An open letter to Satanists: Part 3
…I never saw any of that while I was a Satanist. I never fully understood Anton Lavey’s philosophy until I was in my 20’s. Anton’s error was to see religion as God. He saw the lie of religion and the unfairness of life and decided there was no God. I saw the misused authority of my parents and decided THAT was how God was. So often that’s our first grave error in our search for truth. We perceive life through the narrow experiences of our tiny portion of the world and draw our conclusions about the whole universe from that. It’s normal, but it’s also disastrous.
The fact is nearly everyone forces God to fit into his own perception. Even Christians serve a God they perceive rather than the God who truly is. They limit Him according to those special needs of their own psyche. It’s actually hard not to do that, but every time we do, it has consequences. Seeing God for who He is takes effort, and always has one inevitable result that MANY people cannot accept: Our understanding will always fall short. We will always look toward God and eventually say “why” or “I don’t understand this,” about SOMETHING. That often drives people to come up with their own conclusions, their own philosophies, religions, etc. We demand the right to know God with assurance, in every area, but the very fact that He is God precludes that it simply CANNOT be. A glass of water is not capable of holding the ocean. That limitation is hard on our egos.
It’s so much easier to create our own gods; gods that are fully knowable. Those are the gods of atheism, occultism, religion and sometimes even Christianity. Then of course there are those prejudices that we demand of our gods. Women who take offense at a “male” god and so create for themselves a female or neuter god. Then we have all the racial gods, the black gods, white gods and cultural gods, the Spanish gods, African gods, Indian gods, etc. All of them called GOD. And yet none of them are truly Him. Some may be tiny glimpses of Him. Maybe His big toe or little finger, but nothing more. Others are not even that. They’re only delusions from our prejudices.
Getting past all that to see the true GOD, the real creator of the universe took me years. Understanding why the Bible refers to Him as it does is a good place to start. We can’t relate to the Creator as He is. He’s too big. How can an ant relate to a person? How can a grain of sand relate to a desktop computer? The Bible calls God “Father” not because He’s male, but because of the relationship of a father to a child. God is as much female as He is male, and neither. (The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, appearing in the very first chapter of Genesis is female.) To get even close to defining God as He fully is we have to take every role a person plays in our society and add that to God’s title: Father, Mother, friend, king, lord, boss, brother, sister, judge, jury, lawyer, teacher, executioner, savior, etc-etc.
No single image can contain Him. He will fill it up and overflow it until it bursts apart. But realizing THAT very thing about Him is the first step toward seeing Him for who He really is. That one thing alone cuts through much of the prejudiced images. Unfortunately today’s society seems to have gone the other direction. Any image of God is acceptable as God. However you choose to worship God is okay.
No. It’s not.
Because those images are NOT God. They’re empty cups. And this is the basis of everything the Bible calls sin. My gosh this took me years to understand, wading though all the nonsense that so much of “Christianity” is today. There is a reason for all of God’s commands. ONE reason for them all. A very simple one. They are all a matter of LIFE and DEATH.
FAI
The fact is nearly everyone forces God to fit into his own perception. Even Christians serve a God they perceive rather than the God who truly is. They limit Him according to those special needs of their own psyche. It’s actually hard not to do that, but every time we do, it has consequences. Seeing God for who He is takes effort, and always has one inevitable result that MANY people cannot accept: Our understanding will always fall short. We will always look toward God and eventually say “why” or “I don’t understand this,” about SOMETHING. That often drives people to come up with their own conclusions, their own philosophies, religions, etc. We demand the right to know God with assurance, in every area, but the very fact that He is God precludes that it simply CANNOT be. A glass of water is not capable of holding the ocean. That limitation is hard on our egos.
It’s so much easier to create our own gods; gods that are fully knowable. Those are the gods of atheism, occultism, religion and sometimes even Christianity. Then of course there are those prejudices that we demand of our gods. Women who take offense at a “male” god and so create for themselves a female or neuter god. Then we have all the racial gods, the black gods, white gods and cultural gods, the Spanish gods, African gods, Indian gods, etc. All of them called GOD. And yet none of them are truly Him. Some may be tiny glimpses of Him. Maybe His big toe or little finger, but nothing more. Others are not even that. They’re only delusions from our prejudices.
Getting past all that to see the true GOD, the real creator of the universe took me years. Understanding why the Bible refers to Him as it does is a good place to start. We can’t relate to the Creator as He is. He’s too big. How can an ant relate to a person? How can a grain of sand relate to a desktop computer? The Bible calls God “Father” not because He’s male, but because of the relationship of a father to a child. God is as much female as He is male, and neither. (The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, appearing in the very first chapter of Genesis is female.) To get even close to defining God as He fully is we have to take every role a person plays in our society and add that to God’s title: Father, Mother, friend, king, lord, boss, brother, sister, judge, jury, lawyer, teacher, executioner, savior, etc-etc.
No single image can contain Him. He will fill it up and overflow it until it bursts apart. But realizing THAT very thing about Him is the first step toward seeing Him for who He really is. That one thing alone cuts through much of the prejudiced images. Unfortunately today’s society seems to have gone the other direction. Any image of God is acceptable as God. However you choose to worship God is okay.
No. It’s not.
Because those images are NOT God. They’re empty cups. And this is the basis of everything the Bible calls sin. My gosh this took me years to understand, wading though all the nonsense that so much of “Christianity” is today. There is a reason for all of God’s commands. ONE reason for them all. A very simple one. They are all a matter of LIFE and DEATH.
FAI
posted by Jinn at 4:22 PM
5 Comments:
Man Fai, that's a freaking good post you have there. I couldn't agree more, and it's trully edifying to read Sean Seller's story.
Actually though, there is one exception. In the bible, before the fall of man, man knew God and even walked with Him (Gen 3:8). Sadly however, this relationship was broken (Gen 3:14). The fall had corrupted all conceptions of man (and women of course). Sadly, this conceptions include the religion called Christianity. This is proven by the many undeniable historical events like the crusades, or the Roman Catholic Power abuse during the Rennesaunce period - which were supposedly done in the name of the "Lord".
How then can christianity be any different from other religions and faiths? After all, the bible was written by men (men of God nontheless), and the christian faith is practised by fallen man. The quran was also written by man. So was any other religion's doctrines. So what sepparates the chrisitian faith from others?
The answer's simple. The bible (which our whole belief is founded upon btw), was not written by man, but by God. Here's what i mean:
God chose to reveal his revelation to us through the scriptures. These scriptures were written by appointed prophets, apostles, etc. However God was no dictator, and neither was he merely just using them as his personal typewritters. For example, they were allowed freedom of expression (the different styles of writing of the 4 gospels, the Psalms, etc..), they wrote their experiences (which never contradicted each other), and most importantly, all their writtings were God breathed (2timothy 3:16).
So christianity was not merely a concoction of fallen man, but the revealing revelation of God to fallen man himself.
"(The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, appearing in the very first chapter of Genesis is female.)"
Not too sure about this though, as the first mentioning of gender is recoreded as He is Gen1:4.
I like your spelling for the word, 'renaissance'.
noticed how he spelt separate in the 3rd para? ahaha sepparate
wait till i finish... there should be 2 or 3 chapters to go..
Post a Comment
<< Home