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symbioidljThanks to Renwick, I happened to follow a link to Pandrax... On her userinfo, I found this quote. This is exactly why I left xianity:
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O my Lord, if I worship Thee from fear of Hell, burn me in hell, and if I worship Thee in hope of Paradise, exclude me thence, but if I worship Thee for Thine own sake, then withhold not from me Thine Eternal Beauty.
- Rabia al-Adawiyya
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I thought about god and realized that the ultimate reason that I believed in god was because I feared hell. The christian deity, of course, is the one which I refer to. I had arrived at Pascal's Wager when I was 15 of my own accord, to use in an argument with my science teacher. I had included, of course, re-incarnation as a third option. But as I thought about this all, I started to doubt more and more.
In church one day I had a vision:
And I beheld Him, standing over me, with power and might, and in his hand was a gun, cocked and loaded, and it's name was The Fires of Hell. And He said unto me "Love me, or else."
And it was then that I really started to question if I believed in god of my own accord, or whether I was, in a sense, being spiritually raped. Forced to satisfy the ego of a sadistic psychopath. And I realized that I had to question. Did not Jesus injuction "Seek and ye shall find."? I had been taught Christianity all my life, and I had read about various other paths, but I never really "sought". I accepted Christianity as THE path, without even allowing myself to look at other paths. And if I were to be a true Christian, surely I should follow that command. Because if I only accepted what I was taught, and never sought the truth of my own accord, my faith was/is inauthentic. And after having thought about it a while, not only the punishment of hell, but the reward of heaven was just as much a wrong reason to love a god. So I had to decide that the only real reason to love a deity such as the christian god was to remove both punishments and reward, and love god for the sake of god.
And I believe in god. But just not in that way. I believe in the laws of nature. I believe in chaos. I believe in matter and energy, and the Tao. I believe in unity and duality. I believe in love and hate. I believe in life and death. And all these are god.
PS: Mr. Show comes out on DVD today. I'm going to Tony's to watch and smoke a bowl tonight... Huzzah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh yeah, and I missed meeting David Cross if I had not posted that little (tragic) note. Oh, what sort of tragedy is my life, when my only tragedy is the non-meeting of Mr. Cross...
--------
O my Lord, if I worship Thee from fear of Hell, burn me in hell, and if I worship Thee in hope of Paradise, exclude me thence, but if I worship Thee for Thine own sake, then withhold not from me Thine Eternal Beauty.
- Rabia al-Adawiyya
---------------
I thought about god and realized that the ultimate reason that I believed in god was because I feared hell. The christian deity, of course, is the one which I refer to. I had arrived at Pascal's Wager when I was 15 of my own accord, to use in an argument with my science teacher. I had included, of course, re-incarnation as a third option. But as I thought about this all, I started to doubt more and more.
In church one day I had a vision:
And I beheld Him, standing over me, with power and might, and in his hand was a gun, cocked and loaded, and it's name was The Fires of Hell. And He said unto me "Love me, or else."
And it was then that I really started to question if I believed in god of my own accord, or whether I was, in a sense, being spiritually raped. Forced to satisfy the ego of a sadistic psychopath. And I realized that I had to question. Did not Jesus injuction "Seek and ye shall find."? I had been taught Christianity all my life, and I had read about various other paths, but I never really "sought". I accepted Christianity as THE path, without even allowing myself to look at other paths. And if I were to be a true Christian, surely I should follow that command. Because if I only accepted what I was taught, and never sought the truth of my own accord, my faith was/is inauthentic. And after having thought about it a while, not only the punishment of hell, but the reward of heaven was just as much a wrong reason to love a god. So I had to decide that the only real reason to love a deity such as the christian god was to remove both punishments and reward, and love god for the sake of god.
And I believe in god. But just not in that way. I believe in the laws of nature. I believe in chaos. I believe in matter and energy, and the Tao. I believe in unity and duality. I believe in love and hate. I believe in life and death. And all these are god.
PS: Mr. Show comes out on DVD today. I'm going to Tony's to watch and smoke a bowl tonight... Huzzah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh yeah, and I missed meeting David Cross if I had not posted that little (tragic) note. Oh, what sort of tragedy is my life, when my only tragedy is the non-meeting of Mr. Cross...
