3722. Some people say that when a civilization falls into tyranny and war or is conquered and enslaved, that that is the wrath of God.
3723. Some people say that God gives us suffering to teach us a lesson. If this is true, then God is a lousy teacher. If God were an animal trainer, he would lose his job very quickly. People do not learn. And it is not even faintly clear from the suffering what it is that we are supposed to learn.
3724. Some people think that natural laws apply only to matter. The materialist believes this because he wants to denounce ideas about spiritual things as superstitious and irrelevant. The Christian believes this because he thinks that all you need to know about spiritual things is that you should believe and obey God. If you could know anything about spiritual things by your own observation, that would compete with your duty to believe God. In the Bible, in Genesis, Chapter 2, God says, “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it”. In Chapter 3, Adam and Eve eat it, and that was the Original Sin.
3725. If you treat others badly, then they will treat you badly. That’s a natural law.
3726. It is not true that others treat you badly because God is angry with you for failing to obey his divine orders to treat others nicely, and so he is punishing you by causing others to treat you badly in order to teach you the lesson that you should pay more attention to his divine orders.
3727. Of those who see through the lies of the government, many are Christians. This is because Christians believe that God’s laws are higher than the laws of the government. Those Christians commonly blame the state of the world on the depravity of man. Those Christians believe that tyranny and war are God’s wrath because of man’s sinfulness and depravity.
3728. If someone ignores the Biblical commandments, the Christian says that he is defying God, and that in this defiance he is making himself into God. Christians believe that self-indulgence and decadence are the result of believing that man is God. Christians believe that tyranny is the result of believing that man is God.
3729. These Christian ideas are an attack against Type 1 religion, against the idea that man is basically spiritual and divine, and against the idea that man can improve himself spiritually by his own efforts and can realize his own divine nature.
3730. A materialist does not ignore God’s laws, indulge himself, or become a tyrant because he believes that he himself is God. He ignores God’s laws because he does not believe in God and because he believes that all religion is superstitious nonsense. He indulges himself because his highest ideal is to maximize his own sensual pleasure. He becomes a tyrant because he lusts for power and domination.
3731. One does not need God’s threats of Hell and promises of Heaven in order to be motivated to behave well. One can do what is right and good for the joy of helping others and for the purpose of making oneself and others happy.
3732. For Christians there are only two kinds of men – the saved and the lost. So the Christian solution to the state of the world and to the depravity of man is for the non-Christian man to become Christian and to recognize his own sinful and depraved nature.
3733. The truth is that there are many degrees of virtue and wisdom. The truth is that there are many degrees of decadence and depravity.
3734. The truth is that when the individual falls heavily into depravity, he creates his own personal hell, with no help from God.
3735. The truth is that when a civilization falls heavily into depravity, it falls quickly into tyranny, slavery, war, chaos, and famine, with no help from God.
3736. We don’t need God’s help to get ourselves into trouble.
3737. If the individual wants to become virtuous, wise, and happy, the way to do that is to work very hard at it, not to ask God to do it for you. The Olympic athlete achieves success by working very hard at it, not by asking God to transform him magically into a champion.
3738. If the individual wants to rescue his collapsing civilization from ruin and disaster, the way to do that, or at least to minimize the damage, is to work very hard to persuade and to teach others to be less decadent and more virtuous, both in their individual lives and as members of that civilization.
3739. Christians who observe the ongoing collapse of civilization often discuss it very intelligently, but at the same time they often have no sense of duty that they need to do something about it. This is the wrath of God displaying His vengeance against the sinful. Who are they to interfere? Furthermore, according to many Christians, this has all been prophesied, and Jesus Christ is going to come again in glory to punish the sinful and to save the faithful. Jesus Christ is going to straighten it all out, so there is no need for the individual Christian to do anything about it.
3740. Relying on Jesus Christ to straighten out the collapse of civilization is foolish and irresponsible. It is wishful thinking.
3741. Christians also often have the attitude that the faithful are going to be saved, and the rest are going to Hell anyway, and that’s the way God wants it. So in the final analysis there really isn’t any problem after all. It has all been prophesied. It has all been predestinated according to the will of God.
3742. None of this means that there are not sometimes local deities, or aliens, or angels, or demons, or someone of some description, around interfering in the affairs of men. The Old Testament has a lot of such stories. The Greeks had a lot of stories about their gods. Maybe they weren’t making it all up. There are countless stories of heavenly visions. It is hard to believe that they are all just hallucinations. The most conspicuous and well documented case of “divine intervention” in history is the story of Saint Joan of Arc. It seems that someone, somewhere, did not want the English taking over France.
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This article is Chapter 117 in LIBERTY FOR ALL MEN EVERYWHERE – The Theory And Practice Of Freedom by Dale Samson. This book is available at http://www.libfame.com.
© Copyright 2010 Dale Richard Samson. Partial quotations of this chapter are permitted with attribution. Cite source as Dale Samson's LIBERTY FOR ALL MEN EVERYWHERE at http://www.libfame.com.
