Tuesday, August 22, 2006

A vision of Heaven

And the teaching says...
God's will be done on earth
As it is in heaven
As Jews continue to claim an eye for an eye in the name of God, and Muslims wage jihad against non-believers and each other in the name of Allah - all of them slaughtering thousands of innocent men, women and children - Christians also are taught to profess a desire to implement their vision of God's Will here on earth.

But what is that vision?
Forgive us our sins as we
Forgive those who sin against us
How long have Christians uttered these verses, either every Sunday or for some every day? Hundreds of years? Two thousand years? Apparently not long enough to know or understand their meaning. We want to believe that Christianity somehow, through it's doctrine of forgiveness, rises above the fray to bring a better vision of hope and peace to the world.

And yet the world's two largest Christian nations, the United States and Great Britian, have leaders who have also felt compelled by God to:
  • invade a country causing over 100,000 deaths of non-combatants (i.e. innocent men, women and children) because they scared us

  • implement policy where we kill whomever opposes us before they can attack us

  • imprison, torture and kill anyone they deem necessary to maintain the peace
Compelled by God? This is their Christian vision?

Do any of these ideals truly reflect God's will? Is it Jew, Muslim and Gentile belief that God's will simply means everyone kill everyone else in God's name? Or at least that any one side should kill the other?

This is God's will being done on earth - as it is in heaven?

That's a damn scary vision of Heaven.

A friend of mine recently commented "I might be a religious man if it weren't for God." That's about the same as an athiest friend who constantly says "The world would be a peaceful place if it weren't for your Gods."

Of course what they're echoing is the reality that appears the world is slipping back to its intolerant days of the Crusades - where the will of God was brutally enforced by men who didn't have a clue what the will of God really was.

So what is the will of God that we want done on earth, as we believe it to be done in heaven (for those who truly believe)? Is it to provide an existance of love, peace, protection, and charity for those around us? Or is it to beat the other bastards into the ground and slaughter their children.

According to more and more leaders across the world, it seems the answer is the wrong one - unless of course men like Sadam and Bin Laden are correct, and they're the ones going to heaven.

And that's certainly not a vision I want to have.

^top

2 Comments:

At 10:03 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Great... you are working on the sympathetic part of you...

a chinese idiom "men hu zhi jian, guo nan de huo shou" meaning.... opinion differences are the cause of most trouble...

well, that means... there were never be peace...

 
At 10:10 AM, Blogger N.J. said...

Well, my point wasn't to be sympathetic or infer that there could ever be no difference of opinion, but rather to identify how using "God's Will" as a rallying cry is an effective tactic that's used for the worst purposes - which have nothing to do with "God's will" as written in any religion. And it's amazing that so many can't distinguish truth from propaganda.

 

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