I am so blessed

I was watching an interview with a professional athlete recently and he said of winning a recent game and his performance that he is "so blessed". When I hear this it just grates on me like nails scratched on a chalkboard. I understand that being thankful is important and can definitely cheer us up when we're down, but the whole concept of God being the ultimate source of all our blessings (and choosing to label beneficial happenings as such) just rubs me the wrong way.

You see, to me, saying you are blessed means that God sent favorable happenings in your direction instead of mine. Obviously one could argue that I am blessed just as much, but in different things. For some reason I don't buy this explanation. For the athlete, there is so much time and dedication put out in the form of practicing and training that it should be no wonder they are "blessed" with a good performance in one game or several. I was fortunate to be born in the USA so I had a leg up when pursuing the American dream, having started out in America and all. When I think of those outside my country and circumstances, however, like someone in Africa for example, I get an entirely different reaction. If God is the source of all our blessings, why does he play such favorites?

When I ask this question to people like my wife who believe in God, and believe that god has one favored true church on the earth, the response is that everyone's conditions may seem different here, but in the hereafter we'll see how equitable it all was. This might be, but should we always assume that when there appears to us to be inequality in the world, we should just turn a blind eye and hope everything will be settled in the hereafter? I think this belief can lead to being taken advantage of in the least and outright defrauded or killed (and having it be said that it was god's will) at the worst.

The funny thing to me is that those members who do take advantage of others seem to move up in the ranks of the church fastest, while those that let others take advantage of them because of a belief in the equitable hereafter seem to be the lowest on the totem pole as far as callings (and blessings) go. Obviously this is possibly a gross generalization on my part, but it can be shown true in many cases (Like when Henry B. Eyring says he was blessed to be able to sell a very valuable extra piece of property he just happened to have sitting around in his portfolio of assets). Of course I realize I sound like a bitter apostate in this, but I just can't continue to accept that there is a director or choreographer (or whatever people claim God's role to actually be in our lives) out there divvying up blessings here and there based on some, as yet unknown, standard of fairness. I guess we can either accept that because "the" standard of fairness is not known it must not exist (which would be a perfectly natural conclusion) or we can say that it does in spite of appearances to the contrary, but we just don't know what it is.

This goes back to the question of faith I explored in a previous post wherein I ask what is the purpose of faith. Until and unless someone can show me that there is ultimately a benefit in the hereafter for exercising faith (instead of, or in addition to, reason) in the here and now, I will choose to follow reason and rely on my intellect instead of placing faith in a hereafter that has yet to be proven even exists let alone knowing that when it is revealed everything will be shown to have been perfectly equitable.

On top of that, I cannot relate to this God of whom so many speak. When you say that God is my heavenly father, I naturally try to relate to him by placing myself in his circumstances and asking myself, if I were god would I treat my children this way? The answer most of the time is no friggin' way! It turns out there is much that God does that I cannot relate to, because if it were up to me, things would be wayyy different here.

On a different note, I went and looked up the word mammon (duh, I probably should have done that before I wrote and posted my views on the word) and it doesn't mean "the world" but means riches or material wealth (which could be considered part of the world, right?). I guess that changes my whole outlook...does that scripture mean I have to choose between the god of riches (mammon) and the Hebrew god of...poverty? I think I'll choose to avoid following a god that advocates poverty thank you very much. Makes me wonder what is up with all the admonitions against riches in the bible. I have heard some say (no doubt trying to find the work around to this teaching in order to have riches but still live the spirit of the law) that it is the "love of money" that is to be avoided and not just money or the pursuit of it in itself. But if you desire to pursue money don't you kind of have to love it? If one believes the bible and teachings of Jesus it seems as though it is better to avoid the temptation and seek a life of poverty than to seek riches and be subject to so much temptation. Jesus would say don't worry about stuff...all your needs will be taken care of...just let things take care of themselves...you will be blessed. Then a modern day leader of the lds church would say, "See, all those people that went out on missions early in church history were taken care of." However, if I go out today and take nothing with me and embark on a journey across the country, I could probably survive on the charity of others for a very long time, but is that any kind of life worth living? Living on somebody else's dime your entire life does not bring confidence and self respect, it robs you of it.

I can see some sense in saying that riches can never bring true happiness, but I sure wouldn't mind testing out that theory ;-).

