Experience is arguably the greatest educator. A youth trying everything but a proven successful method will, more often than not, eventually realize the optimal path was the one from the voice of experience. What happens then? Does the now experienced youth return to his father with new wisdom and make amends, or does he simply continue on his way and disregard family?
Assume God is real. He has a fatherly role, and keeps earth safe from destruction catastrophic enough to wipe out all of mankind. Similar to a game designer, he attends to every detail of the world - every character, every creature, every stone and all of the algorithms running the show; He lines up the living dominoes and sets them cascading on their way. He creates a human and esteems man as his own child. This human is given a choice between temptation and obedience. Man chooses temptation and is sent packing, not as unjustly cruel punishment but to become experienced in understanding.
Now what happens when man has gained wisdom and understanding? Does he acknowledge that not all in this world is knowable or falsifiable, or ignore family and wander the world looking for what he already has? The communication and relationship are what the bible is getting across. I would argue that the greatest lesson is not explicitly in the book: it comes from the experience of living as described in it.
This is not to scream "repent and believe" but to describe the message in the noise; your belief is your choice. In my view, there is far more to the bible than laws about behaviors and sage wisdom. The parts combine to make something greater than the whole. Not to mention that so many stories from Genesis onward point to Jesus, how his life and ministry were to unfold, especially Isaiah 53.
Assume God is real. He has a fatherly role, and keeps earth safe from destruction catastrophic enough to wipe out all of mankind. Similar to a game designer, he attends to every detail of the world - every character, every creature, every stone and all of the algorithms running the show; He lines up the living dominoes and sets them cascading on their way. He creates a human and esteems man as his own child. This human is given a choice between temptation and obedience. Man chooses temptation and is sent packing, not as unjustly cruel punishment but to become experienced in understanding.
Now what happens when man has gained wisdom and understanding? Does he acknowledge that not all in this world is knowable or falsifiable, or ignore family and wander the world looking for what he already has? The communication and relationship are what the bible is getting across. I would argue that the greatest lesson is not explicitly in the book: it comes from the experience of living as described in it.
This is not to scream "repent and believe" but to describe the message in the noise; your belief is your choice. In my view, there is far more to the bible than laws about behaviors and sage wisdom. The parts combine to make something greater than the whole. Not to mention that so many stories from Genesis onward point to Jesus, how his life and ministry were to unfold, especially Isaiah 53.
Well expressed. Thank you.
Why can't I believe we are all part of holistic system (obviously we are) without the necessity of believing that a fatherly figure has it all under management? Why does the unfalsiable God idol have to enter the picture? That fatherly God certainly didn't have it figured out in my case and I don't want to hear that BS again about how he was testing me and how all the stupid decisions were part of my destiny, etc.. That is encouraging me to continue to fail in some nebulous concept instead of using my brain to figure it out.
What specific experience do you feel I might ignore that is in the Bible if I don't submit to this supernatural, metaphysical father figure?
What seems to happen is that when we humans attain a state of satisfaction in our lives, we want to feel an emotional connection to the whole. We relax our competitive fire and it can also reflect complacency in a cultural evolutionary competition sense.
I have been under distress most of my life, thus when we see our lives as shit and a struggle, we are less apt to have the above emotion. However, I am familiar with that tendency, because I have had some brief periods in my life where I temporarily experienced the above satisfaction.
What I can say though is I never truly related to the concept of loving the Lord as father of all. The concept never spoke to my emotions. My heart warms to individuals whom as I know them I feel they have a warm heart. But I don't trust the "heart" of ideologues. My entire life people have been trying to force me to think a certain way and I am damn fucking tired of it. No Mas!
If someone browbeats me (you are not in any way doing that so far miscreanity), they are apt to lose those eyebrows.
Reason with me in a fair way, and I will certainly be open minded. Ridicule me when I am being sincere, and I'll grant them the fight they deserve (or perhaps if they are irrelevant I will just ignore). And one thing I learned the hard way in the Philippines after losing an eye due to a gang attack and also in separate incident getting a hammer to my skull (for which I still have a 1" hole in my skull) after knocking all a guy's front teeth out on to the sandy soil at my feet (because he was throwing stones at my house while I was trying to work and he wouldn't stop) and then granting his mother's request to stop (then he ran off to get the hammer while I was talking to her), is fighting fair or not fighting to the death is very risky. Fight me at your peril, because I will not risk my self-defense again by stopping my attack.Btw, the reason that guy was throwing stones at the house had something to do with an argument about a hammock with my ex-wife. And I was not a party to that squabble. But you have to realize it was a boiling point, because I was writing Art-O-Matic and CoolPage with a karaoke blasting away at such high volume nearly every day and night, that I couldn't hear my own voice inside the house. I was also getting dysentery and horrible GI infections roughly biweekly. I saw my neighbors wearing my underwear and other clothing that disappeared little by little. Getting heckled with "hey joe, fuck you" and stones thrown at me when I would go jogging. Jeepneys running me off the road and into ankle deep mud when I was jogging. Etc, etc, etc.. Impregnate the wrong lady and then try to uphold your responsibility as a father...
And don't armchair expert to me about I should have returned to the USA to work, because I did do that! But I can't tell you why that didn't work, because it would require me to talk about someone else behind their back and violate their privacy and so this explanation ends here.