Fear of God.
Somewhere in the Old Testament you are told to fear God. God also says he is a jealous God when he pops out the 10 commandments for Moses. (Exodus 20:5)
So the question I have always had is, Why would you want to worship someone you fear? Wouldn't that be like worshiping Darth Vader? Freddy Krueger? A person that has a gun to you head?
Did the people who wrote the Bible think that having God say "Love me" just seemed too needy?
But if you look at when the book was written, that was a rough time to live in and a tough life to have. You had a hard time eating, you were at the mercy of the elements, the weather. The rain or lack of could cause famine in the next year. Children died of diseases that we conquered years ago.
So life was basically shit. And if God loved you then why would he let bad things happen to you? If you were told to fear God then you get what you deserve. The old saying, "God only gives you what you can handle" is ridiculous. So the people who can handle bad things happening to them get it, and the people who can't are rich and pampered because they are just a big bunch of pussies who can't handle the real world?
I don't know who is "right" when it comes to religion. But wouldn't it be just the biggest cosmic joke and incredibly myopic of God to say, "Just the Jews. They are my chosen people." Or just the Baptists or just the Muslims. Why give someone freedom of choice and then punish them for it?
I tend to lean toward what physicist Richard Feynman said, "Not knowing is a lot more interesting than believing something that might be wrong."
1 comment:
yup. I always had a hard time with the phrase "Fear of God" too. I actually think it s a bad translation.
One of the first tenets of Buddhism is "All life is suffering." Most moderates think what Sid was actually saying was "In all of life, there is suffering. (no one can escape it. its part of the human package--not that its all suffering all the time)." and the rest of the sentence, and the rest of the religious teaching, is "so find a way to have a beautiful life anyway."
I think the originally idea of "Fear you God" was actually "respect that God is amazingly powerful."
I think most "religion" is created as a way to deal with the unfairness and brutality and sadness of human life. I find it amazing that some people chose a God that inflicts magical pain and fear as a salve for concrete pain and fear. Why is that comforting?
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