Let me start this introduction by making a correction. I was wrong to title yesterday's entry "my All-Saints entry". I should have called it "my All-Saints-EVE entry". For Christmas Eve is December 24, the day before Christmas, which falls on the 25th; likewise, one's All-Saints-Eve entry should PRECEDE one's All-Saints entry, as all eves precede all days. But since I screwed up, let me just...
Actually, I don't know why I'm telling you this. All I wanted to do is mention that yesterday was Halloween, and I did not write about it; while today is thus Hallow — no longer the e'en but the day itself — which I will also not write about.
OK. Now here's the obligatory image that I made to keep today's entry company. It's the next page from my book of 297 Drawing Prompts. (The previous page appeared just yestereen.) The prompt for this present image was "Sundial".
Dear diary,
I absolutely don’t believe in God, but I’m still trying to decide whether or not to SAY that I believe in God. Because it matters most what one SEZ. Nobody can get inside one’s head and see if one’s declarations match up with one’s thots; but if one asserts a belief, people must trust that one is telling the truth about oneself. And the believers in God favor fellow believers over us infidels; and it’s my goal to be liked in this world (I loathe being loathed), so, maybe, despite my actual beliefs, I should consider proclaiming a true belief in God.
Alright, I have convinced myself: I believe in God now. “The wicked, thru the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God: God is not in his thots.” [Psalm 10:4] — Thus I am no longer a wicked fool but a righteous believer.
Can I add that word righteous tho? I feel that I should simply stick to calling myself a believer, & drop the righteous. Righteousness is for others to ascribe to me. In order to be granted righteousness, I’d have to perform at least the semblance of a righteous act.
Yet what are these opposite labels, exactly: “righteous” & “wicked”? If I wanted to get into the righteous business — I mean the business of righteousness itself — what would I do? This might seem like a silly question to those who are presumptuous, but I find it hard to nail down just what righteousness consists of.
Wickedness is easier. Wicked means being mean to people, treating people unjustly.
Yet what is “meanness” and “unjustness”? — I guess bad is almost as slippery as good.
Righteous, wicked. Just, unjust. It’s all so vague. These terms seem like cabinets into which one might toss any toy one wants, regardless of its moral or ethical orientation. But let me add more words and maybe the mess will clear itself up...
I assume that righteousness and wickedness, at their root level, were respectively the imitation of God and the opposite thereof. However, didn’t we all recently hear Jesus of Nazareth say that
our Father which is in heaven sendeth rain on the just as well as on the unjust.
That’s what Matthew sez he sez (5:45); and Matthew’s one of us believers, so we can trust him. As a trustworthy author, Matthew’s trustworthiness fills his character Jesus with trustworthiness; so we can buy what Jesus sez; moreover, being a prophet, he often speaks on God’s behalf. (“Our Father in heaven” means “God” — altho to be 100% accurate, Jesus really should say “MY Father in heaven” when he speaks, since it’s Jesus alone who is the Son of God; yea, if his Father is also OUR Father, then we’re ALL Sons of God without even having to believe in Jesus as our personal savior! and you can see how that would make our entire religion fall apart.) Alright, so here we see God, who should serve as the exemplar of moral goodness, leaking his rain down on both the righteous and the unrighteous. Why is God acting so haphazardly? Wouldn’t it be more ethical for our Creator to rain exclusively on the folks who are pious?
I guess it depends whether you perceive rain to be a blessing or a curse. Take Noah and Cain, for two scriptural examples (they both appear in the Book of Genesis):
To Noah’s generation, the rain was a curse; so God should have reserved his downpours exclusively for the unrighteous multitude. And he did; because, as it is written (in Genesis 5 forward), Noah was the only one whom God found just, and Noah was thus the only one whom God saved alive. (Tho God also saved Noah’s extended family, for reasons undisclosed.)
