Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness around the world.

Beyond The Mirror – A Bill Allin Column

March 30, 2007

What Is The Truth? (Part 13)
by Bill Allin

[Caution: What follows may be offensive to some people because it is based on fact, reason and probability, not on an established belief set (religion). If you are offended by anything that does not support your belief set, you should choose to not read this article.]

God’s Love and God’s Grace

I don’t know what to make of those guys. What would you think? Several healthy men living together in a forest. They are self sufficient (hunting, gathering, gardening, fishing) so they have nothing to do with people outside. They aren’t a religious sect, not evenmarginally religious so far as anyone can tell.

Some sort of gay club for anti-social outcasts?

Then along comes a beautiful young girl who lives as happily among them as they were living alone together before she came. She doesn’t hesitate to do all the housework, cleaning up after all of them and cooking for the lot.

Do you suppose she is a nymphomaniac? A willing slave? Or is she emotionally immature, needing the security of the small army of men around her that she willingly subjects herself to emotional bondage?

Have you ever given any thought about Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs other than to read the story or see the movie?

What? Have I desecrated a charming fairy tale? Am I a racist, a homophobe, a lecherous old dude or a curmudgeon? It’s a story someone made up. They aren’t real people. The story itself, in a modern context, doesn’t make sense and lends itself nicely to criticism.

The stories of God’s love and God’s grace were once made up by people who wanted to make listeners feel good too. There is very little evidence for them, if any, in the holy books.

"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son…" Is that it? A turn of phrase inserted by a storyteller?

I am not saying that God is not a loving God or that He does not have a forgiving nature. Just that the evidence for the claim from the holy book is slim. Everyone should agree that any part of religion that came into being after the writing of the original books was made up by people.

Is it a miracle when God cures a person with terminal cancer? If so, then that would have to be the same God that allowed the same person to contract the cancer.

Is God all-powerful and all-knowing, omnipotent and omnicient? We have no trouble accepting that God could destroy any of us humans. Why would God not destroy Satan, abolish hell and make our potential misdeeds a little less tempting?

Because all those concepts were made up by people too? The Church of Rome, inventor of many of these and similar concepts, is not reputed to back away from its mistakes easily or willingly. But even the church today would prefer to having no discussion about hell, purgatory or limbo. And that "hellfire and brimstone" stuff was banished from pulpits decades ago.

If you believe that God loves everyone, then you must believe that God loved Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Ghengis Khan, Joseph Stalin and the leaders of the genocides in Rwanda, Bosnia and many other places. You must also expect to find these same people in heaven, since Christianity allows that anyone who accept Jesus and devote himself to God even on the last day of his life may be accepted into heaven.

For a religion to claim that God loves you and that God will forgive you for any sins you may commit exonerates the members of that religion from any responsibility for loving and forgiving sinners themselves. That is, if you don’t feel loved by God, then it’s your fault because no one faults God and those who spread the message about a loving God take no responsibility for loving you. They say they love you, especially if you send them money.

No doubt exists as to whether people have the capacity to love and to forgive and there is mounting evidence that humans have the power to transfer energy from themselves to others who need it (call it prayer, if you will). Humans have the power to teach and to prevent tragedies such as the Holocaust and Rwanda from happening. Rather than expecting God to exercise the same powers as we humans have (no doubt they came from God because evolution has no way to explain them), we excuse ourselves from taking responsibility for our fellow humans by leaving it up to God.

So here’s the deal. God gave us the capacity to love and to forgive so that we could exercise it on His behalf. God works through us, remember? If we choose to avoid our human and civic responsibilities, should we blame God?

You are the representative of God on Earth. So am I. Many of us are trying to do our best to make life better on Earth by helping, by teaching, by working alongside our fellow pilgrims. We don’t leave it up to God. We do it ourselves.

If you tell someone that God loves them but not that you love them, then you have abrogated your responsibility to the very God that gave you the power of love. And of healing. And of forgiving.

And the capacity to create peace in the world.

Don’t leave it up to God. God already left it up to us.

Get on board. We should all be on the move, in the same direction, together.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems, a book about real and inexpensive solutions to personal and community problems most people think are inevitable evils of modern society. They aren't. We just have to look in the right place.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Contact author Bill Allin at turningitaround@sympatico.ca