In God we trust

24/09/2007 by Lee.

I was watching TV last night and a person in a documentary was talking about having God in their life and what a difference it made to them. There was lots of, “If God hadn’t been with me I don’t know how I would have got through it” and several instances of, “I know the Lord is with me.” all thrown in for good measure. When asked if she would like to go to university she said that yes she would, “God willing”.

Bollocks

If you want to go to university, study! Do well in your exams, work hard in school don’t leave it to the whim of some notional deity. I couldn’t live my life with the thought that someone else (God) was in control and no matter what I did it was someone else’s choice whether it succeeded or not. When I drive my car, I drive it, nobody else, me. If we were to take this attitude and apply it to all of life we simply wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning. If God wants me to get up he’ll lift me from my bed.

This is simply an abdication of responsibility. By blaming life’s ups and downs on a deity you are absolving yourself of any culpability for your actions. If a gunman was to go wild in a shopping centre somewhere killing or wounding innocent people and then claim that God told him to do it, we’d think him mad. Yet if somebody commits a more rational act and claims that God told them to do it that seems acceptable. Why is there this double standard? Is it because God wouldn’t tell someone to go on a killing spree? The self same God that the bible tells us is vengeful, not above wiping out a town or two, sending plague and pestilence upon the Earth and condemning those that don’t agree with Him to a hellish fiery inferno for the rest of eternity?

Challenge any believer on this and the usual reply is something about a test of faith, you can’t prove that it isn’t the will of God. Again, bollocks. I could claim a stone told me to do things, after-all you can’t prove otherwise, it’s simply a test of my faith in the stone.

If you need to believe that someone else is running your life then you have a bigger weakness than any deity can help you with. If you feel that everything that happens to you is of someone else’s choosing then you need to take a long hard look at yourself. Did you agree with the invasion of Iraq? George Dubya claims that God told him to do it, you think he’d have told you it was OK too, after-all if it is all God’s will, you think He’d aim for a more consistent message.

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