By Poch Suzara
I do not believe in the existence of a next world. After death, I do not believe in going to heaven or hell or purgatory or limbo. I do believe, however, that I must try to leave this world one day a much better place than how I found it. Of course I realize this belief is getting harder to materialize as I see our world more wracked in malice, poverty, hate, violence, and wars. Moreover, millions of people around me do not love the same things I love: rivers, lakes, beaches, mountains, trees, flowers, birds, rain forest and; they do not love the potentials of what we human beings can become. Indeed, millions of people around me have only been inspired to substantiate what Jesus preached: “love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any one love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” John 2:15. Such is our Philippines. It is unloved and getting poorer as we, its people, continue to be the victims of religious delusions.
Jesus on the cross cried: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” But why should God forgive man for his sins? Having made man savage and ignorant, how can God hold him guilty? Had Jesus been a philosopher and therefore had knowledge of causes and effects, His prayers would read in reverse: - “ Man, forgive God, for he knows not what he does.” All life attest to this tragic fact, and so the question is not, Will God forgive man for his stupidity? But can man forgive God for his cruelty? That man caused his own suffering through “original sin” is a perversion of the truth. That “sin” was God’s – the original creator of matter, the source of all evil. But God does not suffer for his sins, he lets man do it. Yet Jesus shows no awareness of this brutal fact? Where is the kind word for man, woman, and children of this world? There is none.
Jesus did not confine himself to promoting spiritual results from prayers, but distinctly gave it to be understood that the physical world would respond to petitions to God. “If you have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if you shall say unto the mountain, “Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done. And all things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.” These promises have not been fulfilled. Divine guidance has been misguiding us. Even Jesus himself utterly failed to deliver his own promise to come back to finish his job on this earth.
Jesus gave us the goal, peace and brotherhood, but he did not tell us how to solve the moral, social and economic problems that prevent its attainment. He did not tell us we are still far down the ladder of Evolution and therefore ignorant. He made no mention of savage God-forces here man has to contend with; on the contrary, he offered only the faith of childlike innocence and trust in the supernatural. Jesus was therefore guilty of misdirection of human energies.
A genuine Savior would have taught primitive man that his enemy was not his equally needy brother, but his ruthless, warlike Father – nature if you prefer to call it. This Savior, on the contrary, taught us that his Father alone was good, and therefore should be loved and worshipped. And now considering the time we have wasted on war and worship, it’s little wonder we’re still savage. It’s time man learned he has no time to waste on God, or energies to waste on war. Love, peace on earth, justice, brotherhood – man alone can create these beauties for himself.
But the Savior has taught us to embrace the very opposite. Instead of revealing to us our purpose in creation and responsibility for our world conditions, He tells us to “take no thought” for anything, “for your heavenly Father knoweth your need before ye ask him” – a perfect example of that “false security” under which we have lived. The statement has no literal significance whatsoever. Refuse to take thought for your own welfare and this “heavenly Father” will let you starve. Take no thought for health and hygiene and you die of this “heavenly father’s” murderous bacteria. Take no thought for economic justice and you become a Third World country. Take no thought for political justice and you have a world at war. Caring for these things is precisely our business, and in the present state of the world we see the result of leaving them to God – prayers for peace and incessant wars; the virtuous impoverished, the vicious enriched; while the wealthy parasites loaf and play – this is “divine providence.” What we need is a little human providence: knowledge and intelligence to right these God-ordained wrongs, and a sense of values that will help us help ourselves. In these things divinity is helpless, and uncharted opportunities for humanity are much better than decaying familiarity.
Were honest opinion allowed for just one day, we would learn the most shocking truth – there is not a man among us that would not, if he dared, denounce this ruthless higher power for the suffering it has caused him. Whether the church knows this or not, it is the truth. For my part, I do but make articulate the latent thought of millions: No man loves God, and any man who says he does is a hypocrite and a liar and the truth is not in him. You cannot love what you do not know, and no man knows the God of religion. Why then poison your soul, and the souls of others too with words you know are lies? The least you might do for the human cause is to be honest with yourself; that done, “thou canst not then be false to any man.”
If Jesus on the cross had the courage to have asked Man to forgive God instead of asking God to forgive Man – our world today would be populated by sane men, sane women, and sane children; especially in the Philippines – the only Jesus sweet Jesus country in Asia.
Last 20 posts by pcs
- Why Am I an Atheist - September 12th, 2007
- Science and Religion and Atheism - September 10th, 2007
- Code of Living for Atheists - September 10th, 2007
- Purpose Driven Life - September 7th, 2007
- Thoughts to Provoke Your Thoughts on Rizal - September 3rd, 2007
- Free Will - God’s Greatest Gift to Man ??? - August 14th, 2007
- Jose Rizal Asked - August 11th, 2007
- Oh, Jesus Sweet Jesus - August 8th, 2007
- Filipinos Lost Jose Rizal - July 30th, 2007
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