“Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe. It is not enough that a thing be possible for it to be believed.”
We all know Mel Gibson as a great actor, movie director and devout Christian.
We all have seen or heard of the movie “The Passion of Christ”
We also know or have heard about his troubles with the police.
Now, let me ask you this question:
How the hell did that happened?
I mean if a guy that has that kind of faith in God and has made such a great deal of worshiping God in such a grandiose and spectacular way, gets into such terrible trouble – what kind of faith in God should a Buddhist like me or an atheist have?
For the “pure anxiety”, the one presumably without cause or reason, the only cure we have is a seemingly unfounded, unreasonable faith in God.
Without that absolute faith in God we have nothing.
Yet, bad things happen to good people and good things happen to unremarkable people.
How is that possible? How does it work?
“Faith… Must be enforced by reason…When faith becomes blind it dies.”
Let’s go back and look at what faith is.
Faith is the result of trust which in turn is the result of our relationships.
You might think that a guy like Mel Gibson has a pretty solid relationship with God and should be able to get some “special treatment” from the all mighty, don’t you think?
But a relationship is a two way street.
It is not only what we think about God it is also – and maybe even more important – what God thinks about us.
If you are an alcoholic, womanizing, racist, hypocrite – you might call yourself a Christian but God will call you an asshole and treat you exactly like that.
Unlike the propaganda of organized religions, God does not play favorites.
Your faith in God should be only based on what God thinks about you not on the promises of your religious leaders.
Your faith in God should be based only on the relationship you have with God.
And here lies the big problem and the untold truth about our anxieties.
We live in the most stressful, depressing, dark age because we live in the most unfaithful time of history.
We live in a permanent state of anxiety because we have forfeited our relationship with God and replaced with the lip service of organized religions.
We live in anxiety because we have no faith, because we do not trust God, because we falsely think God has forsaken us, when in fact is the other way around.
“Faith isn't the ability to believe long and far into the misty future.
It's simply taking God at His Word and taking the next step.”
So I would like to end this series on “Fear and Anxiety” by repeating something I always say:
You are the question to be answered, the problem to be solved.
You are the path, the obstacle and the destination.
You are the wisdom and the answer you seek.
Within you there is the power of all possibilities.
“Know yourself!”
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4 comments:
Stuck in a rut BoH?
Actually I don't think that we do live in a particularly unfaithful time. I think that there are two changes that make us think we do.
1) The loss of the power of the church. Lets face it, even a hundred years ago we'd all have been going to church every sunday for fear of being burned at the stake whether we believed or not. Now we question everything - which in many ways is a good thing. Btu where Marx once said that Religion was the opiate of the masses I think today he would be forced to concede that fame had replaced it.
2) The rise of the media. Our children are in many ways safer today than ever, but media hype and reporting has made us think that we live in a time where our kids can't walk down the street without being knifed and that infidelity stalks the streets like a giant stalky thing.
These problems have always existed: but god (if he exists) made us flawed and is supposed to love us flaws and all so long as we love him back?
Having said the above - some of the worst hypocrites i have met have been "christians" and the most honest and believable agnostic at best. Go figure
I rather be spiritual than follow organized religion. As long as I don't hurt anybody and do good, I know I am ok. I don't have to be labeled as belonging to a certain group to do that.
You can have all the faith you want in your imaginary friend BoH, but, different strokes for different folks, that doesn't make your God real to anybody except yourself. Maybe everybody else worships their own version of God, or perhaps rejects the notion of God entirely as being too vague a subject matter to prove or disprove.
Al Gore's God, perhaps, is a tree hugging God, but compared to Bill Gate's God whom is a computer loving God or Mel Gibson's God which is a Self Sacrificing God or Adolph Hitler's God which is a failed World Dominating God, or Warren Buffet's God which is an Investment God, etc....assuming any of those people even prayed to such imaginary friends in the first place. On the other hand, perhaps each individual makes up their own mind about what they want to do and then does it without praying to or talking to any imaginary friends. Well, so long as people's imaginary friends are an enabler of their pursuits instead of being either a hinderance or an enforcer of their pursuits then I see no problem, assuming the pursuit isn't world domination or genocide of course. In fact, I've invented my own morality equation, based on survivalism to determine what is right and wrong and to give a numerical value as to just "how much" right or wrong a pursuit is. And also a map of reality which shows where such things as truth, beauty, reason, and morality (based on survival and developement/creation of complexity being good and destruction of complexity being bad) come from.
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