If you want a fun little activity during the day, try this. Scan your social media accounts for the posts about religion that talk about god's love and glory and abundance and how he blesses us all and such. Find them and simply ask yourself...would this person have the guts to go to Africa where children die by the thousands each year and say this sort of drivel to the people living there in those conditions?
Example: "The first act in this positive turnaround is to affirm God as the Great Restorer, who continually brings good out of personal chaos, growth out of pain, and hope out of loss."
Are you going to tell a family who is starving and dying of diarrhea due to unclean drinking water to not worry? Good will come out of this personal chaos! Hope comes out of loss when your 4th child dies from parasites. Growth will come out of the AIDS epidemic ravaging your country.
Or is it more accurate that these concepts only apply in the western world where the hard work of generations of people (not a deity) has led to advancements in technology, and medicine, and industry, and agriculture to alleviate these problems? Is it really just that you have been lucky enough to be born into a part of the world in a time where you are so far removed from the harsh realities of nature? Is it really just that you have the luxury of saying such nonsense and throwing your concerns up to a deity because civilization itself props you up to a living standard by default? Every time I see this kind of thing posted or hear this kind of thing said I can't help but see that person in the same light that I would see a naive rich teenager saying something that only applies to their way of life.
"The first act in this positive turnaround is to affirm that your parents will always give you what you need. They will continually gift you with the new iPhone. A new Range Rover will always be given at your 16th birthday. And if you just ask hard enough, you too can have the latest designer clothes."
I can't help it, that's the way I see people who post this kind of nonsense. It is people who have been brought up with a certain quality of life that not everyone in the world has. So much so that they can't even imagine life without those niceties. They espouse all of this like it is an ancient wisdom and that if people could just understand that any suffering that they go through will end soon and give way to some glorious gift! Unless you happen to live in an area of the world where that's just not the case. Somewhere that you most likely won't get better. A place where you're more likely than not to die terribly of something that these people can't even fathom. So I'm sorry, but I can't see these people as wise or humble or virtuous. I see them as ignorant. I see them as naive. And their statements bear that out.
Example: "The first act in this positive turnaround is to affirm God as the Great Restorer, who continually brings good out of personal chaos, growth out of pain, and hope out of loss."
Are you going to tell a family who is starving and dying of diarrhea due to unclean drinking water to not worry? Good will come out of this personal chaos! Hope comes out of loss when your 4th child dies from parasites. Growth will come out of the AIDS epidemic ravaging your country.
Or is it more accurate that these concepts only apply in the western world where the hard work of generations of people (not a deity) has led to advancements in technology, and medicine, and industry, and agriculture to alleviate these problems? Is it really just that you have been lucky enough to be born into a part of the world in a time where you are so far removed from the harsh realities of nature? Is it really just that you have the luxury of saying such nonsense and throwing your concerns up to a deity because civilization itself props you up to a living standard by default? Every time I see this kind of thing posted or hear this kind of thing said I can't help but see that person in the same light that I would see a naive rich teenager saying something that only applies to their way of life.
"The first act in this positive turnaround is to affirm that your parents will always give you what you need. They will continually gift you with the new iPhone. A new Range Rover will always be given at your 16th birthday. And if you just ask hard enough, you too can have the latest designer clothes."
I can't help it, that's the way I see people who post this kind of nonsense. It is people who have been brought up with a certain quality of life that not everyone in the world has. So much so that they can't even imagine life without those niceties. They espouse all of this like it is an ancient wisdom and that if people could just understand that any suffering that they go through will end soon and give way to some glorious gift! Unless you happen to live in an area of the world where that's just not the case. Somewhere that you most likely won't get better. A place where you're more likely than not to die terribly of something that these people can't even fathom. So I'm sorry, but I can't see these people as wise or humble or virtuous. I see them as ignorant. I see them as naive. And their statements bear that out.
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