You've forgotten about the Devil
Submitted by Heather on July 07 1999 at 19:59:59
In reply to Sorry...that don't cut the mustard Submitted by Triple Q on July 07 1999 at 19:11:21
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Okay, maybe not a guy in red tights, but the older I get (she says sagaciously), the more I think that, if one believes in the forces of light, one must also believe in the forces of darkness. So get this – the Israelites are wandering along, looking for a new homeland. Moses goes up onto the mountain, dreams or has a vision (take your pick), and a voice says to him, "Thou shalt not kill" (which, perhaps, pricks a little guilt in the recovering offender). Moses comes back the next day and puts forward an embryonic form of the Ten Commandments (in good, liberal fashion I'm going to assume that the Jewish law evolved over time). Then someone says, "Where will we go when we get out of the deserts? All of the lands ahead are taken." So Moses goes up to the mountain again, and a voice whispers to him, "Kill them. Kill all of the people in those lands, and I'll give the lands to you." Now, the million dollar question is: How does Moses know that the second voice is the same as the first voice? Actually, I'm not sure whether the early books of the Bible are history or legend or both, but I can easily conceive that if they were history, something like that might have happened – Moses and his followers, eager to follow their own selfish path, paid attention to the whisperings of the dark, convincing themselves that these were the whispering of the light. If you want to put it in secular terms (and I assume that you might), messages that we get from the subconscious can draw us toward good or they can draw us toward evil, but the messages often sound just the same. "Lucifer" means "light-bearer." The fact that the Jews gradually came to realize the error of their view of God – and, by the way, the Jews wrote the Hebrew Bible, not the Christians :) – is amply testified to in the latter part of the Old Testament; you might appreciate the passage below, which is one of my favorites (for its subtle humor, if nothing else). Heather And the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time, saying, "Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee." So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days' journey. And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he cried, and said, "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown." So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them. For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, "Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water: but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?" And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not. But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry. And he prayed unto the Lord, and said, "I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil. Therefore now, O Lord, take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live." Then said the Lord, "Doest thou well to be angry?" So Jonah went out of the city, and sat on the east side of the city, and there made him a booth, and sat under it in the shadow, till he might see what would become of the city. And the Lord God prepared a gourd, and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head, to deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd. But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered. And it came to pass, when the sun did arise, that God prepared a vehement east wind; and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted, and wished in himself to die, and said, "It is better for me to die than to live." And God said to Jonah, "Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd?" And he said, "I do well to be angry, even unto death." Then said the Lord, "Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night: and should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?" |