Why does God get the blame

My intension this week, was to post a follow up on my last post. However, when I saw this, my mind ceased to function along the path of that post. Check this out. This is so amazing to me, that when I read it, it took me right back to a "church related" school type setting in which the teacher was busy telling us that if we did not pay our offering (money placed in a plate at church services) we would go to hell. Let me quote that again: "If you do not pay your offering, you will go to hell." Does our creator need money?

If you read the link I posted, click here, you saw that a leader in this country thinks that the morality of his people caused these horrible disasters, and consequently their deaths. Apparently, these poor souls are so bad behaved, that God him self had to punish them by bringing all manner of natural disasters down on them.

Why would a loving God, a being that is the creator of the entire universe, be so petty as to destroy someone or ones for their lack of morality? He WOULDN'T! This is rhetorical. You see, morality has become and inseparable part of religion and this is a real problem. Now, I know that this will create a huge controversial storm, but it needs to be said. God did not invent religion! I'll say it again: God did not INVENT religion.....

Instead of pointing the finger of blame, condemnation and shame, is it not far better to rally around our fellow man? In the pursuit of following what Jesus said in John (3 I think): I am paraphrasing; I (Jesus) did not come in to the world to condemn it. So, let us not condemn but rally around and love each other. We are One Mankind.

Fear Doesn't Always Cause Flight

I was recently discussing my "Oneness of Mankind" opinions with a friend of mine, and he said to me, that in his opinion, we can never have oneness unless we get rid of our fears. I think what he was angling at, was that fear instinctively cause a "flight" reaction that causes us to grow farther and farther apart.

The truth about fear, at least at the psychological level, is that the thing that we fear the most we tend to attract to ourselves by our behavior as it relates to the thing we fear. This sounds like the exact opposite of what we've been taught about the evolution of our species. Think about it for a moment, and you may discover the truth that is within this psychological state. You see, the longer your mind focuses on a particular thing, the more the subconscious arranges things for that thing to come to past. So, we have to be very carful about what we spend our time focusing on. For example: If you have a fear of attracting a "crazy" mate, you may discover that the people you've been dating, turned out to have a "crazy" streak in their personality. The focus is on the fear and not on the positive traits we all desire in a mate.

Fear is a very destructive state of emotion. What is it that we so fear that keeps us from becoming one with our fellow man? Do we fear the differences between us? What are those differences? Are we so different? In future post, we will try to disect and answer these and other questions, in an attempt to bridge and eradicate some of these fears. I will be inviting some fellow "thinkers" that I have come to respect a great deal, to join me in this discussion. Please stay tuned...

Land of opportunity

I've been thinking lately about the abundance of opportunity that living in the US is supposed to afford it's citizens.  Though we should count ourselves as fortunate to be in a country where we have freedom of speech, are opportunities as boundless and some would like us to believe?

I count myself as being very lucky to be surrounded by a family that is very supportive.  As I look around the city neighboring to small town that we live in, I wonder how many people living there have this support system.  I think we may have something in common.  We, like many Americans are living from paycheck to paycheck and are just one paycheck or less, away from being out on the street.  Is this what a county that has so many opportunities has in store for my children?  Where are all these opportunities that I keep hearing about?  For years they seemed to have eluded me and others like me.  A man trying to provide for his family, trying to avoid having to work long hard hours for pay that won't meet more than a bill or two.  It's amazing to me that this bill of goods, the land of opportunity, is still being presented in a nice shiny wrapper as the American dream. One paycheck.  Miss one payment; then what?  Are we supposed to continue to believe that the next opportunity is right around the corner?

Isn't it funny that the people we see on the infomercials selling us these opportunities never send you the information for free?  If they have great riches as the claim, wouldn't it be nice to provide this information for free to help better mankind?  I wonder if that happened if the land if the land of opportunity would still keep its name?

So I'm lead to believe that this is not so much the land of opportunity, but the land of the haves and the have nots. If you have, then the opportunity is yours in handfuls.  Have not, and well... you have not.