Great Controversy

Don’t we all live in a world where people are blank canvasses being written on all over the earth. We are therefore being shaped by those writing processes that come to us most influentially in our immediate surroundings. The influences that are designing who we are come from our surroundings but they also come because of the time period we live in.

 

Because of these historical developments and our surroundings people everywhere are effected by competing ideas. These ideas are competing for our acceptance of what truth is.

 

Those same forces in religion assert truths about God and His supposed revelation to us. We can never question this revelation much though because it is buried in history written with authority a long time ago. 

 

The problem for people everywhere is most of the time they aren't equipped with an inward ability to evade the widespread dogmas that confront them in the world. Whatever can convince will convince. People are more often wrong then right. All ideas can be made into complicated arguments that win elegance.

 

The wide spread doctrines that are shaping our truth claims in the world develop dependent on where we live. We know this is true, don’t we, since isn’t it obvious enough to observe. People can’t overcome circulating large scale ideology. For an example look at entire geographies across the earth of places of likeminded belief as an example of truth claims and that dogma there winning beliefs adherence for those people in those different places.

 

True in some places some of the time people decide between one path of identity to another in these situations but only sometimes. Yet dare we assume that our ability, the majority of the time, is able enough, on it’s own, by itself, to discern past our familiar environment to figure out another of life’s other argued paths?

 

How can we traverse our community, step into a foreign one, and navigate these buriers required to embrace another's truth. What the “truth” is and what right is are entirely subjective though. Our convictions about the truth are open to great debate, dispute, and are effected by many misleading persuasions all while being faced with great uncertainty.  Because of this uncertainty the individual is up against ideas in his/her culture being forced on him/her that are winning him or her over innocently enough all over the world to different kinds of thought and have been all across time.

 

Humanity then staggers onward through a very confusing world and always has in the past don’t you agree? As we stagger onward there are some doctrines that are better then others perhaps. Don’t even the best of doctrines however have their arbitrary side?

 

For instance the idea the world has hope in it only for those who embrace a belief system of one kind. Most people can’t possibly appreciate one certain claim however do to time, place, culture, familiarity etc. but God supposedly doesn’t care about that. He supposedly only saves Christians for example according to this way of thinking. These teachers of this way suggest this to us by trying to represent this claim of truth believably to us. As it appears, however, if it is looked at honestly for what it really says, it’s pure madness to think about the destiny of so many of us being Hell and this is actually what so many believe and they are quite ok with it.

 

For every person in attendance at an evangelical crusade, for instance,  there is a million other people that weren't exposed to the message. Many millions of people therefore didn't stand up and publicly embrace a doctrine. Supposedly that is the only like path that can help us in our eternal destiny. if we do the math this doctrine casts away great multitudes of humanities population. Do we dare see it as unfair? I personally see it as unfair in this way.

 

Despite the big ideologies in civilization shaping our overall world views aren’t we effected as well with actual instances where we do use a will. That we have a will, if we do, it then complicates this human picture even further. We at times, do we not, have some ability to choose with an act of our will? 

 

On a personal level can we then wrestle between the thoughts that are persuading our actions to good and evil ends. Our minds might sometimes blindly follow evil but at other times are we not able to wrestle with bad ideas avoiding their influence. It can seem at these times like there is a force that is trying to beguile us into acts of injustice, rage,cruelty, revenge etc.. Are we able to act for the good of us and others at these times perhaps and can we use our will to will to act right.

 

It seems though that often we don’t know how to act and where to direct our will in our thinking in these situations. Perhaps at these moments of indecision we haven’t the foundational examples of right behavior. Could this be one of religions often unrecognized relevance's. Is there arguably more to religions relevance then just some insightful moral teachings.

 

By insightful moral teaching I mean Jesus saying “Love your enemy” “Do good to those who hate you and despitefully use you.” “Remove the beam from your own eye first so you can see well enough to remove the timber from your brothers eye.” I do not mean to point to the rare passages of outdated views found elsewhere attacking gays for example.

 

I wonder also about the description of the character of God and the claims of His existence. In a mysterious world located in the middle of nowhere amid deep space perhaps these ideas shouldn’t be easily overlooked if they are fair and include everyone.

 

The world appears to be a place where the ideas around us are constantly at war. Should any person be unworthy of compassion here in this place with the world being so vulnerable to so many currents of persuasion? With world communities coerced into these doctrines that linger on taking hold hundreds of years earlier. With these views continually, through the generations, repeatedly instilling their views to the adherence of each coming generation. It’s a path I now wonder about that we’re on. I wonder about the truth. I believe as I wonder while being thoroughly convinced that there is a God and that His nature is love.

 

In my concern for what truth is and what we're supposed to think about God and love and good and who's who and what's what what do I dare think about the truth? Do any of us dare believe everyone is worthy of our acceptance everywhere or instead is it fairer that people really be deserving of mostly our suspicion and condemnation. How to feel about the Muslim, Hindu etc.. communities of earth. Can people be loved by God enough to have hope despite their  belief, ideology, nationality? Can  people be empathized with if they are in great error, at least after the danger and threat they posse is gone?

 

The systems we now have say supposedly who's going to ultimately be good in God’s book and who's not going to be. For now these claims and beliefs suggest that God loves all the living. It’s the majority of the present, but soon to be dead, my heart feels for. Again lets be clear about what those doctrines really do when all is said and done. The ideas themself abandon great seas and multitudes of us human beings forever.

 

We are supposed to discern by these old doctrines that multitudes of people are lost and in the end beyond mercy or promise because they think differently about God in this chaotic and confusing world. Perhaps someone’s perception of God was developed while suffering under a dictatorship etc. but none of that is “rumored” to even matter. Do these doctrines abandon the real beauty and hope we have as human beings in this way?

 

The dignity of a person again is a canvass being drawn on. Unfortunately beyond a person finding insight in a confusing world that drawing may turn out beaten down, ripped, in tangles from life lived in the world.

 

Why can’t we, the discerners of this tragedy befalling on so many, allow actual love to reign as who we see God as and how we dare think He sees us. We need to salvage the broken image of our fellow man as we look at the world through modern eyes.