Religion and hypocrisy?

[JarodRussell]

I noticed it lately (more than usually anyway). We (the general "we") all say we believe in (a) God. Everyone goes to church, everyone prays when something bad happens. When a child gets kidnapped, hundreds of people go to church and pray that everything turns out to be alright. When a catastrophe occurs, everyone prays for the victims.

But when someone actually says that he did something because God told him to, then EVERYONE rolls eyes and doesn't believe it.

Why is that? Belief only goes so far, I presume? We all seem to know it's useless, we all know that someone who thinks he heard the voice of God is crazy, but we all pray anyway, and hope for the better. But when someone actually says he got a reply, everyone thinks it's just his imagination.

This is... funny, to say the least.

Moreover, how do people think catastrophes like volcanoes and earth quakes correlate to God? I mean, if someone puts up the schedule of catastrophes, isn't it God himself? So why do I go to church to pray to the orchestrator of a tragic event? Is it like begging "Please don't do this again?"
Or do we think that God doesn't have anything to do with earthquakes and all the suffering? But what is praying good for then? Why would he do anything about the aftermath of an event that he didn't care for to begin with?
And when someone dies, and everyone says to the surviving member of the family stuff like "We pray for you", isn't that a little too late?


How many of you people really believe? Or are you aware of the fact that praying is first and foremost a method to reflect about your own problems by talking to yourself, and that on the other end nobody else listens but you? Do you really start praying when you hear that a child got kidnapped or that an earthquake destroyed an entire country. How do you think this helps the victims? Do you really expect the hand of God to come down and save them from further suffering?

I think you already know that I don't. So I'm wondering if you do, and why you do, and how far your faith really goes.

Cheers,
Jarod

 

[auntiehill]

I don't and never have, not even as a child. I remember losing a childhood friend over it, when I was in first grade or thereabouts. She lost her favorite doll and was terribly upset. But rather than look for it, she fell to her knees and started to pray.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"I'm praying that God will bring my doll back."

I stood there, dumbfounded, and said, "You know that's not going to work, right? You have to get up and look for it yourself."

I offered to help her look for it, but she was so mad at me for questioning God that we weren't friends any more.

I've never believed, and probably never will. It might have made life easier if I did, as lots of people seem to get comfort from it, but I never understood religion in any form. And sadly, even in America, openly being an Atheist makes you an outcast, an untrustworthy or immoral villain, especially south of the Mason-Dixon.

 

[FordSVT]

I'll go so far as to say that a belief in prayer and spirituality was probably an essential part of our evolution and social progression as a species. There is also some documented evidence that the so-called "power of prayer" is helpful when recovering from injury or sickness, but only in the way it acts as a placebo. Similar effects can also be seen with meditation and visualization though, so it's not exclusive or necessary to achieve the same results.

I wouldn't give two shits about what people believed religiously if they weren't so busy trying to ram it down other people's throats. In Canada, people tend to, more often than not, keep their business to themselves and leave other people alone. Live and let live and all that. And religion is pretty much a hands-off topic in politics, the first whiff the public gets of a party trying to legislate by the Bible and they'd be gone, whether it was a Conservative or Liberal party. More people should act this way, IMHO, and stop worrying so damned much that everyone else is going to go to hell but people like them.

 

[K'Ehleyr]

I don't believe in any god ~ I have enough trouble believing in myself sometimes.

 

[Kirkman1987]

I Don't believe there is a god, although you are likely asking this question of those here who do believe.

I go to church once a year for my girlfriend's family christmas service and I dread it. I'm respecting of others having beliefs, but so much of Religion and the concept of god itself just offend me. I can't believe so many people can accept things like that in into their worldview. The whole thing is so obvious to me as wish fulfillment or a way of establishing order to a chaotic universe

anyway, I'm not really too much on topic

Obviously as an Athiest, I don't see the point in praying

 

[sojourner]

If it helps any, I roll eyes at both the prayers and the people that get replies.

Even if there is a god I think humanity should fix it's own problems.

 

[Saga]

I don't believe in any god ~ I have enough trouble believing in myself sometimes.

same here.

