How does God feel about other countries, other religions, and the dignity of people of other cultures?

On this planet earth that we inhabit there are numerous outlooks, attitudes, values, morals, goals, and customs that are a part of all that we know and experience here. Whatever form of persuasiveness these persuasions have on us they will undoubtedly lead, inspire, and unfailingly win the loyalty of each single mind to some perspective. We are individually standing alone in the world and standing here now we will unavoidably adapt to these influences knowingly or not. As a lone person we now stand mysteriously before uncertainty standing here before the utter unknown.

 

For anyone hungry for truth, or at least relevancy in how one chooses to live or care about what matters, that persons journey then, as a mind being fed perspective, is a journey busy acquiring some form of knowledge and truth perspective. What that person will be confronted by in life is different for each person everywhere too.

 

Despite any hesitation that person has, or resistance in allowing change, inevitably and unavoidable that person will be persuaded and changed in the world somehow by the worlds ideas. Whatever continent or culture one is from  ideas are being experienced there. The person will encounter human arguments by preachers, teachers, advisers, friends, political leaders, media etc. These persuasions will then form what that person normalizes and sees as their truth. It can be observed naturally enough by reason that ideas then shape human beings everywhere right?

 

If our imperfect minds are being adapted imperfectly to different influences, and I’m being shaped in this way, as is everyone else, then our experiences cannot be anything other then unique and different then. The persuasion these ideas have on people must be better for some, worst for others, from Iran to Moscow to Bangkok to Brazil and to the entire world beyond. The effects that different influences of thought has on people are these not influences falling on the perceptions then of innocent people.

 

 I believe we can suspect and look at people when they have different political objectives in a way where they aren’t like us exactly. How do we view people when they are militant or their nationalism and position in the world isn’t in harmony with ours. How do we view foreigners when their religion is foreign to us. With Christians when other people far away from us deny our claim of salvation and deny who God is supposed to be how do we see them really. Can these other people, after their different ideology is accounted for in their different thinking,  be seen as the same blank slate, as innocent, vulnerable, susceptible people. Isn’t that what we all really are in this world as we struggle to understand. 

 

Do some of us approach the people of other nations like they were predestined by God to be inherently evil people.

 

From birth we see no child anywhere in the world as inherently evil.  Why then does it seem in the same breath as we say that no child in the world is evil do so many of us, of course not all of us, then lose sight of the intrinsic value of entire populations of the men and women there. Just twenty years later now the once children, now young men and women, have become so different. They have supposedly in our eyes perhaps reached the age of accountability. It is like they were faced with such a fair chance to think like we think. Now it is like for many of us like they exist somewhere God is not.

 

As adults how did these people stop sharing our humanity. True many informed people love their enemy and wish well on everyone but many don’t. True these others might hate us and have an agenda that rivals us. They may even want to hurt us. Yet why do they not appear to us as innocent victims of doctrine that has shaped their minds. These people were after all won over by a dictator or preached to by a different religious influence in that state. These people were shaped by breezes of ideas often naively and innocently enough. They were persuaded by persuasions that we all adapt to, if confronted by the same kind in the same way. It is true that these ideologies can come in a truly ugly form but the human person is vulnerable to indoctrination, is drawn to group dynamics and to causes to live and die for like every human being.

 

In our defensiveness of the threat posed by other people lost to evil influences out of self preservation and our defense of our values we will of course be guarded and prepared to fight for those values. Yet should other people ever lose their human dignity. Do they ever lose their value as children of God. Why must we hold so many human beings with such suspect in our eyes for what is unavoidable. What is unavoidable is that ideas are harnessed and spread and effect masses of humanity through indoctrinations that they can’t foresee. Shouldn't we therefore have compassion on our fellow human beings like us everywhere. What we instinctively seem to do is judge others and categorize them according to ideological correctness but is this really fair.

 

As a human person we have dignity and a great potential for good. The evil in the world doesn’t have to come with clarity for us and probably never has when it affected us across history. Evil just effects minds everywhere who don’t understand a better way confusing a person and harming them and others.

 

There is no guaranteed way to avoid evils persuasion on the innocent person. Evil effects a persons reasoning, judgment and behavior. Evil inspires deviousness, hatred, it justifies war and does indignities to human life while robbing peace.  Evil steals family members to death, leaves people alone, and forsakes the poor and needy.

Evil wishes to humiliate people. There is no guarantee that others effected by evil won’t intrude into your life or mine. Its effect on us is very possible as we try and live a good life.

 

We all have minds that are struggling for peace. We want to be loved and naturally enough to be treated well.  The human person, wherever that person is in this world, is fallible, and being fallible a person is universally  ill-equipped and ill-suited to be ideologically lead in one “specific” direction. We are not able, all of us at once,  everywhere we are, to be able to hold one specific belief of what is supposed to be the “truth.” We cannot know that specific belief all of the time and in all of the places. Everyone cannot know the truth now even if part of the truth is really attainable in this world. People by nature, simply by the the laws of opportunity and chance, will choose differently when faced with ideas. Naturally people see the world differently. The arguments around those people will be different which means a belief for them on their individual journey through the world is different.

 

Do we choose to love people everywhere and  spare them our ideological condemnations. Is it right instead to hold the position that if people don’t think like me, and those I’m familiar with, they are not on the right side of God and His mercy and His hope. Do we determine therefore, “That those other people over in another part of the world do not see the truth as I see the truth.” Do we reason then that, “They have not accepted the truth and therefore those other people have no future with God.”