However, in a time of drought, especially if you’re a farmer like Mr. Cain (Genesis 4:2 calls him “a tiller of the ground”), then rainfall is considered to be a blessing; so you’d like for God to shower you, and you’d prefer that he withhold his downpour from the unjust. My point is this:
Say that God were to command a thundercloud to go hover atop a particular individual, and to follow that person wherever he walks on the earth. Now say that this man has an enemy with whom he’s been feuding for many lifetimes. And the same God who caused the thundercloud to follow the first man around now commands all clouds to steer clear of that man’s enemy, and to avoid this second man entirely, so that no cloud ever was seen over this enemy’s head, all the days of his existence. — What should we conclude is the moral content of our heavenly Father’s character, here? Can we even begin to judge him?
I say, before we can deliver our verdict, we must first find out what each man required from this world. If the first man truly is Noah, a boatmaker; and his enemy truly is Cain, a fruit vendor; then God is blessing the one while cursing the other:
God is blessing Noah by giving him his own personal worldwide flood to follow him around like a faithful servant, which provides his boat a perpetual ocean to float in, thus God is doing good and being righteous and just, because he is pleasing his creature. Yet, at the same time, God is cursing Cain the farmer by withholding his rain, thus rendering the farmer’s family impoverished — the lack of water causes a local famine — and when this tiller of the soil offers God a portion of the crops that he, poor farmer Cain, managed to harvest despite this season’s meager yield, God doesn’t even appreciate the gift (verses 3-5 of Genesis 4 say “it came to pass that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the LORD; but the LORD showed no respect unto Cain and his offering”), so although we judged God to be righteous and bountiful when he caused his rain to plash on the head of Noah, we must conclude the polar opposite here: God is wicked and unjust to be so mean to farmer Cain.
Here I’ve been presuming that both characters in our parable desire a hearty rainfall, and that God chooses to act in a discriminating fashion. Yet recall what Jesus is truly rumored to have said: God rains over all. That means that both Noah AND his foeman Cain are allowed to have their wildest dreams come true, and the God of this world is friendly to his creatures. So we can deliver a verdict of “not guilty”.
Only if both souls in our tale were house-cats, and thus desired to remain constantly dry because cats abhor even the slightest feeling of dampness, would we be justified in calling God unjust for spraying rain at them all the time; especially if he did so indoors — that would be particularly evil of God; also unnatural, in the sense that it would go against Nature’s accustomed behavior to precipitate inside of an air-conditioned building; yet, deifically speaking, the incident would prove quite natural indeed, as God has a long-established record of employing miracles for detrimental purposes.
The real accomplishment would be if one of our men is a vrochíphile (lover of rain), while the other is a vrochíphobe (rain hater) — yes, this present sentence assumes that “vrochí” is the Greek word for “rain” — and God were to downpour only on he who hates it, and withhold every last drop from he who desperately needs it. THAT would be an example of supreme wickedness.
Then the next thing this God would do, after reaching such a height of injustice, is stand by invisibly while a U.S. soldier breaks into the house of a foreign woman and rapes her. God simply watches this occur; he does nothing to stop it. Then God pilots his throne back to North America, and there he espies two men engaged in a fistfight. God immediately makes himself visible, and stands up and shouts “Stop this injustice!” Then he physically steps between the two men and breaks up their fight. And the crowd of people surrounding this spectacle begin to boo, and they say one to another “Who is this man that calls himself our creator? Let him be crucified for his crime!” For the fistfight that God interrupted was a professional boxing match, which was being broadcast live on cable television; and people paid a lot of money to see it, and it was a decent show before God appeared. A lot of the audience had placed bets on who would win; but now the payouts are gonna be screwed up, due to divine interference. Now if your man loses, you’ll wanna argue in court that instead of having to part with a ton of cash, the referee should declare a mistrial, on the grounds that God is contractually obliged to remain indiscriminate. And you’ll probably win, cuz this judge is in your pocket. Plus you hired a team of the BEST attorneys, who can cite scripture dating all the way back to the first century as legal precedent.
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