Sunday, July 09, 2006

thoughts?

the big question:

If God is not a big candy-giver-outer, then why do we follow him?
-what is in it for us?
-what do we offer him?

4 Comments:

Blogger Michelle said...

I'll go first...

I follow God because
1. I believe that there is a God

2. I believe that he had a human son called Jesus who was crucified and then came back to life, and now reigns in heaven next to God.

3. I believe that i'm a pretty disloyal daughter and I know that God could not tolerate my being his child without some sort of offering for my bad behaviour - hence Jesus' sacrifice

(i guess those are pretty standard reasons)

4. because both my head and my heart know this to be the truth. Often my head doesn't believe it, but my heart knows it, or my heart doesn't feel it but my head knows it. Sometimes the two are in unison, and this is wonderful.

5. God is still there, and still listens to me when i get depressed, or upset, or life seems to crash in.

6. Look around you. If God didn't create the marvellous human body, and beautiful world then how boring!


What does God get out of my following him?
-i guess he gets the same feeling that a mother gets when her child hugs her and says 'thankyou Mum, i appreciate all you've done in my life, and for still loving me regardless of what I do. I'm going to use the love you give me to love other people"

hehe. i just answered my own questions. anyway i was just wondering. Like when life doesn't always seem that good - like for Stanley or me when our friends kill themselves, and we think where was God? but its good to know i still have my reasons for following God, and that its not just a habit.

1:04 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I follow God because he is good. And good is good, and worth following.

-Maybe I'll be rewarded because I follow God, maybe I won't. It doesn't matter. Following God is doing good, and that is good.

-What do we offer him? Well, he's good, so us doing good is naturally good for him.

Ultimately there's a type of unity, as my goals and his goals become one. He wants good, I want good. So by following him, we both satisfy this goal together.

1:59 pm  
Blogger Rebel Heart said...

for me personally, because of the fear of going to Hell if i don't (my head knows God is real but my heart doesn't love Him)

like the child, if they don't love the mother they get disowned. but it was the mum's fault for creating them in the first place. it might be sweet growing up here in a Western world but you should read a book called "First they killed my father" about growing up in left-wing Cambodia, where they hate their parents for giving birth to them 'cos of the shitty lives they have to go through. you certainly wouldn't love your parents if they force you to live in a crappy world, you can imagine how much your kids would hate you if you were living in a third world country, i mean, how dare you decide to have a kid and make them live on a spoonful of rice a day. God should never have created us humans, just look at all the suffering around us, but since He has, we just have to bear through it and according to Islam He will make up for it when we go to Heaven, and be dipped in healing waters which will wash away all our worldly pain and compensate us for all our sadness that we had no choice but to take here on earth

as for the sinners who did not kiss Mohammad's ass and fight the Jihad, they will be burnt with hellfire and it will be as if they never felt a single blessing before in their lives

9:24 am  
Blogger Kat said...

Hm... these days for me it's a combination of the following factors:

-I am in love with Good and want to pursue it, and believe that God is its source and goal - somewhat like Nato described.

-I'm used to it, having grown up (whether by nature or nurture or both) with a default setting that pursuing God and His ways is the way to do life, such that I feel out of harmony with myself when I do otherwise.

-I have a fear of breaking off with the community of His followers that has raised me and where I feel at home.

-The love I feel for the people around me and the conviction that, somehow, following God will show me the way to help them and ease the pain I feel when they are hurting.

-There's some kind of drive in me that wants to uncover the mystery, that senses that there's something great and glorious out there that I want to explore and live and breathe. Like a great big cosmic carrot on a stick.

Not particularly noble or doctrinally prescribed reasons, I think, but when I look into myself that's what I find at the moment, for better or for worse.

As for what we offer Him... I really don't know. Maybe when I have kids I'll start to have some idea. For the moment, I guess I have no choice but to take it on faith, or rather on logic I guess, that He must have had some reason ('reason' possibly the wrong word but I don't know a better one) for creating us. I'll find out some day, and at this point in my life it doesn't particularly bother me that I don't understand that aspect, as God is so far beyond our understanding, and it seems like the kind of thing that we don't particularly need to know in order to do what's right.

4:05 pm  

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