Moses was High
Out of context: Reply #256
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- gramme0
Khurram, I hope you are being intentionally disingenuous. You are the king of fools if you actually think it's as simple as "all this cos gramme shagged some prude with a hang-up about sex." Here's the thing: I DID take responsibility for my mistakes, all the innumerable ones that happened before, during and after I shagged some prude with a sexual hang-up. I realized that nothing I could ever do would clean up the mess caused by my lies, my sleeping around, my stealing, my blasphemy and my selfish habits. Sure, I owned up. I confessed all to my parents about how while living at home in college I totally said "fuck off" to all of their rules behind their backs. I asked forgiveness of the girl who I'd coerced into a sexual relationship. I admitted my fault to the friends I had hurt and attempted to repair broken relationships.
But this was all not enough. It did not matter how much cleanup I did, how I learned from my actions. Because sin was and is in my nature, I was unclean. I needed someone, something, bigger than a human being who could pay penance on my behalf. We are fools when we believe we can pay penance and that does it. Our good deeds are as filthy rags before a perfect God – the literal Biblical translation in the Bible is used menstrual cloths. Bloody nasty, I know. But it's there. Isaiah 64: 5–7:
"You [God] come to the help of those who gladly do right, who remember your ways. But when we continued to sin against them, you were angry. How then can we be saved? All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away. No one calls on your name or strives to lay hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us and made us waste away because of our sins."
To say that self-acceptance solves the need for people to be told they are good implies a complete lack of understanding of what sin is, and how human nature works. To say I should "create my own internal values/standards to live up to" implies that I have the final say, God does not matter, there is no truth but my truth, we are all moral and spiritual islands, and fuck a standard because a standard does not, cannot exist outside the borders of my own paradigm.
Do you see how incredibly self-centered and self-serving that viewpoint is? Who are you to determine truth? Have you fathomed space, time, the physical and the metaphysical? I cannot claim to know the truth based on some internal compass. My internal compass is fucked. Yeah, sure we all have consciences (evidence of a soul, but that's another issue), but we sear them by violating them. Further, none of us is born wise. We do not understand true love, true faith, forgiveness, righteousness. It must be revealed from a greater source. That source must be one that CAN transcend space and time. That source MUST be bigger than me, or we descend into chaos. This is already the way of the world. The fact that we accept the genocide of unborn children and yet raise the outcry against global warming is a case in point about the chaos that ensues when personal morality trumps the greater morality.
Look, belief or non-belief in God has absolutely nothing to do with intelligence. It is a matter of revelation. God and the scriptures either make sense to you, or they don't. This is the working of the Holy Spirit, not some feat of philosophical strength. The word of God is madness to the man who lives outside of it, until God reveals it's truth to him. So be it.
I am glad that I am not in charge of my own spiritual well-being – just look around and see what a cock-up the world in general does at that job. I'd rather not place my faith in my own limited, weak little frame, thank you very much. That knowledge makes me strong – stronger than you could ever fathom Khurram, without actually experiencing it yourself.