Store up for yourselves treasures in Heaven
where moth and rust cannot destroy and thieves cannot break in and steal

Thursday, August 1, 2013

Atheists Save the World

Have you ever wondered about the tsunami like tide of evil that is sweeping the Globe? Are you staggered by evil's power to shred society, collapsing nations? Not a Newscast goes by without the mention of corruption. And do you notice how no race, gender or age group is exempt from the power and influence of evil? It ruins families. It destroys homes. And most of all, it causes humans to do all they can to ignore it, despite the way evil corrodes the quality of everyone's life.
On the other hand, those who refuse to call evil for what it is, have grand plans for healing society's ills. Space does not allow a full discourse of the “cures” that have so far been explored by secularists but there are a few that are worth noting. Another of the more infamous secular efforts might include:
- Science
- We were told that the combination of wide-spread, higher education and stupendous wealth
- Then it was sex without the perceived confinement of marriage.
- The coerced celebration of the sexually disoriented.
- Or how about easy divorce?
- Feminism
- The pursuit of everything.

The latest solution is to indoctrinate us with the condescending attitude of tolerance. "I will tolerate you." Doesn’t that make you feel all warm, and fuzzy inside? Of course discrimination, be it from Christian communities or elsewhere is wrong. My generation screwed up by finding it impossible to hate the sin without also hating the sinner. This generation is screwing up because they can't figure out how to love the sinner without also loving the sin. 

Sophisticates brag, "I tolerate everyone, no matter how diseased, dysfunctional and damaging to themselves and to society their behaviours may be." What they’re really saying is, "I have so little genuine love for you, that you can go straight to hell for all I care." So there you sit, surrounded by your refined and worldly wise friends, yet utterly alone in the very dim awareness that others care as little about you as you care about them. Oh sure, you cluck your tongue at the famine in Africa and worry about the whale on the beach. But treating with love your partner and kids is another matter altogether.


All of the above failures have sounded wise to the worldly, but this kind of thinking is repugnant in the extreme to those of us who know the love of Jesus. Why? Jesus loves us too much to just tolerate our miserable state. He refuses to tolerate the fact that the path we are following is leading to a disaster of eternal proportions. Rather than sitting back in smug indifference, Jesus left His throne in paradise to venture into our slum-living, futile, sin-enslaving, squalor. He did this to show us the way to victory and to freedom. This is a freedom from real guilt, freedom from slavery to self-destructive behaviours, freedom to make choices that will bring contentment into our lives despite circumstance. For Jesus’ love is a love that pursues relentlessly. 

8 comments:

  1. Well, Rod, this is a farewell - got more important things to do as I leave Bangkok for my annual six weeks of unpaid social work in Cambodia. And I got to say that I find this site pretty repetitive. And astonishingly oldish, so to say. Not quite worth the attention.
    This last diatribe about the evils of tolerance is just another brick in the wall, alongside the "evils of science" - this from someone who'd be dead without 21st century medicine, and who's communicating on high-end internet technology. Of course, science can only provide saner environments, diets, housing, better medical and information services: better pre-conditions for our lives.

    Now you're bragging about tolerance, equating it to indifference. How stupid. Tolerance is conceding that someone else may be other than you. Maybe less anxious, maybe less in need of "objective authority", maybe more or less thoughtful and reflecting than you.
    Maybe falling in love with other people than you. Looking, smelling, talking different from you.

    And still exactly as important, as worthy as you, even if not embracing the idea that a Jewish 1st century Rabbi (born by a virgin) saved the world when be was executed for committing sorcery and working wonders on a Sabbath, then reappeared again for a few days.
    That's never been a very convincing story, Rod.
    Especially not if combined with a god who creates flawed beings, and watches them going to hell all the time...
    With all respect, sending people to hell for not believing such stuff seems a bit, well, over the edge.

    See, Rod, part of my academic studies 45 years ago was history, especially European and Near East medieval history. This is a period of open competition between belief systems. No secular powers at all. And it is the time of decadence, fall of empires, followed by centuries of stagnation under Christianity and Islam. It was the time when your ilk had absolute say. And it was a time when you watched two thirds of your children and your first two wives die during your dirty, undignified 40 years life.
    Everything that changed those animal-like conditions of living had to be wrestled from the hands of those in power positions in your beloved Jesus Cult. Even worse in Islam, where such undertakings were impossible because there cult and state were even more tightly interwoven. A horrible situation.