Thoughts on mammon

My wife says that it is difficult to serve two masters, that I will eventually have to decide one way or the other; to either get back into the church or remove myself entirely from it. Of course, I cannot ever truly remove myself entirely from it if I want to stay married to a woman who is active in the church, but I digress. I think this philosophy only creates a line in the sand mentality and causes divide among people in the world who are just trying to get along and do what they think is right. This thought has caused me to think upon the scripture the thought is based on, man cannot serve two masters, man eventually has to decide between God and mammon. I am not 100% sure about my definition of mammon, but I think the word has been generally used to describe "the world". Especially since there is a teaching about being in "the world" but not of "the world".

It seems like nobody really questions this teaching or its underlying assumption that "the world" is evil. So who is this "the world" anyway? If I ask people who cite this teaching or prescribe to it, it is always defined as a nebulous place "out there" or "all the bad stuff". So, if I press for some specific examples of the influence of "the world" what do I get? Is your neighbor of "the world"? Are your co-workers of "the world"? Some might say yes, but if I ask which one's, what do I get? Lots of hemming and hawing and excuses about how "the world" can't be described as any individual but a nebulous group of people "somewhere", "out there" who are influenced by the devil to promote his works. So which people belong to this group? Oh, you know, the murderers, rapists, etc. bad people. You mean the one's in prison? Yes, those people. So are we supposed to go and hang out in prisons, then, to be "in" "the world" but not "of" "the world"? It only gets more ridiculous until the point where the believer begins bearing their testimony to me about the existence of "the world" and that they believe the scripture is true telling them to be "in" "the world" but not "of" "the world". Essentially the believers put their fingers in their ears and begin yelling "la la la la" really loud and saying they can't hear me anymore.

I have a TBM friend who recently invited me to read his blog. Other than a nice layout the content was pretty boring. In one entry he talked about going to Best Buy early in the morning on black Friday and that there was a youth group there from a local church that was handing out hot chocolate. He observed that some people in line (to get into the store, before they opened) gave the youth a hard time because they wondered aloud why the youth were not in Africa with other missionaries trying to do what they were doing. Basically my friend felt bad because he didn't do a better job of standing up for the youth and he wondered why our world seems to be so anti-religion. Of course, his reaction was to silently criticize those apparent anti-religionists and wonder why the world had to be so evil.

I had a glimmer of hope that he might begin to touch on what I see is the larger issue at hand. And that is, why is it that people who go about doing good things must advertise the fact that they belong to a certain church/religion? I was curious as I passed the local baptist church on my way to work the other day where their sign outside said (I'm paraphrasing), "Our mission is to seek Jesus and teach others to do so" (it was put somewhat more elegantly on the sign and my paraphrase doesn't do it justice). In my opinion, it is the constant proselytizing and attempts to convert others that may actually be the crux of the problem. I wonder if those youth that belonged to that church could have done the same service without announcing to everyone which church they belonged to and announcing who or what they were serving on behalf of? I wonder how the result may have been different had they done that?

It seems to me that Jesus would be more inclined to have people go about doing good works without anyone knowing what church or religion you belong to, but rather I think Jesus' idea was to just go about doing good for the sake of making the world a better place. Instead, attempts to serve are darkened by the advertisement of the church that is doing the serving. It reminds me of those trailers that are setup at freeway rest stops during holiday travel days that have signs that say "Free Coffee and cookies", but when you get up there to have some, they push a donation cup in your face and have signs all over advertising who is offering this "free" stuff. I understand that this is the way the world works, but it doesn't seem very Christ-like to me. If only Christians understood what Jesus was trying to tell them, don't hide your good works, but you don't need to go about doing them with the intent of converting those that you serve.

I guess this is how advocates of religion define being "in" "the world" but not "of" "the world". They place themselves in situations they call service to others, but they attach strings of advertising what group they represent and almost make the acceptance of the service a conditional acceptance of their invitation to come to their church some day.

If only they were sincere in their pronouncements that you can come and receive spiritual nourishment at their church and didn't want to tell you how important it is to buy into the concept of tithing (paid to their church only) if you want to adequately demonstrate your faithfulness to their brand of God.

So do you take the hot chocolate or not? Right now I am inclined to not do so because of the strings attached, but maybe if I was hungry enough or cold enough I would consider it. This conclusion causes me to think about the question of guilt. Since I was proud of myself for recognizing that guilt had no power over me when I began my journey out of belief in the church, I told my wife that at one point. I said, I don't really feel any guilt anymore. Of course, she freaked out at this because then she wondered what terrible thing I would do because I had no guilt anymore. So, why do I feel guilt about taking hot chocolate from a church youth but I don't feel guilt about not going to church or believing in Mormonism anymore? I will have to ponder on this some more and see what my subconscious helps me come up with. I probably need to do some more field work by being "of" "the world" and see what I come up with. I really don't think "the world" is such a bad place after all.