"God will not accept that. Mine won't. Will yours?"
-Bono
-George W. Bush
God in the year 2010.
As I believe is evident through the Bono and Dubya quotes above, the Christian God in 2010 is not exactly what it used to be. People take liberties to make “their” God think and say what benefits them. Bono’s God does not allow injustices against impoverished folk. But hell, maybe someone else’s God does, amirite? It takes all kinds, I guess. And apparently, there’s a God for every kind. Gods that allow you to have premarital sex, Gods that smite you for smoking pot, Gods that require you to give Churches money, Gods that are okay with Gay marriage, and Gods that are okay with just about anything, or maybe even nothing at all. It seems to me that the more people are convinced that they know what God really is, the more obvious it becomes that nobody knows. If the “real” God is the Christian God, then why do so many Christians have such conflicting views on God after all reading the same book?
-Because it’s inconvenient. The Bible oftentimes preaches against things that we don’t want it to. We want to have premarital sex and get tattoos and get drunk and be selfish and indulgent. And from a psychology/sociology perspective, it makes perfect sense…but wouldn’t it be nice if there was a God? Someone always looking over you, telling you what to do and rewarding you for complying? Wouldn’t it be nice if after you die, you go to heaven, and be in paradise with everyone you’ve ever loved?
The answer is yes. It would be extraordinarily nice. But if people were to follow the Christian Bible exactly, they wouldn’t really enjoy their earthly lives. So they need to create for themselves Gods that allow them to do mostly everything they want to (and in some cases tell them to COUGH IRAQ/AFGHANISTAN COUGH).
In 2010, God is a crutch for people who want to live their lives undisciplined and unstructured by religion, but are too afraid to face a life without someone watching over them, and too afraid to face a death without a heaven.
interesting...i agree that is what "GOD" seems to be used for today. personally i feel that "GOD" is just for structure purposes in general...i mean yeah sure he/she/it exists...maybe...but just because people interpret the bible differently and make up their versions and all have different views doesn't make him a crutch. personally i feel that the bible is totally unrelated to "GOD" in a sense really although it provides a nice few views of how to live in our current society.
ReplyDeleteI think your claims are legitimate. People sometimes tweek religions in order to allow personal preferences. But I also think that it is more likely in Western society for there to be more denominations and divisions than in Eastern society. Eastern societies are more likely to be community-oriented whereas Western society is more individual-oriented.
ReplyDeleteIt is more likely, then, that the West has more divisions because of its increasing individual philosophy, an example being the incredibly large number of interpretations of the Bible.
God definitely seems like a crutch in these modern times. Although it varies from situation to situation, I think that many people use capital G "God" as an excuse. A great example is that Bush quote. It's as if he's using God to defend himself so people can't critize him. How silly.
ReplyDelete