer?

  The Wife Beater doesn't go to Wife Beater school and the child molester doesn't receive a diploma for credits earned. The malefactors in human society are part of the Bell Curve of possibilities in human behavior.

  On one end of that curve we have the saintly, prim, proper, benevolent, good-hearted, naturally happy people we are all glad to be around.

  On the other end we have the sociopaths, serial killers, psychopathic tyrants and bloodthirsty haters hellbent on destruction and chaos.

  Somewhere in the middle are most of the rest of us.

  Why?

  Because the infinite variety of human characteristics, traits, behaviors and natures ARE POSSIBLE. Onlly the possible ever happens, you see.

  THE NATURE OF CREATION IS TO FOLLOW ITS NATURE.

  It has become necessary for each religious denomination, sect, cult or belief system to convince whomever will allow themselves to be convinced--

  that you only need to worry about the SALVATION end of it. That is the chief sales pitch.

  Jehovah's Witnesses use the "Limited time only Going Out of Business" tactic: Armageddon or Bust.

  Mainstream Christianity sticks with "Accept Jesus and Get Saved".

  Yet, none of these sales schemes ever really addresses the REAL PROBLEM.

  Humans don't possess any mind other than their own mind and that can never be the Mind of God.

  Were it to occur---they would cease being humans.

  So, why did God bother creating humans when all he really wanted was more of HIMSELF?
• 

  prologos

  terry, do the wilderbeast have to forgivve the lions, the crocs, or do the herds have to be culled to survive ?

  what if there is no fall from grace, no sin, no need for forgiveness?

  if the leaking roof is just a dream? our idea?
• 

  Terry

  Terry, do the wildebeast have to forgivve the lions and the crocs, or do the herds have to be culled to survive ?

  What if there is no fall from grace, no sin, no need for forgiveness?

  What if the leaking roof is just a dream? our idea?

  Humans want what they want. I want what I want. You want what you want.

  We run out of time trying to obtain what we want. It is called dying.

  Humans are homo sapien and that means we are "wise". We seek ways of problem solving.

  Technology has solved a great many of our problems.

  But, until technology solves the problem of dying we are stuck with our back to the wall.

  We are co-erced into seeking a "cheat".

  How do we cheat death?

  We go so far as to retreat into Primacy of Consciousness.

  We simply let go of our rationl thinking and plunge in over our head into magical thinking.

  If we are christian we shrug and seize the only viable opportunity we are offered: we accept Christ and forgive others.

  How's that workin' out?

  Somebody make me a list of people they know of personally who have cheated death.
• 

  glenster

  Again, a leading case that's too general about Christian belief at a few
  points.

  Interpersonal abusive behavior is discouraged scripturally. Spiritually, the
  believer is encouraged to pull for the other for God and leave the judgment
  about it to God, not just leave bad human behavior to God. Complimentarianism
  is conservative vs. liberal. The conservative choice and worse is also due to
  social trends that are broader and older.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_domestic_violence
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complementarianism

  More generally, being irresponsible about the known things (evolution) and
  harm (rights for women and LGBT people) over a possibility is conservative
  stipulation added to belief (or socially or politically added by a non-believ-
  er), not just belief.

  The known things and concern to not harm will never make a case against belief
  in God, only what religious and political stipulations to not add to belief or
  non-belief in the basic God concept.

  To be a credible possibility, it has to be reconciled to the known things,
  including the bad things of it (tragedies, death) and people (overindulging
  the self at other's unfair regard or treatment, needless harm).

  Those things are debated regarding how to reconcile them with an all-benefi-
  cent God concept--do you blame God for the bad or allowing the possibility of
  it, see a freedom of choice in it, etc. But that problem is eliminated by not
  requiring the stipulation. You can still rue the bad just as much but it's then
  like being able to believe in life for the good in it, and to believe in helping
  with and encouraging the good in it.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodicy

  With God, you could believe He wants you to do that and add afterlife as a
  sweetner. Just blaming God for the bad then turns on itself as a judgment
  parallel to arguing against belief in life due to the bad of it. It's not the
  perspective I'd recommend for a possible God presiding over life any more than
  for life.
• 

  Terry

  GLENSTER shares: Again, a leading case that's too general about Christian belief at a few

  points.

  I take issue with the misnomer that there is a Christian belief which you could get all Christians to agree upon. Isn't it really whatever your local church and local pastor teaches? And if you don't like what's taughter in THAT church you go to another and another like a person in a buffet line cherry picking?

  GLENSTER says: Interpersonal abusive behavior is discouraged scripturally.

  And yet, Eusebius in his history of the early church tells us that it was nothing but fighting and abuse among the early believers! What gives? Could it be we deal with whatever SELF-INVENTED idea we have rather than the reality of historical christianity?

  GLENSTER says: More generally, being irresponsible about the known things (evolution) and

  harm (rights for women and LGBT people) over a possibility is conservative
  stipulation added to belief (or socially or politically added by a non-believ-
  er), not just belief.

  Once again, you're assuming there is an orthodoxy BEYOND WHICH a layer of stipulations is superfluous. I'm saying there is no orthodoxy and that christianty has always been what is "true" locally.

  GLENSTER concludes: Just blaming God for the bad then turns on itself as a judgment

  parallel to arguing against belief in life due to the bad of it. It's not the
  perspective I'd recommend for a possible God presiding over life any more than
  for life.

  I'll try to be more specific than just "blaming God". I'm not blaming God. How's that for specific?

  The only "blame" is to be laid at the doorstep of people who MAKE THINGS UP and pass it off as truth.

  That gives us a strawman version of God for us to blame.

  I'm saying that the corrupt nature of bible transmission leaves us with no solid ground for determining what IS or IS NOT real or true.

  But, Christianity has morphed and divided and spread virally along many disparate lines of improvised TRUTH.

  ON TOPIC: Christian "truth" generally centers around SALVATION for man. SALVATION only solves an immediate problem and does not

  solve the CENTRAL and fundamental problem.

  What is the problem to be solved?

  The God of scripture has caused all the problems HIMSELF by creating what he doesn't want and insisting it rise to his expectations!

  Do I believe that is a description of any real God? NO.