Full of sound and fury . . .

[Hoshiko]

It might do both. What's to say that pissing off God can't earn us points at the same time? Some of the most influencial people in this world were pretty damn awful to be around.

Ever meet someone clever and say to yourself "That's guy's a complete asshole! But damn was that funny..."

Now, the trick is to figure out if you're doing something worthwhile and meaningful in some way and amusing or just assholish. Not an easy thing, and people much wiser than us have gotten the two concepts confused.

And remind me not to sit next to you in prayer... Not that I'd go, but yikes.

[Hoshiko]

Also, if you were God, which do you think that you'd appreciate more... The little girl who's making a face at her brother to get him to laugh, or the guy who's silently praying for you to help him with his second car payment?

[agent compassion]

I'm a little frustrated right now with God stuff. I spent yesterday evening crying and drinking over the death of a man who I knew for three months nearly ten years ago. Because he was one of the Good Guys, you know, the world is a rough place at any age....but high school is worst, I think, because you are least equipped to deal with any of it. But he was there and he had seen it all and he taught me so much.

He taught me that it is perfectly all right to be a hardass if you know you're doing the right thing and you're not a jerk about it. That sometimes you HAVE to take the reins and not listen to the whiners because if it's worth doing, it's worth doing all the way and sometimes that means sacrifice and work, but you'll be so much happier for doing it well and so will the rest of the people involved. That it takes just as much time to think up an excuse for not doing something as it does to actually DO it. That time is a gift you can't waste. That it is ok to ask for help when you're in over your head. And that appearances are deceiving - he was a gruff, bald curmudgeon, and some students feared him because he seemed so tough and mean - but underneath it, he just cared a lot about his students and wanted them to succeed even if he had to push them really, really hard and make them even hate him a little bit. But nobody hated him once they  figured that out....because, after all, he was usually right.

Anyway, he died last week, of stomach cancer, when he got the diagnosis they said it was inoperable, but wanted to put him through the chemo and radiation anyway....he said no, he let it take its course and lived the rest of his time on his own terms and last week the time ran out. I never got to thank him for what he did, I always thought there'd be a chance "someday." Now it's gone.

So I've been wondering why. Why there are people who will insist that all I need is some God in my life, and that God does all, sees all, knows all, and loves all, and protects the good and punishes the wicked.

Well, my teacher is dead, and Saddam Hussein is still alive. And Slobodan Milosevic is still alive, and that guy who poisoned Yuschenko, and perhaps Osama bin Laden is still alive, and those are just examples I can think of off the top of my head of wicked people who, by the logic of the faithful, ought to be piles of ash right now.

Because, after all, if you're a good little follower, your God will protect you from bad shit and bad people. Right? Because supposedly this God makes EVERYTHING happen. Everything, down to the hair growing on my head right now, or cancer in an old director's stomach.

So I just gotta wonder why. Why God would let those assholes live, and kill someone who most definitely was NOT an asshole. Or why God took two of this guy's lady friends first, one at a young age and one in her sleep without warning before coming to finish him off. What the hell's up with that?

Or hey, how about this, God, explain why my friend was born into an abusive home where her own sister fed her lye soap as a joke, where her husband beat her, where her own husband didn't believe her when she was raped by one of his coworkers in broad daylight.

And that free will shit - Oh, I don't buy that, because I'm not questioning the stuff people do ON PURPOSE TO EACH OTHER - I'm asking why this God person doesn't step in with his all powerfulness and pop some bad guys to set an example or two, and step up for his people once in a while just to show that there's a reason to believe.

Why do people still believe this guy? How can they, when he lets them hang out to dry when they need him most?

I. Just. Don't. Get. It.

[Horab Fibslager]

she works in mysterious ways.

[agent compassion]

I was being serious.

My question is about belief.

I'm very angry with God right now.

[Horab Fibslager]

so was i.

profound lessons can be found in every aspect of life. good people die while bad people prosper.

she rolls dice.

[agent compassion]

That I understand, but what I don't understand is how people can still pray with a straight face, and believe that God's gonna keep any kind of promises it makes to them.

Peter: And if you are pure of heart, when you die, you will go to a wonderful place called Heaven. Nah, I'm pulling your leg! You just rot in the ground.

Yet there are still people who think that God is gonna have their back.

I mean, what is the point of faith at all when it's a roll of the dice anyway?

[Sepia]

Because everyone's just guessing?

[Hoshiko]

I'm sorry to hear about your friend, Agent. And I also know that there isn't anything I can say to make you feel better, but you definitely have someone sending positive vibes or thoughts or whatever your way.

The world isn't fair, and I guess that some people choose to view that as an absence of God. I don't know if he/she exists or not, and at this point I'm not sweating it. If he does exist than I don't think he can or will interfere. I've never seen evidence of him doing so. I don't think he protects (or harms) people, and the only issue I see that even makes a difference in regards to believing in God or not is the creation/where do we go after we die issue.

I believe in God right now because it's too painful for me to think that friends I have lost before are completely gone, that I'll someday be completely gone. Somehow it helps to think that they're still there somewhere, existing in some way beyond my memory. My mind rebels at the thought of all of this being for nothing, and my instincts do the same.

But I've always pretty much assumed that we're down here on our own, no get out of jail free cards from any religious diety. If God did create life for a reason or purpose, why would he mess it all up by coming down here occasionaly to steer us in the right direction or reward behavior? That doesn't make sense. We die and kill each other for no reason,  beyond the fact that we need to do so for life to mean anything.

But if you're looking for a benevolent God who guides us when we need him and prevents us from suffering, no, I don't think that exists. And I think that if you fool yourself or others into believing that it does you're in for a hard crash when you learn otherwise. The people who do believe that, they do so because it helps them in some way to pretend. It doesn't help me, but I don't judge them for soing so. It's their life, and whatever helps to get them through the day is fine by me.

