Monday, July 31, 2006

Purpose Driven Life

Pastor Rick Warren writes: “Long before you were conceived by your parents, you were conceived in the mind of God.” Imagine a Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Truman, Chiang Kai-Shek, Emperor Hirohito, Noriega of Panama, Batista of Cuba, Somoza of Nicaragua, Diem of South Vietnam, Shah of Iran, Saddam Hussein, Bin Laden, Eisenhower, Nixon, Johnson, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Tony Blair, and Marcos of the Philippines. Imagine also the leaders of other countries too created not only in the mind of God but also installed by the US government to serve the interest of the US military that serves the interest of the rich US armament corporations own by the wealthy few and the powerful in America. Since the time of Jesus, hundreds of billions people already lived and died on this earth. Among them were the Christians, the Jews, and the Muslims. They lived hating and died cutting each other’s throats in God’s name and for His glory in heaven. For my part, I find it incredible to believe that the children of the Christians, the children of the Jews, and the children of the Muslims were once all conceived in the mind of God. If I were present with the Lord when he made man, I would have said, Lord, make the Christians, make the Jews, and make the Muslims; but Lord, if you want peace on earth and goodwill to all men, please do not make man in your own image and likeness! To Pastor Rick Warren, the author of PURPOSE DRIVEN LIFE, a best seller, I should wish to congratulate you. Also, I should wish to convey to all of your faithful readers: It is good to be Born-Again. It is, however, much better to grow up! Poch Suzara

2 comments:

erebusnyx said...

And on page 23 (Zondervan, 2002) Warren incredibly declares:

"[God] decided when you would be born and how long you would live. He planned the days of your life in advance, choosing the exact time of your birth and death."

Warren is proclaiming that the victims of murder, homicide, genocide, and the like are not accidental, that ultimately the culprit in all these crimes is God. Because God planned the death of each person in advance, God is the brains behind the heinous crimes of our century--the 6 million Jews tortured, shot, gassed in Auschwitz, Dachau, etc.; the hundreds of thousands of Japanese men, women and children obliterated by shock waves, heat, and radiation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the 1.2 million Tibetans killed by the People's Liberation Army of China, the 200,000 East Timorese murdered by Indonesian military and militia. Warren is even declaring that God is responsible for the 1,000 deaths per week in Darfur, Sudan, mortalities stemming from the genocidal acts by the Sudanese government. Furthermore, every terminally-ill patient, every person run down by a drunken driver, everyone killed by earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, typhoons, fires, ..., every one of these is ultimately attributable to God. As Warren says, God planned the days of our lives in advance and chose the exact time of our death. Thus, He planned how all the aforementioned victims would die and when.

One implication of course is that all the individuals and groups who perpetrated the above crimes are not really responsible for their crimes. Since God had planned everything in advance, these people were merely instruments who carried out his divine will. They did not have any choice. They most probably did not even know they were conscripts. God had chosen these people as his henchmen. Moreover, the countries, states, and judges who meted out the death penalty to some of these criminals were also part of God's plan to terminate the lives of these instruments of death of His. And court judges who have been killed out of vengeance (by the Mafia for instance) were also killed by God according to His plan.

And so on and so forth.

Incredibly on the very next page Warren declares that God is a "God of love," that "He is love!" Such a perverted understanding of love is completely beyond me. Only a psychopath could possibly describe engineering holocausts of all ilk as loving. Warren will no doubt vehemently deny that God is the author and director of worldwide genocide, but then this is the logical conclusion given his premises.

Poch Suzara said...

Omega writes:

Poch, you've said, Obviously, Rick Warren believes that God is not only always hungry for attention, always eager for devotion, always
frustrated for affection, always thirsty for adoration, always desperate for recognition, but also always cold-blooded as a perfection always lost i self-admiration.

It's ironic that despite their mantra that God is perfect, the faithfuls are doing their darndest to portray the Omnipotent as:

* insecure (needing constant high praise and homage, Psalm 34:1-I will extol the Lord all the time. Psalm 71.6---I will ever praise you).
* given to jealousy (Thou shalt worship no other gods).
* egocentric (needing flattery: God is great; All nature praises God).
* narcissistic(needing expressions of gratitude, love, and respect from people; Psalm 148:2---The angels praise Him).

It is very obvious even to a nincompoop that a perfect God should not be any of them. So why do they faithfuls do it? Aren't they demeaning to Him? Omega