No

by Paul Bovis

Created on: February 02, 2011

"When good men die their goodness does not perish, but lives though they are gone. As for the bad, all that was theirs dies and is buried with them."                                  Euripides

Have you ever pondered the point that if there were no religion what the world and people’s attitudes would be like? Think about it for a few moments and then consider the following.

To know God we have to be taught it, we as children have to follow our parents into the unknown abyss every Sunday as well as that fellowship meeting or, annual committee meeting, Harvest Festival and all the rest of the hype that goes with religious sects and meetings.  This includes baptizing us into a religion that we probably do not want, admitted some followings have a dedication process where, when you’re old enough you can choose to stay or choose to do something else. However all religion is an indoctrination as is life through the medium we are raised.

Whatever it is you choose or find yourself doing, is a result of learning or being taught, not many people unfortunately step outside the box of given direction. The only distraction from the thought and practice you grow up in is that infernal devil Satan.  He gets preached to us more than any other doctrine throughout the world.  In fact he is in some cases the most revered thing in the Christian world, well you would think so by how much space he is given in sermons and articles.

It is this very reason that inspired me to write whilst viewing an article on the opposite of this theme and the person writing was so obsessed by the devil that he/she wrote an article in excess of three thousand words on how and why Satan torments. This so ups my anti in disbelief that a so called God fearing Christian can give so much creedence to Satan. I ask myself at times like this, “Who are people with this obsession giving the most thought to and respect if Satan is true?” What makes them so paranoid that their fear of satan overwhelms the love of God?

You know, it’s a funny thing how we can look back over history, with religions and mythology, even works by people such as Plato, Aristotle, and many others. Some works and texts are accepted without clarification and others need too much assurance.  The Bible for instance really does come under the scrutineer’s headlamp; being highlighted here and there, as if three words or more carry a whole generation of truth, if not a lifetime.  Then someone comes along and uses the same verse with the same amount of passion in the opposite. I shake my head in utter disbelief at these eventualities and cry, “What is truth Lord?”

I like the Bible and its many stories of wisdom and I see reason and sense in most of it, though some can be hard to decipher as they are in contradiction of one’s education.  One part I do like and it is in conjunction with this topic we are addressing is about Jesus and temptation. Firstly though, I would like to address something from the Old Testament.

Le 16:8 And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats; one lot for the LORD, and the other lot for the scapegoat.

Le 16:10 But the goat, on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat, shall be presented alive before the LORD, to make an atonement with him, and to let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness.

Oh! How mankind hates to take responsibility for his own errors in society and it is no more so today than was back in the days of the travelers through the wilderness.  What hope do we have today, so many thousands of years ahead with this sort of indoctrination built in to our genes, generation by generation at whatever religious gathering you choose?

We may laugh at the picture drawn by the words of yesteryear with the goat being run into the wilderness with a package of excuses tied to its back and probably became a free feed for a lonely nomad on the road to wherever. So why should we not laugh at the concept of Satan these days; is he not one and the same as the goat?  Does not modern day effigies and depiction of Satan’s head pattern that of a goat covered in blood? Is Satan nothing but a scapegoat for our excuses and lack of responsibility toward our own ability to be wrong? But wait, wasn’t satan a serpent? Please don’t get me wrong though I mock, I know the depiction of Satan is much bigger and deeper than this or is it?

I go back to the beginning of this article where I ask or say, “To know God we have to be taught it.” And where I ask think about it; did you?  If you did, what you will probably find is that you cannot determine a world without these concepts because you are part of the inauguration process of mankind and his distinctions on life limited by and through blinkered religious education.

What we can do however is to analyze our own life, look where we put God first, look where our wrongs are, admit how much is you and not Satan and then wrongs of the world last.  Look to see how we determine wrong and where we lay the blame?  Do we for instance blame satan (small ‘s’ because that’s all it’s worth) for our mishaps in life? Or do we face up to these anomalies and our mistakes?

Logically, if you look at God and accept God as the great creator (which was primarily Jesus’ teaching) without deviance from that perception; then you will accept that all things are in God’s control or established by a certain order for his creation to grow, with or without Him. Satan, man’s escape from responsibility then becomes the same as today’s perception of the scapegoat, ‘laughable.’ The choice is ours, the mistakes made; the evil road we walk or choose is our choice, not satan’s or God’s.  We are the ones that are maturing through a spiritual life system whilst materially bound on this earth and any temptation is a figment of one’s imagination manifested into reality.

Jesus said in one of his teachings about lust, “We can experience anything in this world, we can experience the whole thing in our minds, we do not have to experience it physically and commit a wrong.” (My interpretation)

Did not Jesus get taken in spirit to the top of the mountain and suffer temptation? He knew in his mind that he had a power at his finger tips that could make or break his journey. He could have been king in those days and other than the religious leaders of the time, no one would have stopped him.  He also knew that if he dashed himself on the rocks below, it would achieve nothing other than a sure death and did not allow his own thoughts to betray him as so many do when they find themselves in a powerful ego struggle within.

Note Jesus was taken in the spirit, it was a mental exercise, he was able to deliberate, experience and reject all in the space of a nano second. “Get yea behind me satan,” were his words to us all in explanation and to do when we find ourselves being tempted by our own ego, our own need for recognition, our own lust for material gain. Jesus gave it a name; mankind manifested it to a being.

Mankind has had to live this dualism of life to ascertain the good within him, he was too weak to say no and shorten the days.  Other cultures and practices have recorded and also made known these facts. In fact man has tried to destroy this wisdom time and time again replacing facts with wild dreams of an apocalypse a second coming, and satan. Mankind wants to see blood and thunder roaring from the heavens and for his precious pious soul to be lifted up as a saved one.  No man alive on this planet or ever lived could fill the shoes of a deity he proclaims he is like, no one, not a one.  But in the eyes of God we are all his children and Satan if he was but real?

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