    You can romanticize such belief dominated situations all day long, but keep in mind that you'd live under a Catholic Bishop if your ilk had succeeded over the last 600 years.

    More likely you'd be dead for 20 years already.


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  2. @Tobias

    Our paths did not cross here on this blog since I decided to stop my commenting "career" but I still take a look pretty regularly and it was interesting to read your comments here!

    Take care,
    Hugo

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  3. "evils of science"

    This is so typical of atheist thinking. You bring your “no God” presupposition to the evidence and it makes you incapable of seeing or hearing reality.

    No where have I ever said that science is wrong, bad or evil. What I said is, science is and will always be incapable of curing human nature. It's incapable of resolving our irritability and anger, our desperate need to be in control, our dependencies, obsessions, and addictions, and our corrupt self-love. Science is incapable of ending our desperate run to the things that we look to for a sense of comfort and worth and value but which provide only temporary relief and a deepening dependence on distractions.

    I don't expect you or Hugo or any other atheist to get it. You can't. You're a slave to a grand delusion that has been given you courtesy of your Creator.

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  4. (I'm in a Phnom Penh Hotel, enjoying the luxury of an internet connection when we don't combat local and international bureaucracy)
    Rod-
    what a wish-washi reply! I note that you didn't have anything to say about tolerance... instead you continue your deeply depressive ranting about anger, control wishes,obsessions and such, which for you are unavoidable fate. What a nice excuse!
    I cited your savior in another post - not that you recognized it. I said if you know something is sin, don't do it. "go and sin no more", John 8:11. You are making excuses by again and again describing human nature as immutably sinful.
    That's rubbish, as even your strong-armed savior said. And people can behave. Most do, most of the time. We have such a long history of compassionate changes of basic behavior, and so many horrible customs are no longer in existence.
    .
    Which is not science's merit,(for the last 300 years philosophy played a major role), but science with its findings creates a better factual basis for ethical discussions and decisions, and, of course, exposes fraud and forgery. Which were a genuine part of all major religions - be it weeping Madonna statues, levitating sadhus, or disappeared gold foils...
    But, stripped of those "supernatural mysteries", your creator is pretty absent in public space. Looks like he's in your head only, and the few others who share your special twig or branch of Christianity.
    .
    I am no-one's slave, Rod. And no-one "created" me, so no one "owns" me. I'm just a temporary expression of life on this planet, the result of a cell merger of two other life forms whom I called Mum and Dad. No gods involved, only an embryonic development process common for all higher life forms, birth, and lot of brood care. And the process continues, my son carries a random selection of my and his mothers genes, and a lot of peculiarities in reaction to our brood care. And that's it.
    You adhere to an iron age form of authoritarianism: an almighty ruler whose rules are by definition just. We've experimented with such systems for a few thousand years - they are ineffective. Because absolute rulers - like your god - tend to act as if they were the only ones who count, not their underlings, whom they slaughter in senseless wars, trying to end history... they don't care about their suffering.
    I do. And so does a great part of the diverse atheists of this world. And we really cannot share your distorted s/m world view.
    .
    (And now I'm off for another round with the Ministry of Rural Development.)

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  5. "they don't care about their suffering"

    Interesting perspective considering you'll have to step over Jesus' dead body in order to get to hell. I feel bad for you Tobi. All this good work that you do and the little thanks you get the day you leave is all the reward that you'll receive.

    It doesn't need to be that way.

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  6. (Before I return to the prosthetic factory in rainy Kampot)
    Hi, Rod.
    "they don't care about their suffering"
    Interesting that's what you chose to comment about.
    .
    A clarification: absolute rulers enforce rules, their rules. Like being worshiped, being obeyed, no matter how idiotic their whim may be. Ask Abraham, ask Job. That's so, well, bronze age. Absolute rulers justify suffering - of others. They can't be blamed for that: it's just their greed for power & control... But you, a human, a born underling - how can you bear such partisanship? All the suffering you witness, and so much blindness, and no real action, instead: "Submit, submit!"

