Worldwide Discussion:
BILLIONS THINK THEY ALREADY
KNOW WHAT GOD WANTS
What God Wants is not unimportant information. Millions of people all over the world have been living their lives based on the information they have been given about What God Wants, and if the world’s prior information on this topic is inaccurate, the world could be in big trouble.
The world’s prior information on this topic is inaccurate.
The world is in big trouble.
The world does not have to be in big trouble. It is because it chooses to be. Its people could make a different choice.
I think that very soon they will. I think people have had enough. They’ve had enough of the violence and the terror and the killing. They’ve had enough of the bickering and the quarreling and the fighting that leads to it.
They’ve had enough of their own lives not working, of seeing their own relationships falling apart, of watching their own careers crumble, of having their own dreams dissolve and disappear.
They’ve had enough of everything being such a struggle in our world, with every day filling itself with adversity and difficulty all over the globe. They’ve had enough of human society taking two steps forward and one step back, constantly, constantly, constantly trudging into the wind.
The human race is losing patience with itself. People everywhere are saying, “There’s got to be another way.” And we’re becoming more and more clear that there is. Humanity’s problem, as it seeks to find that other way, is that people simply do not know What God Wants. They think that they do. Billions think that they do. But they do not.
If you find that hard to believe, consider this: If humanity does understand What God Wants, and if the present world situation is the best that humanity can do after all these years with that information, how much hope can there be for a brighter tomorrow?
If we really know everything that it is truly important to know about God—and if all that has been revealed, all that has been taught, all that has been said and sung about God has brought humanity to this, then what good has all of it been?
Yet if there is something new for us to learn, something more for us to understand about God, then it’s still possible for the human condition to change. Hope returns. Not hope for something better in the Hereafter, when life as we’ve known it on the earth has been destroyed, but hope for something better right here right now, before everything has been destroyed.
That hope cannot be realized, however, until some very important questions are asked and answered.
Is it true that humanity is utterly stubborn, completely unwilling and absolutely unable to overcome its most primitive instincts? Or is it possible that there is still some teaching left to be done, some data still missing, some important aspect of God and Life still not understood?
Could it be that the problem is not with the receivers of the information, but with the information itself?
Could it be that humanity’s understanding of God and of Life is not so much “wrong” as it is simply incomplete?
Finally, is it time for humanity to throw open the door to inquiry about God in a new way?
For far too long the world’s discussion about God has been moving in only one direction, led in the main by those who say that we understand all there is that’s really important for us to understand about God, and who assert that humanity’s problems are not caused by human beings who fail to understand, but by human beings who fail to act on their understanding.
This is a popular notion, but it’s a misconception. Just the opposite has been true. It has been people who did act on what they understood about God who have caused many of our biggest problems.
These are people who thought they knew What God Wants.
This is Part II of an extended series of headline stories in The Global Conversation.
It’s people who thought they knew What God Wants who created the 200 years of the Christian Crusades and the horrors of the Inquisition, seeking to win the world for Christianity.
It’s people who thought they knew What God Wants who told armies of Muslims to send marauders far and wide to conquer every land and culture and bring it under the Nation of Islam.
It’s people who thought they knew What God Wants who called themselves the Chosen People and reclaimed land they declared to be originally their own, ignoring the fact that history had caused it to be inhabited for thousands of years by others, and telling those others to now leave portions of that land, and to live when and how they are told to live, as second class citizens without equal rights in their own home.
It’s people who thought they knew What God Wants who hanged men and women in town squares, and burned others at the stake, holding up the Good Book and declaring them to be witches.
It’s people who thought they knew What God Wants who passed laws making it illegal for humans of differing races to marry, or for consenting adults to engage in certain sexual practices.
It’s people who thought they knew What God Wants who created cultural prohibitions forbidding people to sing or dance, draw pictures of any person, or play music of any kind except sacred songs.
It’s people who thought they knew What God Wants who said that it was not okay to even utter or write the name of G-D—but that it was okay to kill in G-D’s name.
Is all of this really What God Wants?
Are you sure?
It is important to be sure, because we are not talking about a small thing here.
There is much that we have been taught about What God Wants. Are these teachings accurate? We’ll begin to take a look in our next entry here.
(Our exploration of this topic continues in Part III of this extended series, coming very soon. Don’t miss a single entry. And if you wish to catch up on installments that you have missed, simply click on the word HEADLINE in the Categories list at right, then scroll down to find the column you wish to read.)
