i do think god is selfish because i think he sent jesus down to earth because no one was recognising him, so he did not send jesus to save us, but to help him feel loved
people are looking at this post please write to me and tell me what u thing
Yes, I am.
God shows many human vices such as vengefulness and selfishness in the christian bible. The idea of him is such a contradiction and its so obviously made up by imperfect humans trying to explain the unexplainable. But then you can’t disprove him just as you can’t prove him, but then you’re not meant to you’re just supposed to either believe in him and worship him until his pride is satisfied and feels like he can forgive you and let you go to heaven. Fascist totalitarian dictator.
I think he’s particularly selfish for a different reason. He says he wants to make things better for humanity and stuff with his rules etc but humans will never be able to appreciate it. When they are born they accept whatever is consistently thrown at them as normal. So whether that was a million times better than what it was like a thousand years ago, they won’t be able to appreciate it because they won’t have experienced it. They can read about it and imagine it, but this means nothing because you can never truely understand something unless you experience it. So since all this ‘making things better for humanity’ washes off humanity’s back, the only person who it affects is God himself. So he’s not doing it for us, he’s doing it for himself, which is selfish. I dunno the reason, maybe its so he can be proud and burn all the liars and sinners and keep all the suppressed people who managed to be good enough for him.
A being who shows so much human attributes cannot avoid selfishness, because that is so central to human nature. Whether it be to feel love or pride or gratification or getting results of any kind. But then this is hardly surprising. If god is supposed to be everything, then he has to be part selfish, because selfishness is a particular ‘something’ that makes up everything. And he shows himself to unselfish in other ways too.
So I guess I conclude that he is selfish, but he is also unselfish and everything else that exists. I guess he’s just got the right balance of it all and he’s trying to get us to follow suit for both selfish and unselfish reasons. But then thats all down to belief, and being a true agnostic I believe you just can’t tell and its all down to you what you make of it in the end.
It’s a rather odd picture the old Hebrews paint of the divine. They variously attribute to their divinity the qualities of a vicious god of war and the qualities of a loving father. It is Jesus, or what we have of his teachings, that takes the old image of Yahweh and transforms it into a cosmic vision. Yahweh then becomes not the god of a specific tribe but a divinity for all people, everywhere. The message of eternal salvation, which had been specifically addressed only to the Jews, now becomes a universal message.
Now does the divine have the quality of selfishness? We can interpret it this way. In the older metaphor of the warrior god, divinity gets attributed with the qualities of jealousy and wrath. When his love for the Jews goes unrequited then he gives out some devastating punishments.
A cosmic vision of divinity attributes power to the divine far beyond that of the power attributed to a tribal vision of divinity. A being of omnipotence would be beyond jealousy. Jealousy comes from thwarted desire. A being of absolute limitless power would experience zero lack. No desire can get thwarted for a being with limitless power. (Unless such a being chooses to thwart himself.)
Trouble can arise when we try to hold onto the attributes from the tribal vision of divinity and mix those with the attributes of a cosmic vision of divinity.
Joey,
Please post these religious topics in the Religion forum.
Thanks,
Michael
Joey, you are obviously struggling with your understanding of God - what you have been taught versus what makes sense logically, as well as how to love a God who is All-Loving and All-Fair, yet Judging and Particular.
God wants you to live a certain way, but gives you Free Will - His most beautiful gift.
God wants you to believe in Him first and foremost, but will not prove His existence.
God loves all His people, but has them born into families with no religion, with the wrong religion, etc that confirms an eternal damnation.
These things don’t make sense, and you want to understand this God.
I applaud your search for understanding and I would suggest that you look to other religions’ descriptions of God, as well as how God has been understood outside of particular religious institutions.
It comes down to this:
The Bible is a historical document. Not only was it written by humans at least a hundred (and most of it many hundreds) of years after Jesus died, but it was been edited and re-edited by Kings who wanted particular parts added or omitted given their desired reign.
When you look at Jesus as a historical figure, you see a man who grew up as a Jew, was disillusioned by reality, left to the East in search of some answers, and came back around the age of 30 with what many people would call an Enlightenment. Jesus was what we would call today a political dissident. He called out the hypocrisy of a politics that abused the understanding of God for monetary gain, and he called out the misguidedness of people for focusing on material possessions instead of spiritual progress. Jesus talked first and foremost about compassion, love towards one another, and how that should be both a person’s and a society’s objective. Jesus was killed because he was a political threat. Even Pontius Pilate did not want to kill him. The people did, in riot, because he was stirring things up and pissing people off. He agreed to it because he wanted to get elected.
There are other historical figures from other parts of the world and in other times who have also reached Jesus’ kind of enlightenment and have also said the same sorts of things about God and spirituality. It comes down to the following:
- God is Love.
- Love is Freedom.
- The pursuit of spiritual freedom is the most important pursuit - above wealth, fame, power - because it leads to the most genuine happiness and ability to let go and surrender into the perfection of the divine.
The God you are worried about is a God that was created by human institutions to create law and order because for most of civilization, politics and law have been dictated by religion.
How better to control a body of people than to tell them that the laws are made by GOD - you can’t disagree with them, and you can’t rationalize them. Even better, the less sense they make, the more proof that God knows better than you, and that you must live on faith and laws alone.
There is no reason to fear God. There is reason to fear people’s alterior motives for forcing a fearful God upon others. Many people believe in this fearful God because they are scared not to, because this God jives with the sorts of authorities they have encountered all their lives in the form of parents and teachers, because they are angry and want to believe themselves superior to others who dictate the course of their lives, because they are resentful for the fear that keeps them from living as they genuinely would determine, because they have never questioned this idea of God…
I’m moving this to the religion forum. Please pm Ben, myself, or any of the staff with any questions.
i’d like to paraphrase the line from Devils Advocate (w/ A. Pacino, K. Reaves) on God and the tree of knowledge
“God said look but dont touch, touch but do not taste, taste but do not swallow, swallow but do not enjoy” (great paraphrased)
but thats the general gist of it. and again according to the christian church we have to attend the house of god every sunday, else wise we go to hell, well if he “loves” us so much then he should be able to forgive us and have all of us sent to heaven?!!! 
