I recently came across Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show, and since I'm a nerd, I read it. It had an intresting short story in it called To Know All Things That Are In The Earth, where the rapture finally comes and people are all taken away like it says in the bible. Except that the people taken away weren't necesarily good Christians. Along with some Christians, they were Hindus, Jews, Baptists, and even some Scientologists (in one part it mentions Tom Cruise was taken away whilst in the middle of a filming). Good people, bad people, old people, young people, rich people, and poor people were taken in a way that seemed random. And the idea about this is very intresting, stated by one character: "Maybe the gap between Human intelligence and God's mind is still too large. Just because the selection process seemed random to us dosen't mean it dosen't follows a pattern that we can't understand."
The point I'm trying to make here is related to Nate saying that God does the right thing on the universal scale. We may not understand why it's not right to give me a million dollars since I was nice guy for a full year, or give the truly-fucked country of Africa peace, or letting scientists find the cure for AIDs, or other noble things that will benefit people and make life better. But in God's divine sight, where he can literally see the Big Picture, the reason it hasn't happened yet is because it would eventually be the wrong thing to do for some factor or another. Perhaps curing AIDs now means some terrible dictator will live and oppress humanity when he otherwise would have died in childbirth. Or perhaps my million dollars will end up in the hands of Cuban drug lords somehow or another. God is literally playing Universal Chess, and he sees so far ahead that he is willing to possibly sacrifice all his pawns to get the win in the end. So if bad things happen here and there (like a Holocaust, or a epidemic that makes us all slavering ghouls craving human flesh), won't it be worth it if the end is that Holy Grail: Rightness?
So basically, the perception I'm seeing here is that in God's view, the end justifies the means. While that necessarily isn't a bad thing, it makes me think: Where's the end? Or are we just the 1st or 2nd pawn in the game? How far away is that end of Rightness?
While I could probably go on about this all day, it's sort of late and I have to get up early tommorow (which by the way never happens during school breaks like I'm having right now). Plus, this is seriously undermining my image of being agnostic, since I'm at least making this assuming God is real.
Last edited by mitsur; 01-01-2009 at 10:02 PM..
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