thread: 2006-09-08 : Picky-choosy religion, 3 views
On 2006-09-12, Sydney Freedberg wrote:
Ian, I may be going round in circles here, but let me try rephrasing this idea again:
All beliefs contain some truth; but not all beliefs contain equal truth.
What you believe is not the only thing that matters; it is not even the most important thing; but believing true things is more useful than believing false things.
I do not know everything about where and how God is to be found; compared to the unfathomable greatness of God, I in fact know terribly little; but I still know enough to make value judgments about ways that I think are clearly better and ways that I think are clearly worse.
I may be wrong about everything; I am certainly wrong about something; but I owe it to you to say what I think is right.
There is a frustrating tendency in this otherwise astounding discussion for people to bounce back and forth between "oh, so all beliefs are equally true and all religions are equally good?" and "oh, so everyone who doesn't agree with you is going to Hell?" It is actually possible to hold a position in the middle. Please stop trying to force me to one extreme or the other when I think both extremes are nonsense. If the truth about light is that it sometimes acts like a particle and sometimes acts like a wave, why do people think that the truth about the Lord of Light is going to be simple and straightforward?
Vincent:
I understand God's generosity to us. I don't understand God's letting us suffer. "Free will," yes, but why is free will so important, and what does it require so much suffering?
I'm not trying to dodge this one, I'm taking it on the chin because I don't know how to throw it back into your court.
For whatever reason, God created a universe in which your father died of cancer, my father died of terminal kidney failure, my grandfather and his sister suffered senile dementia so severe that their personalities disintegrated and we were left with twitching bodies that didn't know when to die, and then there's Darfur, and Iraq, and Afghanistan, and downtown Washington, DC. And it's not like God didn't know this was going to happen.
So yes, God has a lot to answer for.
On the Last Day—if I don't just wink out of existence or burn in a Hell I spent my life assembling—I mean to ask Him to explain Himself. That's not a joke, Vincent: It's honestly the first question I'd have, if I have the opportunity. Until that conversation, though, I don't think you'll find any Christian who can give you a satisfactory answer.
Maybe, until then, part of having faith in God is trusting Him enough to forgive Him. Maybe "forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who tresspass against us" is about us and God. I don't know.
What I do know about forgiveness is that I don't really forgive people who've hurt me for their sake. I forgive them for my sake, so I stop holding onto being hurt by the evil they have done and start on taking advantage of the good they can do.