From what I can tell right now, life is there to experience, and it ain't always going to be fun, but look at the alternative. There are wonderful things worth experiencing, like deep friendships and relationships that change you as a person, among other things. Sometimes we don't appreciate those things until they're gone, and that's what makes them valuable.

This isn't to say that I don't believe that God loves us, but there's a time when it's important for people to burn themselves and learn from their mistakes and triumphs, and I think that that's what the world is about. If God exists at all, he/she's an observer.

And therein lies the conundrum: If there's a god, he wouldn't interfere. If he doesn't interfere, how do we know he exists? He exists because we're here. But how do we know that isn't a fluke of nature? etc, etc.

YMMV.

[Horab Fibslager]

I mean, what is the point of faith at all when it's a roll of the dice anyway?

what's the thrill of living if it isn't?


faith isn't measured in what goddess does for you. it's measured in how units of jobe.

[BipolarFastCycler]

Faith in dice is honest faith. After all, when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. Our only hope of happiness in this world is learning to be satisfied with the result, no matter what it is. You may not be able to change what has happened, but you can change the way you look at the event itself.

Our only hope is ourselves; we are our own saviors. How you deal with what is thrown at you tends to effect how the next roll goes. Just because the world is random, that does not mean it is not stable. After all, if randomness was all there was, how exactly has this world not floated away from the sun, and how come I cannot walk through walls? Not all of the world is fun and games, and death is a good example. Yet, there is a certain beauty in it. After all of these years, when I go, all my theories and ideas will be put to the test; my weary mind will have answers. Yes, it will be sad to leave what I once loved, but I walked into life knowing I would walk out of it. Day by day, I ignore death's inevitability. Even still, I will have a final smack in the face to wake me up; I will get that final salute. This is chaotic, and still... it is set in stone. We assume this all must be better than beyond, but isn't that hasty?

Eris may play dice, and she may not. That is the true chaos of her nature! Hell, we don't know what she does. The world is both a mix of random events and stable institutions... and that is true chaos.

[agent compassion]

Not all of the world is fun and games, and death is a good example. Yet, there is a certain beauty in it. After all of these years, when I go, all my theories and ideas will be put to the test; my weary mind will have answers. Yes, it will be sad to leave what I once loved, but I walked into life knowing I would walk out of it. Day by day, I ignore death's inevitability. Even still, I will have a final smack in the face to wake me up; I will get that final salute. This is chaotic, and still... it is set in stone. We assume this all must be better than beyond, but isn't that hasty?

That's just beautiful.

I made a promise to myself some years ago that I would open my mind as wide as possible and not sign on for anyone's beliefs in "what comes after" because really, nobody knows, and to quote one of my favorite plays...

Rosencrantz: ,ÄúAnd then again, what is so terrible about death? As Socrates so philosophically put it, since we don,Äôt know what death is, it is illogical to fear it. It might be,Ķvery nice.,Äù

Still, though, it makes my mind warp when I hear people who have such absolute CERTAINTY that there is an activist God who is holding them by the hand, as it were, and is always there, and when they believe that good is rewarded and bad punished, then that means they ALWAYS do and so if someone suffers, the other side of that equation is you suffered, therefore you were bad and deserved it, and well....that's a crock of shit, as far as I'm concerned.

[agent compassion]

If it were within
Within our power
Beyond the reach
Of slavish pride
To no longer
Harbor grievances
Behind the mask
Opportunists's facade
We could welcome responsibility
Like a long lost friend
And re-establish laughter
In the doll's house once again
For time has imprisoned us
In the order of our years
In the discipline of our ways
And in the passing of momentary stillness
We can see our chaos in motion
Our chaos in motion
We can see our chaos in motion
You are chaos in motion

---

[Lord Trout]

It isn't so much the people who have the faith in an activist God (as Agent described them) that bothers me, its the condescending schmucks who simply prattle off easy phrases to deal with uncomfortable questions (again, such as Agent raised).

"God has a Plan," you say? Then what is it, asshat? I know a guy dying of prostate cancer, who just had to bury his much-younger wife, who died unexpectedly of a stroke. Now he's lost all will to fight, and the most common answers anyone gives him when he asks "Why God does this shit to him" is... as you might expect...

"God has a Plan," or
"She's waiting for you in Heaven."

Yeah, those should really make him feel better about all the pain in his life, as well as bolster his will to fight for life!

My answer: "That sucks, dude. Are you okay? How can I help?"

Maybe if some of these condescending fuckwads would realize that this guy isn't questioning their faith, but mearly looking for solace on this Earthly plane, they could come up with something better than that weak tripe they spew.

Merry Fucking Christmas.

[agent compassion]

"God has a Plan," you say? Then what is it, asshat? I know a guy dying of prostate cancer, who just had to bury his much-younger wife, who died unexpectedly of a stroke. Now he's lost all will to fight, and the most common answers anyone gives him when he asks "Why God does this shit to him" is... as you might expect...

Yeah.

I mean, Mr. Erickson - the guy I was writing about - he always used to say he'd retire from teaching when they dragged him out of the school, he loved it that much. But then his second partner died(the first had died many years ago) without warning one night. Then a few months later his father died suddenly. Next thing you know, he's retiring, and the people who were close to the situation said that he had just changed....didn't have it in him anymore to teach, it was like all the wind was knocked out of his sails. He quit the school, and a year later, quit the theater he'd spent decades with. And he kinda just faded away. And when he got diagnosed, he didn't fight it, didn't want to go through all that hell and die anyway. I cross my fingers that whatever we find on the other side is something good, but I don't know, and I resent people telling me that THEY know just because they're part of some big religious club that tells them what they want to hear.