Saturday, January 19, 2008

Disease, Genocides, Bad Behaviour nd other fun things

God is looking down on all of us, I am convinced. But this life ain’t no picnic, and was never meant to be. Some People say they stopped believing in God when 6 million Jews were slaughtered and starved to death in the German camps. A God would never let something like that happen, they conjecture.

Well, he would … as humans we were given free will, for good or for bad. Miracles did happen in WWII and every day. Some Jews miraculously escaped capture or death. People walk out of mangled cars, without a scratch. So God/Angels do intervene from time to time, but there is no human-discernable logic to it, neither can we depend on it. Even pain and disease have their place. They humble us. But it can seem awfully cruel when they go on for a long time.

In the matrix/school of life that was created for us, the whole point of being here is to exercise our free will, and be free to choose Evil or Good behaviour. As individuals and as nations. If god intervened all the time to stop genocides and so on, we would never grow up as a race. It’s a bit like a parent allowing his kids over 18 to make mistakes, start businesses, travel overseas, join the army, mountaineer, or whatever… If this were not permitted, the “virtuous” or “successful” behaviour would be a sham. You can’t be virtuous if you are not free to be unvirtuous.

That’s why any state-enforced religious behaviour, such as Sharia law in Malaysia, or it’s more extreme version in Saudi, is a sham. Tell me – where is the virtue in fasting for Ramadan in Malaysia , if the religious police can arrest you/fine you for eating on Ramadan ? (as happened to a co-worker in Malaysia). They ask you for your ID card, and if it has “Muslim” written on it, you are fined. It’s a man-made thing – as it says in the bible:

The Sabbath was made for man, not man made for Sabbath

(when Jesus was criticized by the high priests for healing people on the day of Sabbath).

God/Allah is not impressed by people who blindly follow rules. Particularly when they are state-enforced ones, where it takes more courage to break them than to follow them.

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