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  7. "they don't care about their suffering"
    “Interesting that's what you chose to comment about.”

    Well, it's only one of the most important questions of life – Why all the senseless suffering? Although I'd have to say, Suffering is only senseless if God does not exist.
    -----

    “A clarification: absolute rulers enforce rules, their rules.”

    Well, yes, Creator God is the only absolute ruler. And He is unlike any wanna be ruler on earth. For Creator God stepped down from His thrown and paid the price for our rebellion, treachery and sabotage. In that sense He does not enforce His most important rules: Love Creator God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbour as yourself. A rule that none of us obeys.

    As your life shows, and as I lived for the first 30 years of my life, God has given you the freedom to reject, deny, rage and rant against your Creator. You know the ground rules ahead of time and you're free to choose to disobey.

    Tobi, you don't have to like God. You don't have to like anything He does or how He does it. In fact, until you repent of your sins you have no option but to see Him as your enemy. But that doesn't change the fact that He exists and that He has revealed Himself to us. If you're honest with yourself you know that science itself shows that the existence of this universe requires an eternal and immaterial Creator. He exists and we need to adjust our lives accordingly.

    You are right in being repulsed and disgusted by the pain, loss and suffering that immerses our world. It is our sin, yours and mine that is the cause of most of the suffering that we see and experience. You dismiss the pain that you've caused other people because you've said you were sorry. Well, “I'm sorry” is better than not, but the pain and destruction still took place. Justice demands more than “sorry.”

    We are profoundly spiritual beings Tobi, and it is our profoundly sinful nature that separates us from God. As the state of the world shows, we are hopelessly lost and unable to cure ourselves. Everything that humans touch, including religion, including the most sublime world-view possible, turns to crap. As absolute ruler, your Creator and mine has born the penalty of that sin, at His own expense so that you need not experience the significant consequence of rejecting your Lord, your God and your Saviour.

    You and I and everyone on this planet have broken His rules. He is inviting you to accept His offer of forgiveness. One day every knee will bow before our Creator, Tobi. We can either do it now, in admission that we are wrong, and gain the forgiveness that we so desperately need, or we can do it later when it is too late.

    We have that choice. Why would anyone choose the latter.

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  8. “All the suffering you witness,”

    That I witness? I've had crippling arthritis for 50 years. I've had five major operations to repair the damage that the disease and the medication have wrought upon my body. I was physically and sexually abused as a child for five years. Our only biological child died. All seven of our adopted children are permanently brain damaged from their mother's drinking while pregnant. None of their IQ's rise about the mid 70's. I've struggled, like you, with cancer and cancer treatment. I witness the same plague of sin that you do.

    But pain, loss and suffering are not the main problems Tobi. They are the path to restoration and reconciliation. The pain, loss and suffering that humans invited into the world are to jerk our chains and force us to admit that there is something terribly wrong with us. As C.S. Lewis correctly said, “God shouts to us through the megaphone of pain.”

    We need help. Humanity is rotting and the stench of spiritual death oozes from each one of us. Who we are at a fundamental level needs to be changed at a fundamental level. If that doesn't happen, humanity will not survive. We can't make that change on our own. Neither science nor philosophy can do the job. The best we can hope for on our own is to become more sophisticated sinners.

    You say that nothing is being done by God to fix the situation, but you speak too soon. You're expecting a finished cake, but you're looking at it when it's still in the mixing bowl. The judgement of evil is coming Tobi and you need to side with the good. You're doing it to some extent with your volunteer work. Most don't even do that. The problem is however, you think that having good intentions makes you exempt - That evil does not reside within you. You point to others who are worse and declare yourself good.

    Jesus says that no one is good, That all will face judgement, That only He has the ability and the right, as absolute ruler to save those who come to Him. “I will not turn away anyone who comes to Me for forgiveness.”

    Tobi, you talk of atheists doing good just as though others, including Christians don't do good in the world. It's a losing battle Tobi, because even with all our good, the world is sinking deeper and deeper into war, and starvation, and greed and corruption and looking out for number one.

    Jesus offer of forgiveness includes you and me and everyone else. Why reject that offer just because you don't like or understand how He does things?

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