On the Problems Associated With Faith

Robert Bronsdon (Hollywood Rob) September 2019

I really didn’t want to step into this particular part of the swamp.  Others have far greater knowledge on their religion than I do.  After all, I don’t even believe in a god at all so I have almost no incentive to learn more about teachings from people who were just learning to write, were mostly illiterate, and had not invented toilet paper yet.  So you can see that I make no claim to knowledge in this regard.  What I want to offer is a response to a question asked in a recent post.

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Hollywood…

I read a pretty long response from you, left it to consider a condensed reply, and lost the trail to what thread it was on.

You are correct, a whole lot of what transpired I missed, and from writing style alone I can’t say whether you are right or not except in a few rare occasions. If you have a technical way of knowing as you call out the origins of another handle, then I may have missed that as well….

Either way, you are strongly convinced and clearly lay your cards on the table. I can’t get dealt in because the pot holds no value, just as errant comments from the subject at hand create a distraction that destroys a ‘train of thought’ on a thread……not much to take to the bank

annuit coeptis novus ordo seclorum <<<<—– those who destine to achieve this will do anything to get there, and the commie is a large part of it, for sure.

And on a final note, ‘He’ is not MY God…..He is THE GOD……and the answer to what ails this world has already been provided….tick tock, tick tock..

All I can say is thank your god for Google Translate because I was not raised Catholic so I don’t speak Latin.  Well, that is actually the point that I would like to make.  Who exactly do you think The GOD might be?  First off, he is most definitely “your god.”  And in addition to being your god, he is also the god of the Jews, and the god of the Muslims.  And in all three Abrahamic religions, he has a different name.  In all three religions he is worshipped in many different ways and within each religion there are sects who not only interpret his teachings differently but have fought wars for thousands of years over insignificant differences.  Sunni killing Shia.  Catholic killing Protestant.  And on it goes.

So which is you’re “The GOD?”  And you see, this is a really important question because some The GODS demand civility and kindness and other The GODS demand blood on the sand.  But all of them demand some kind of murderous assault on the non-believers and all of them are The GOD to their adherents.

But let’s face it, I kinda know which incarnation of The GOD is your The God. So let’s approach this like Grace County Pastor would.  In fact, let’s use his explanations in general because he is the only man of the cloth available to us.  His header on his website proclaims:

 “We teach Jesus Christ according to the mystery kept secret since the world began and revealed to the Apostle Paul.”  

He doesn’t mention his affiliation but much of what he preaches appears to be based on Southern Baptist dogma.  I am not claiming to know this myself, my son is a Southern Baptist pastor and he says that he see’s much of what he teaches in GCP’s writing but I will leave it to GCP to elaborate on which of the major Christian religious affiliations he finds most compelling.  But regardless, we can be assured that both his The GOD and your The GOD are the Christian god.

Whatever his affiliation he gives a particularly good explanation of why specifically Baptists are so supportive of Israel.  I encourage you to visit his web site as I will only pull one paragraph here and there is much more.  In addition to GCP’s explanation, my son also told me exactly the same thing.

https://gracecountrybiblechurch.com/2015/03/18/why-israel/

In Genesis 12:1-3 God calls Abram out of Ur (Babylon) unto a new location that remained undisclosed to Abram.  Abram believed what God was saying to him and, following the Lords instruction, left his fathers house.  God made a promise to Abram (because of that belief) that He would make of Abram a great nation which would in turn be a blessing to those who would bless Abram.  I think we can fairly identify a nation as a large group of people.  Key words to my point are located in Gen 12:3(b)… “and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.”  This is the very beginning of the nation Israel and defines their very purpose; that they should somehow be a blessing to others (all families).  Many years later, the covenant of circumcision comes into play.  It is the wall of partition which separates out those whom God has a covenant agreement with (a covenant is an agreement between parties) from those He does not.  God has a covenant agreement with Israel and no other nation.  See Genesis 17:11-14 (KJV…Only).

