Morality

[emjay]

Thank you for that but I am sort of past being triggered.  It's just a fact that the honor thy parents thing didn't work for me.  I didn't understand why I had to.  Just another piece missing from the belief system I was supposed to buy into.

I can't relate to that exactly but I have been in let's say manipulative relationships, and there comes a point, if you get wise to it (and you're in a position to do something about it, which sadly you wouldn't have been as a kid but I was as an adult), that you realise that there's another choice and that is to step back and refuse to play their games. It reminds me of the scene in the film Labyrinth; Jareth, the Goblin King says 'just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave' and Sarah looks at him and says decisively 'you have no power over me'. That's how I approach the notion of God as well, that if it has to resort to cheap manipulation, of carrots and sticks, to be worshipped, it's not worth worshipping and I would, at least like to, treat it the same as I would any other manipulative relationship. Would I cave on the big day, maybe, who knows, but one thing it could never get through manipulation, or fear, would be true respect.

@arewethereyet

I'm sorry if my example here missed the mark or was TMI. I was basically just trying to agree with you that love/respect should have to be earned not just granted by fiat, whether in regard to absolute laws of the Bible, such as honour thy parents, or in regard to the notion of God as a whole. And also, I didn't mean to come off as insensitive, if I did, to how powerless you must have felt... in my case even though I was an adult it was still not easy to get out of these situations, because I'm not the most assertive of people IRL, and am or at least was, easily manipulated/taken advantage of. So in my case though the dream/ideal was to look them in the eye and say those immortal words 'you have no power over me', the reality was much less courageous; I walked away and never spoke to them again (read, ghosted them). So no real closure there, but still felt empowering to do that.