 

Is there any compassion or fairness in this view as we consider it at this time in history. In modern times now, in the way we now presently know the world to work, does this even make sense. Is this the position that God would take on this.

 

"Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father's care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”

Karma

In a discussion with a friend on Facebook, who’s name I won’t say here, I was just recently asked the following question. 

“I wanted to pick your brain too. I've been having this conversation online with Christians. They use the bible to explain everything. I'm not a bible person, so I see things a little differently. I know you are well versed on the bible, but you are open minded and also able to see things rationally. So, here is my question. Do you believe in "Karma"?”

After writing my friend a personal note I replied to her question here, for her to read this way, because I like to post things in my blog.

The question Do I believe in karma and your observation that I am well versed in the Bible and also an open minded person I thank you for suggesting. I find your question very interesting material for thought. I don’t think I have a great amount of knowledge to share so whatever I say of course I don’t believe is law. I simply like to weigh in on these subjects and try and understand these subjective questions. I know I answer like an authority, which I’m not, it’s how I approach philosophical questions.

The way I understand karma is that if you do something wrong, if you hurt someone, cause someone pain, the pain you cause to someone else will come back to you again. Maybe this is true somehow, maybe it isn’t.

I think everyone is prone to experience error in their judgment and behavior. A judgment that is made however I don’t think is always made thinking with total clarity. Even most of the time the thoughts involved in people making a decision are thoughts they don’t see the complete facts entirely or accurately for or the full implications of what acting on them will do with total insight. People don’t always see their thoughts or actions accurately. That resulting judgment and course of action is rarely made with 100% clarity. The way the human mind seems to work is ones clarity of mind and moral responsibility can be as low as 33% or even less where some minds live obliviously in a total fog. 

When we get angry we expect and demand that those who do the wrong we now judge should have seen right and wrong in their minds. Through our anger at them we think they should have known at that particular deciding moment in life, however much they were surrounded by negative influences, that they should have known how to make the right moral judgment in that situation.

Our anger in judging human error is often high-minded and unfair however. We delight through that judgment in our exceptional status. There on our moral high ground we rage with self-righteousness judging what we see elsewhere in the human condition. Our judgment adds fuels to our feel good about ourselves gossip circle. There in our contagious gossip networks we feel good about ourselves while resenting others outside of the pack. For the person that’s being judged, I think, often enough for them, that that particular experience at that particular time was a choice for that person that seemed logical enough given their percentage of moral insight that they had at the time.

In that course of wrong action, through the fog of immorality, probably because of subcultural role models shaping their norm, there they act. Likely they have no ethical direction, no conditioning of their thoughts in a healthy way. They simply have thoughts that are left to wonder off course while having no way to counter evil itself. They have no direction where right is even to be found. They are in a dark place where they don’t believe right is even relevant. The right path forward Is totally unrecognizable for them where they are.

I think there are literally billions of people on earth who are victims of evil. It’s human nature to despise other groups of human beings who really have no clear way to reason or understand how to reach thinking that is fairer and more inclusive. They have no perspective that loves all of the human condition. There is not a councilor nearby them to hear or to help them through their struggles.

Jesus speaks in the New Testament through several parables about forgiveness. I don’t read the Bible much anymore but one parable from vague memory that Jesus taught I think was basically about a judge. I think the judge is meant to be God. The judge forgives a man with an enormous debt everything he owes. The man in return was asked to forgive other people the little debt they owed him. Owed then a small debt by someone else the man who was forgiven by the judge then refused to forgive that debt even after God forgave him so much more. So the man was sentenced to prison by the judge.

I should read the story again to know if I have it right. It makes sense to me that God forgives like this however. Some of us have bigger debts then others but God says that He is the one who really substantially forgives everything. He is really forgiving so much more then what we are. Through our anger and resentments we are not willing to do for others the things God does for us even when it’s very important to God that we learn to do this. I think that we are asked to forgive because forgiveness is real with God.

What I know of Karma is it is about doing something wrong and then being repaid the unkindness down the road. I think it’s also how people wish the injustice they feel and direct their anger toward should to be handled. Its that we wish the wrong doer to suffer for those wrongs.

I think that there is a God however and that He is forgiving. I think if we do something wrong, and know God, that the more we know Him better the more He will have us revisit those errors from our past in our minds. We will revisit those wrongs many times as we grow in compassion and in love. Going over those pains we have caused I think gradually will lead us to greater spiritual maturity. Injustice, cruelty, hurtfulness, violence, and all wrongs like these will be things we oppose happening to anyone. So we will be deeply sorry for those wrongs thinking much about them a thousand times in a year. I think eventually that our minds will grow clearer, our moral judgment will become sharper, while we come out of the fog the closer to God we get.

I think what I believe is that I don’t think we will be punished forever but that Gods nature is ultimately one of forgiveness. However Karma I think may happen in our journey with God. You can’t draw near to love without evaluating yourself. As you grow yourself you reflect on your past and the person you are. You draw nearer to love and you can’t help have deep regrets about who you’ve hurt. Drawing near to God then I think is like experiencing karma because you do have to come to terms with your wrongs and you do experience things in your growing conscience which is a kind of pay back.