7/2/2003: "Finger" of God

[joydriven]

Our president is made fun of every night on the Tonight Show, and I can't say that many people think it's that big of a deal.

1. The president wouldn't be so fun to make fun of if he was a less-significant person. Incongruity is the heart of humor. The very fact that incongruous scenarios about the president are considered funny is evidence to the fact that he is a big enough person to make the scenarios incongruous. It's one thing if I fall down and trip--it might even make America's Funniest Home Videos. It's another thing to see someone of import fall down and trip. In that sense, the bigger they are, the harder they fall--the irony strikes us, and our human nature is to respond with laughter.

2. Just because people make fun of someone, that does not make their actions right or wrong. Popular belief and popular action do not seem to back up the "there are no absolutes" popular talk. Most of today's society operates on a premise (as thought it were an absolute truth) that what's right for you is right and what's right for me is right--pragmatism rules. If it's ok to make fun of the president in your eyes, then it must be ok, and if I have a problem with it then the problem is only as big as my opinion.

I simply posit a completely different absolute: The God of the Bible.

The Bible's words influence how I think about my society; not vice versa. For instance, you will not likely catch me mocking a president, at least regarding the honor surrounding his position. There are plenty of moral/character grounds that have lowered my personal opinion of the leadership competency of Bill Clinton, for instance, but I would still show him honor and respect. The Bible says that the powers that be are ordained by God, basically cannot run from fulfilling God's ultimate purposes, and are to receive the honor their offices are due. The only time I am biblically sanctioned to buck my governmental authorities is when they buck God's. "We ought to obey God rather than men."

See above. That is why it's so hard to accept that one way. Because I refuse to spend my eternity in the presence of that kind of being. That is blatantly heartless and cruel, and I see it no other way.

This is a very interesting self-contradiction. The one way is offensive to anyone since it requires humility to realize that we don't dictate how we can enter God's heaven. If you come in my house and I have a house rule that requires the removal of your shoes, you would very likely submit to that or have a pretty good reason why not. If God indeed created heaven and earth and all the inhabitants and so on, he does indeed have the prerogative to condemn/forgive/glorify those who submit to his conditions. That's nothing of their own merit, so the mentality is indeed NOT "you're fucked and i'm not" (read Ezekiel 16, the book of Romans, the book of Hosea, the book of Ephesians so that you will have a more well-rounded concept of what GRACE is about--and why only worms and whores are qualified to be recipients of grace).

You say that God is "blatantly heartless and cruel." I ask you, upon what absolute moral authority do you stand in judgment of God's actions? What absolute moral measuring stick do you measure his heartlessness and cruelty with? Your own? Did you attain that sense of right and wrong when you evolved from a gas cloud? Did your tender conscience develop in the wake of a big unexplained random explosion? Is it at all possible for you to believe that God is the source of absolute truth? That God was the one who created you with an awareness of morality? That God is the one who gave you a mind to discern with?

So maybe you believe there's an ultimate creator being, but not the God of the Bible. (This seems to be your view, since you consider only bits and pieces rather than the whole Bible as you make your evaluatory statements about God.) And you just don't like what you're seeing of him. Again, you are harking back to your personal experience. Is it possible for you to acknowledge that your experience might be limited and might just not be enough? That there may be something beyond your comprehension out there? That your refusal to spend eternity with the God of the Bible IS the foundation of your self-damnation? We don't get sent to hell. We work our way there.

It's ironic that most of mankind's reaction to God seems to be shaking a puny God-made fist in the face of God.