Welcome back, Mr Quarzmate! Even if I do say so myself. My academics were increasing drastically since my previous post, so I apologize for not posting any sooner.
FATE- noun
The development of events outside a person’s control, regarded as determined by a supernatural power.
Verb: Be destined to happen, turn out, or act in a particular way: "it was fated to end badly".
I think we’ve all heard obituaries at some stage of our lives. They usually go along these lines: If the person was kind, he/she would be treated in a heroic fashion, showing how this person’s lone efforts had built an empire of utter awesomeness. On the other hand, if the deceased happened to have led an infamous life, we would hear either an appeal to God, hoping that a few kind (but practically undeserving) words would spare the dead human in question from hellfire and brimstone, or a cry of outrage (I mean, this person had an unfair life! How can God punish him/her for that?).
In these moments, where sorrow and grief comes almost uncontrollably, we see more clear, undiluted world-views about life, death, God, evil, and eternity than a thousand icebreakers ever could reveal.
Here are some common phrases expressed at funerals:
“It must have been God’s will for –insert name here- to die of –insert cause here-”
“Who are we to question God’s purpose, after all, He knows what he’s doing.”
“I don’t understand why God took him/her away from us.”
And the ever popular…
“Well, God must have loved –insert name here- so much, that He wanted to be with him/her so quickly.”
This shows us a fractured fraction of the human mind-set.
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QUICK PAUSE!!!! (Don’t worry, this will make sense in a few moments)
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In the movie, Stranger than Fiction, a man hears a strange woman’s voice in his mind, narrating eloquently every detail of his personal life (For Example: The way he counts the number of times he brushes each individual tooth until he reaches seventy strokes). In the beginning everyone he informs of this phenomenon thinks that he’s insane (which is quite understandable, you understand), and even he starts to think of himself as insane, but when the ‘narrator’ one day says, “Little did he know, that events would be set in motion, that would lead to his imminent death..” he becomes concerned on a number of levels.
Now I don’t want to spoil it for you, but the man finds out that he is the character in a tragic fiction novel that is in the process of being written, and with every typed word he comes closer to his death.
We see a popular and powerful implicit view in this movie, which is saying two things:
1. Enjoy life while it lasts, because:
2. Death is inevitable.
Which reminds me of another funeral statement: “If God can see the future, then surely He knows whether we’re going to heaven or hell. So if God knows where we end up, then why should we bother with trying to change?”
I think that we’ve all experience this feeling of meaninglessness at some point in our lives; where we feel like we’ve been stuck for so long in a habit that we can’t imagine surrendering our last breath without it standing at our bedsides. Then our heads start pounding with anxiety and we start thinking that, “Oh well, maybe I was just born this way.”
Now THIS…. is exactly what we should discuss, because somehow, we have come to a place where we have stopped thinking about why we believe what we believe and just tried to accept why a so-called “good” God wants bad things to happen to good people.
So let’s dissect these statements one by one, just to see if there were any thoughts behind blaming God for pain.
1.
Okay, where in the Bible do we read about God’s will for our lives?
Jeremiah 29:11
I know the plans that I have for you, declares the LORD. They are plans for peace and not disaster, plans to give you a future filled with hope.
Ok… So God doesn’t want to kill us, go figure, but why do we think that God’s will for us is destruction? I think it’s probably because we forget to put life in context. Here are three things we never should forget.
1# There’s a good God: We’re talking about an awesome God who was slaughtered like an animal for us, but still begged for our forgiveness and said, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Now personally, I think that’s huge… So if something good happens, it’s probably from God.
2# There’s an evil Satan: The Bible says that Satan is the one who steals, kills, and destroys. We’re talking about the one who actually got us into this mess (to some extent). So if something bad happens, it’s probably Satan.
3#There are humans involved: We humans have this thing called ‘free will’, which means that our choices determine whether or not something happens or doesn’t happen. Now the previous two factors may have power, but we as humans are the only ones with authority now, and the only way something literally takes place is when people are involved. For example: people are tempted, or feel moved to do something, thus they do whatever they feel like doing, whether it’s good or evil.
If we drop even one of these points, we end up either:
1# Blaming God.
2# Intoxicated with the fear of evil.
3# Seeing ourselves as worms because we blame ourselves for everything.
2.
This can be a lot to take in, and even harder to apply to our lives, I mean, after all, how can we figure out if God’s involved, Satan’s involved or we’re just acting out of our own choice?
Hebrews 4:12
For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
***May I direct your attention to the part that it says, “Dividing Soul and Spirit”. Has ANYONE ever wondered why we would want to divide a Spirit from a Soul?
We humans are divided into 3 parts:
Spirit: This is the part that goes to Heaven or Hell when we die. This part is determined by our “Bloodline” (which is a topic for another day). Our actions do not affect this identity, but our identity affects our actions.
Soul: This is our emotions (which comes from the words ‘in motion’), characteristics, and mind-set. This is the part that feels and makes decisions.
Body: Our “Earth-Suit”; it lives, ages, and we can’t survive on Earth without it (“See, I told you…. now put it back!!!”).
God’s word divides what we think or feel is true (funeral statements), from what is actually true (God doesn’t want to hurt us).
[Credit to Niel Hofmeyr]
Unfortunately, these things are usually ignored quite blatantly, because we feel as if we are destined to failure, which brings us to the final point. (Hello? Is anyone still there?)
3.
Fatalism: The idea or belief that life takes it’s course, even though we have free will and choices, life is pre-determined.
It’s interesting how we’ve accepted this view almost without thinking. Why? because everyone has accepted the view.
There’s a story about a gorilla cage with ten gorillas inside. A test was done on them to see if they could develop a cultural mind-set. A banana was suspended in the centre of the cage, and every time a gorilla stormed it greedily, all the gorillas would be soaked with ice-cold water from a fire-hose (if that’s what you call them).
All of them knew not to touch the banana. Then one day, they replaced one of the old gorillas with a new one. The gorilla charged the banana as if it was made from gold, but the gorilla was crushed by the nine elders who feared the icy cold spray more than death. Thus the monkey was inter-grated into the society, never looking back or questioning the beatings.
The scientists were slowly but surely replacing all the original apes, until all ten of them were new. They were never tempted to touch the bananas… even though no-one really understood why, they did it anyway, because it was Traditional.
Now through the years, we’ve been following our beliefs and mind-sets blindly ( Don’t get me wrong, this is very different from being faithful with something we’ve witnessed or experienced first-hand).
Just to conclude, I want to propose one last things to you:
1# Find out for yourself: even the truth can be misunderstood, but that doesn’t falsify the truth. So do yourself a favour, and ask, “Why do I believe what I believe?”.
This is the end…. of this blog.
Drop me a comment if you enjoyed it.
Until next time…..
December 17, 2012
Guilliam J. Nel
To speak of Influence....... 