 

[TerokNor]

I don´t really believe, my doubts are too strong for faith. However I hope for more ( may it be called God..angels... energy... whatever)...and sometimes I also fear it...and sometimes I imagine to feel it...but it can be just that..imagening, nothing real.
That there is more we can see, hear etc. we know...we can only percieve what we can with the biology we have. Others have different perceptions. So who knows what many things we cannot see, besides the things we know we cannot perceive, like certain sounds etc.
I do sometimes speak to God or Jesus, but I always doubt them to the same time, and tell them that too. However I am not religious. I don´t think religion and "believing or hoping in something more" is the same....the word religion has such a political, war etc. taste to it. Then again I am in the church on the paper...here it may be hypocrisy, cause I need it for work. I also actually like being in a church, because it has so much history and it is so calm, so...don´t know, but I don´t like that the different religions have fought and fight with each other so much.
I want to believe in the rainbow bridge and in heaven, because that gives me comfort and a way of coping better with the death of loved ones...on the other hand I don´t want to believe in hell..or if so maybe hell is what people make for themselves, but nothing they get thrown into. Still one cannot be sure...even one time I saw something when being without consciousness...it was beaustiful, but real or a trick of my mind? No idea. I guess it doesn´t hurt someone to imagine there is a place were we all meet again, so that there is no Good bye forever...and if there is nothing, then I will not realize it when I am dead anyway.

.... Yeah..so... "I hope" may describe it best.

TerokNor

 

[iguana_tonante]

If praying to God doesn't work, people could as well pray to me.

 

[Amaris]

Whatever someone wishes to believes does not bother me in the slightest, as long as they do not try to take away or limit the rights of others to believe as they wish. Back in high school all those many moons ago, I was quite the fundamentalist Christian who believed God talked to him all the time. There were other Christians who thought I was nuts because when I prayed, I expected an answer. No faith is monolithic, and each person is going to have their own idea what (the) God(s) thinks or how (the) God(s) is supposed to communicate.

 

[K'Ehleyr]

I don't believe in any god ~ I have enough trouble believing in myself sometimes.

same here.

If praying to God doesn't work, people could as well pray to me.

Praetor, I have found our saviour ~ it is the Great iguana_tonante.
I just hope he doesn't want money or ritual suicide

 

[gturner]

In Canada, people tend to, more often than not, keep their business to themselves and leave other people alone. Live and let live and all that. And religion is pretty much a hands-off topic in politics, the first whiff the public gets of a party trying to legislate by the Bible and they'd be gone, whether it was a Conservative or Liberal party.

That doesn't surprise me in the least. Canadians, especially Canadian politicians, are reluctant to acknowledge their subservience to God as the highest power, because He lives in the US.

 

[JarodRussell]

Whatever someone wishes to believes does not bother me in the slightest, as long as they do not try to take away or limit the rights of others to believe as they wish. Back in high school all those many moons ago, I was quite the fundamentalist Christian who believed God talked to him all the time.

So what happened?

 

[Brent]

I'll answer the post in greater detail a bit later, very busy right now, just want to chime in on the notion of hypocrisy in religion specifically.

I think people look at religious people as hypocrites because they too sin or fall short of God, and thus do bad things too or screw up really badly sometimes. One thing to keep in mind is that even when one is saved by grace through faith, that doesn't mean they are magically perfect and incapable of sin. It does not make one all the sudden capable of doing no wrong. In fact, what it does is means that God has forgiven your sin, through Jesus, but we are still at our nature sinful people, we are still with sin, we will still sin, we will still fall short of God, and we will still do bad things, our hearts will be tempted by the Devil. So when someone who is "saved" really screws up and seems like a hypocrite, its not that they are a hypocrite, its just that by nature we are still sinners just like everyone else and we aren't going to magically be perfect, sin cannot be escaped on this Earth in human form.

That may or may not be the topic of this thread, just wanted to put that out there since it is in the subject of the thread. I'll post in more detail later to the OP.

 

[Amaris]

Whatever someone wishes to believes does not bother me in the slightest, as long as they do not try to take away or limit the rights of others to believe as they wish. Back in high school all those many moons ago, I was quite the fundamentalist Christian who believed God talked to him all the time.

So what happened?

Well, that lasted for a while, a long while, even as I passed from ultra conservative fundamentalist to a more open minded and moderate faith. I believed that God would communicate with me directly. Nothing on the line of the national news or a Sylvia Brown, just personal stuff, like a letter between friends.

I believed this because I believed in the idea of a living God who still had a hand in people's lives. That belief remained right up until about the age of 21, when I started becoming more esoteric, following a more mystic form of the faith. That became progressively naturalistic and interpretive, to the point where God spoke through other things rather than through a physical voice that I could hear. God could speak through the trees, the wind, your friend, a stranger, there was no limit, and suddenly God was speaking through everything.

That went on for quite a number of years, about 7 in all.

 

[Saga]

I don't believe in any god ~ I have enough trouble believing in myself sometimes.

same here.

