A Simple Question...or 3!

[Angrboda]

We had an old pastor at my church that had a saying that always bothered me, and intrigued me at the same time! "God won't put us in Hell....we will march there ourselves, willingly." I'm realizing that message hanging around here!

And...what do we have to offer each other is the reocurring question in my mind? IMO...just confirmation of our own convictions! But in separate directions... You slide deeper into your hatred and darkness, as I move more to love and the light. Alas...my old pastor was right.

Good weapons are instruments of fear; all creatures hate them.
Therefore followers of Tao never use them.
The wise man prefers the left.
The man of war prefers the right.

Weapons are instruments of fear; they are not a wise man’s tools.
He uses them only when he has no choice.
Peace and quiet are dear to his heart,
And victory no cause for rejoicing.
If you rejoice in victory, then you delight in killing;
If you delight in killing, you cannot fulfill yourself.

On happy occasions precedence is given to the left,
On sad occasions to the right.
In the army the general stands on the left,
The commander in chief on the right.
That means that war is conducted like a funeral.
When many people are being killed,
They should be mourned in heartfelt sorrow.
That is why a victory must be observed like a funeral.

— Lao Tzu, The Tao Te Ching, Ch. 31

You celebrate death, destruction and suffering as if it were the highest good. The destruction of so many, no matter how just, nor their fate deserved, no matter that they fell from weakness or lack of honor, their passing is still to be mourned. Indeed, if such suffering indeed marks their passage, the wailing and gnashing of teeth should be reserved for the living as they contemplate the wretched cost and fate of those they once shared life with. That you find delight in any of this, assuming it true, as you do, indicates that there is a great sickness in your heart. And just as a bent arrow cannot fly true, and will hit its mark only if fate should intervene, your heart is incapable of finding a true God on its own. If the god you describe is the one whose design results in so much suffering, he is not worthy of even faint praise, much less worship. The only gods the likes of you find in this life are the kind that delight in evil. This is no "God." As the neuroscience clearly shows, this is simply the callous inside of your own heart, delighting in horrific spite. The brain science is clear: when we think of what we ourselves want, a spot in our brain lights up; when we think of what another wants, a different spot lights up; when we imagine what God wants, that first spot lights up again, corresponding to our own desires. This is not God's will, and nobody is marching anywhere, except in the sick and twisted fantasies of someone despicable. You could likely benefit more from the river of anti-psychotics which my doctors prescribe me than I ever will.

Like the death and destruction of souls, the sickness in your heart is to be mourned.

And whatever steps that can be taken should be taken to prevent others from falling under its sickly siren song.

(ETA: It occurs to me that, just as many contemplate separation from God's love as a hell of sorts, how no less could I consider my separation from those I once loved any less hellish; atheists live with the contemplation of the death of those they hold dear, and know that pain. And the pain doesn't end at the limit of my outstretched arms; when I contemplate the people suffering in Africa from AIDS, exacerbated by the religious who would rather see their flesh and mind mortified if it offers them a chance to enslave the soul, and I have found hell in the here and now, knowing the pain, suffering and death of people I've never known, nor whose faces will ever resolve into particularity for me. As above, so below. God creates needless suffering by sundering the race one from another into eternity, and Christians here on earth reflect his light back upon the world, sundering the bonds and natural affection that one has for another of one's own kind simply by mankind's nature. Christianity doesn't solve the problem of suffering, it creates it.)