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In essence, The GOD made a covenant with Israel and if you believe that the bible is the true word of god, and the Baptists do, then you must support Israel as all countries that support Israel will be blessed as Israel is blessed.  This is why you see so many people like Mike Pence proclaiming their support for Israel.

So as with the support of Israel, we can see that one’s faith, one’s belief in The GOD, predetermines one’s approach to problem solving.  If one with the Baptist faith is asked “should we support Israel”, the answer has to be yes for The GOD favors those who favor Israel.  If you believe in the faith, you must accept the tenets dictated by that faith.  If you ask a Baptist that question you will get one answer.  If you ask a Catholic that question you will get a completely different answer.  If you ask a Jew or a Muslim that question you will get even more complex and different answers.  All from believers in The GOD.

This is only one question that faith is attempting to answer, and it is a relatively simple one.  So let’s take a look at a more complicated one.  Let us follow the logic of putting things in The GOD’s hands and see where it might lead us.

So far I have been discussing the three major Abrahamic faiths and their sub divisions.  But within each faith and within each subdivision there are even further fractures which have led people to even more constrained faiths.  No you can’t smoke.  No you can’t dance.  No you can’t drink.  We have all known about these prohibitions but there are more.  You must put your faith in the lord to heal your sickness.  God will protect you from your enemies.  Put your faith in the lord god and he will give you all that you need.

The lord god will smite the philistines as they are unbelievers.  But the lord didn’t smite the Nazis.  The lord didn’t smite the Maoists, nor the Khmer Rouge.  And the lord didn’t smite the Jews who invaded Russia and murdered all the ethnic Russians.  So how does one come to the conclusion that god will take an active part in your life if he wasn’t interested in people who were being slaughtered wholesale.  And by the way, which side did he take in Russia?  There the chosen people, the Jews, were slaughtering the Catholics and when that was finished most of the Jews were slaughtered as well.  Where was god’s wrath?

In the end, for all of recorded history, it has been lowly men who have put right the travesty which was visited upon mankind by other lowly men.  You might argue that it was lowly men inspired by the word of The GOD, but still, it was men who did the smiting, not god and not angels.  Just men.  And no matter how you see the world, you will have to admit that those men were not just Christians, but Jews, and Atheists, and in Cambodia, they weren’t even Abrahamic.

The real problem with faith is that it promotes a complacency that suggests that the best thing to do is let god take control.  This has never been proven to be a successful strategy.  The faithful have acquiesced to the masters of all mankind until they finally have had enough and then they have risen up and killed the masters of all mankind.  They have waited for their The GOD to come a set them free, and then, when he did not, they finally did what needed to be done.  In between the onset of the misery and the doing of what needed to be done there were many years of suffering and many millions of people slaughtered; as they waited for their The GOD to come.

So, faith is fine.  You can have your faith, but don’t allow it to lull you into a false sense of security.  Don’t assume that your faith is a shield against your oppressors.  The only shield against your oppressors is your own actions.  You are the one who will serve the justice that you seek.  No one else will seek the justice for you and god has never shown any interest in protecting the just. For that matter, he has shown precious little interest in protecting the faithful either.

Now I realize that this is going to be an incendiary post.  I fully expect that a lot of comments are going to be bible quotes, and that is great.  My intention is not to denigrate your personal The GOD, but rather to point out that there are many, many different versions of The GOD.  As long as you cling to the notion that your version is the one true The GOD, then this world is going to be a contentious place.  I happen to believe that the Christians seem to be the most evolved of the world religions, but let’s face it, I was raised Christian and live in a Christian country although in a heathen state.  So what else would I believe?  But at the very least the Christians have seemed to have advanced beyond the slaughtering the non-believers stage and that is a good thing.

I have posted this not as a challenge, but to invite your thoughts so please do express your own faith freely.  I will endeavor to do the same.  And thank you to order out of chaos and Grace County Pastor for inspiring this post.

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