Are you "blessed"?

changeling

Font was too small, see new post below...

beksbks

We may be perfect C, but that font is getting awefully small for my old eyes

changeling

Sorry, pasted and copied from "Word" and that's how it turned out. :)

W hen a person makes a good grade on a test, or receives a promotion at work, or escapes harm in an accident, or perhaps lives though a potentially deadly disease, you often hear them thank God. Sometimes they refer to themselves as being “blessed” or having experienced a miracle.

Just the other night, when watching the finale of “So You Think You Can Dance”, I saw the winner jump up and down and excitedly point to the heavens and say: “It was God, it was all God”. I’ve heard victorious football players, lottery winners and even beauty queens say similar things.

I’m sorry, but I don’t think God has anything to do with any of these things. I don’t mean to mock anyone’s faith. If the thought that God and his angels are looking over you and “blessing” you gives you comfort and gets you through the day, be me guest. But I don’t find the concept comforting at all.

The other day I was a having a particularly hard day with my very elderly parents. I sent an email to my aunt in order to vent. She wrote back that I needed to pray very hard to Jehovah for patience.

By the time she responded I had gotten my thoughts and emotions together and given myself a nice little pep talk. I also commiserated with friends I play “werewolf” with. Patience, yes, I need lots of patience, but…where does it come from? Me. Yep, from deep inside my mind. Nobody bestows it on me; and when I lose it, nobody snatches it away. I have the power within myself to gain self control in any given situation and do the right thing. I also have the power to lose my cool. When I do, I have the power to make an apology. When I do the right thing I have myself to thank, and when I don’t, I have myself to blame.

When someone tells me they are “blessed” because they narrowly escaped a near deadly accident, I want to say: “What about those children who died in a car accident last week? Where was their blessing?” The opposite of a blessing is a curse. So, if two people are crossing the street and out of nowhere a car comes and hits and kills one but spares the other, can the survivor claim a blessing? Does this not imply the one who died received a curse? If one child in a hospital room survives leukemia but her roommate with the same condition does not, what does this say about the stand of the dead child with God? And, thinking back on the winner of SYTYCD, why does God care who wins a dance contest, or for that matter, a football game or a beauty pageant? Doesn’t he have bigger fish to fry?

Bottom line: for me, thanking an invisible entity for something you achieved because of hard work, preparation, natural talent, a resilient immune system, picking the right doctor, taking the right meds or even working well with a team, takes away from human accomplishment. It says: humans are puny and can’t do anything without God’s help. One of Jehovah’s Witnesses favorite and most often quoted scriptures, Jeremiah 10:23, expresses this very thought. Why did I ever quote and repeat such drivel? It paints the picture of feeble creatures stumbling around in need of help to direct the very steps. I refuse to look at myself and the rest of humankind in such terms.

We humans have power. The power to learn, even from mistakes, The power to change. The power to make choices. The power to comprehend when we’ve made a poor choice and take another road. The power to help each other. If there is a God, who deliberately created us as the blithering idiots Jeremiah speaks of, I refuse to accept and worship him. Why would a loving parent (as the Bible claims God is), make his children utterly dependent on him?

We are perfect. We have all we need within ourselves.

beksbks

This is one thing that really irritates me. How many people are sitting there with cancer or having lost a child, listening to some fool say they won a sporting event because of gods help? I am not blessed, but I am extremely fortunate.

meangirl

I can't stand it when someone says they are "blessed". It is so pious and frankly just ignorant!

finallysomepride

Me, I'm not blessed in the terms normally thought of.

In 1983 when i was diagnosed with cancer I never prayed for help, I never ever thought that Jehovah would get me throw this, I always thought that if I was going to get through it I would it on my terms. 26 1/2 years later am I blessed. No! I am a survivor.

llbh

If people believe god helped them win an event why participate or train too hard, as it is all in god's hand as he "rolls the dice" so to speak?

When examined empirically these arguments are full of holes. A philosopher on a radio show over here asked two teenagers, one Christian, one Muslim, if they had each others parents from birth, would they have their beliefs too??. This is a very difficult and fundamental point to refute, and raises so many points as to who has the 'correct' belief system.

The further I am from my JW days the more questions I have and have answered, I am oddly enough much calmer too.

Warmest regards

David

Are you "blessed"?

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