Disclaimer: I firmly believe that any Heaven run by a God that would threaten you with Hell, is no Heaven at all. Nor do I find myself a fan of the fire and brimstone/Armageddon motif. Though it puts me in contrast with the Bible, the “vengeful” bent in God is way overplayed. Now I know about the banishment from the Garden of Eden, the 40 Day Flood and a whole host of plagues yet still don’t see God as an arm-twisting, leg-braking destructive deity. Sorry, I just don’t see God as a bully.
You sure wouldn’t know it of late. If something bad is happening in the world, God is the instigator, the perpetrator and the culprit.
Pat Robertson targets God as the cause of destruction in Haiti, Rush Limbaugh votes God the cause of the Volcano eruption in Iceland. Last month Islamic clerics claimed that provocatively dressed young women provoked God to unleash the recent rash of earthquakes, and now Governor Rick Perry accuses God of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill while British Petroleum lays it on “the Lord.” Massive numbers still blame God for the Indonesian Tsunami. Talk about ruining a reputation with slander and libel. Wow.
When it comes to natural disasters, do we always have to find a super-natural power to lay it on? At the very least, couldn’t someone accuse Satan of any of this crap; the Devil made the earth do it?
Since the earliest days of humankind, cavemen and cavewomen saw lightning hit a tree and decried the heavenly deity of their day. Zuess with his lightning bolt, Poseidon with his trident is an old literary feature. Wouldn’t you think we could have grown up a bit, perhaps surrender ancient myths of God’s wrath and mayhem?
Seems to me the only ones still bent on “highlighting” God’s coercion are those that do so purely for their own benefit. They threaten and intimidate because it is their “will be done” and it has nothing to do with God.
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Ask Sakineh Why Iran Must Never Obtain a Nuclear Weapon
Warning: This post contains nauseating content.
Imagine, for a moment, burying a person in the dirt up to their collarbones. Then, with an utterly defenseless human neck and face exposed, you pick up a baseball-sized rock or bigger and hurl it with enough force to begin inflicting the slow process of death. The skull, the jaw, the cheeks, they eyes, the nose and teeth all targets for a group of evil sadists. Unimaginable pain must certainly match the horrific inhumanity of a stoning.
Your eyes swell shut, your teeth battered and bleeding as your jaw and nose fracture, your skull cracks open yet the pain only builds. Never before has death been so recruited and welcomed.
Think about it.
What person, what government, what religion could stomach and sanction such brutal savagery? What absolute dearth of a being could do such a thing? That type of vicious, depraved cruelty takes a unique mammal to perpetrate, one certainly devoid of any human trait of compassion or empathy.
As we watch the horror of the Sakineh Mohammadie Ashtiani sentencing unfold, remember that any country engaging in such cruel and wicked “justice” would not think twice about inflicting sever pain, suffering and violent death on “the others” they contrive to be guilty. The next time you hear of UN actions, the United Nations Security Council and their “sanctions with teeth” against the Iran’s nuclear ambitions, please remember this.
Once you cross the hell-drawn line of satanically killing with a handful of rocks, hurling a rocket is a layup.
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