If praying to God doesn't work, people could as well pray to me.

Praetor, I have found our saviour ~ it is the Great iguana_tonante.
I just hope he doesn't want money or ritual suicide

but they always want money or suicide. its always 'gimme your money. ok, now drink this kool-aid.'

 

[STR]

But when someone actually says that he did something because God told him to, then EVERYONE rolls eyes and doesn't believe it.

Not really, it just depend on what precisely the person says. A lot of people say "God called them to serve" or "God showed me the way." Which is basically saying that after reading scripture, and meditating on what they want, and what they think God wants them to do. Often the individual will come to a realization, which they feel has divine inspiration. Basically, God planted the seed, and they individual nurtured it into something positive (at least from the perspective of that individual finding a purpose in life), and ultimately personal. They don't claim to know more about the world than you do. They're not telling the world to live like them. They're not trying to sell you something.

Now, the people that claim either a 2-way conversation with God, or that God literally spoke to them (ala Moses), or received divine instruction to spread to the world, are usually spouting their own (often extreme) views and are merely using God to pump up something that otherwise no one cares about (everyone thinks that if they were emperor of earth, things would be working better). So they're not dismissing God, they're dismissing a snake-oil salesman that doesn't have the gravitas, or the good thinking, to hold his own water.

People aren't that gullible. That's why they roll their eyes at the "jiving preacher." Plus, it's pretty damn arrogant to proclaim that you, a nobody, are somehow in the same rarefied air as an ancient and renowned prophet. People don't like that either.

 

[RandyS]

If it helps any, I roll eyes at both the prayers and the people that get replies.

Prayers get replies? Since when? I stopped praying years ago because I never got nothing.

When did God start answering??

 

[JarodRussell]

But when someone actually says that he did something because God told him to, then EVERYONE rolls eyes and doesn't believe it.

Not really, it just depend on what precisely the person says. A lot of people say "God called them to serve" or "God showed me the way." Which is basically saying that after reading scripture, and meditating on what they want, and what they think God wants them to do. Often the individual will come to a realization, which they feel has divine inspiration. Basically, God planted the seed, and they individual nurtured it into something positive (at least from the perspective of that individual finding a purpose in life), and ultimately personal. They don't claim to know more about the world than you do. They're not telling the world to live like them. They're not trying to sell you something.

Now, the people that claim either a 2-way conversation with God, or that God literally spoke to them (ala Moses), or received divine instruction to spread to the world, are usually spouting their own (often extreme) views and are merely using God to pump up something that otherwise no one cares about (everyone thinks that if they were emperor of earth, things would be working better). So they're not dismissing God, they're dismissing a snake-oil salesman that doesn't have the gravitas, or the good thinking, to hold his own water.

People aren't that gullible. That's why they roll their eyes at the "jiving preacher." Plus, it's pretty damn arrogant to proclaim that you, a nobody, are somehow in the same rarefied air as an ancient and renowned prophet. People don't like that either.

Hey, it's not like Jesus was a VIP, he also was a nobody. They believe in a guy born 2000 years ago being the direct son of God, who got killed and returned from the dead, but they wouldn't believe a guy who says he just had a direct conversation with him?

 

[Owain Taggart]

I don't and never have, not even as a child. I remember losing a childhood friend over it, when I was in first grade or thereabouts. She lost her favorite doll and was terribly upset. But rather than look for it, she fell to her knees and started to pray.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"I'm praying that God will bring my doll back."

I stood there, dumbfounded, and said, "You know that's not going to work, right? You have to get up and look for it yourself."

I offered to help her look for it, but she was so mad at me for questioning God that we weren't friends any more.

I've never believed, and probably never will. It might have made life easier if I did, as lots of people seem to get comfort from it, but I never understood religion in any form. And sadly, even in America, openly being an Atheist makes you an outcast, an untrustworthy or immoral villain, especially south of the Mason-Dixon.

I had a similar experience, except that I witnessed a family get split over it, which I felt really sad. So not only did I lose a friend, but a family I knew well. We had known them for years. My Dad had taught his parents. So what happened was that the father was deeply religious while the mother wasn't, and the father was taking my friend to bible study. The father would make him recite bible passages. Eventually I heard that they had split up because the mother couldn't take it anymore, and couldn't see her child be indoctrinated like that. So, they split up and then moved away and I lost a friend. I've never been able to see religion the same way after that. I was heartbroken, just seeing something like that happen. Religion isn't everything in life, and it shouldn't destroy families.