Why Doesn't God Come Down and Just Say Hello?

Average:

Your rating: None Average: 1 (1 vote)

Well. Why doesn't he, or she? I guess that's the first problem, one of gender. The Bible is gender blind, I mean Adam has all of his ribs but somehow his wife was created out of one of them instead of out of the earth from which Adam was created. And another question, If Adam and Eve had three sons (no daughters), hmmm, who had sex with whom to keep things going, so to speak? But that doesn't mean that God might be female, or male, or Gay.

Yikes! A gay God! That would be interesting. But I think one of the overriding issues pertaining to God is what does He (we will use "He" to simplify this article), look like? Would we recognize Him if He held a news conference, or floated around the sky for awhile?

Do you think that He looks like a father figure, whatever that means? Maybe old, gray beard, wise-looking, powerful looking, all the things that we can relate to. Maybe he would shape-shift into something different for everyone so that we could all connect? A white light, an old man, a rainbow, But whatever He appears as, please . . . just appear!

I see three reasons why He might not appear. The first one is obvious; He is just a dream, a creation of the insecure human mind because historically we have made Gods out of what we can't understand. The second reason is that He is shy.

Yes, God is shy. You wouldn't think that a powerful God would be shy, but after what we have down to His earth and how we have turned out, wouldn't you be shy as well! Who would throw themselves into such a situation, especially if he was very wise?

The third reason is because of overexposure. I mean, the mystery of God is what makes God so . . . Omnipotent. If he was here on a daily basis, just think of all the arguments he would have to field from health care to how many troops should we put in Afghanistan! Plus, how many hours are there in the day to heal all the people one by one. He could probably heal everyone all at once, but why hasn't he done that already!

Well, I hope that He does show up someday because I have a few questions to ask him. Are you listening God? ARE YOU LISTENING!!!

Okay. Actually, I have hundreds of questions, but I will ask just two, and you can figure out the other hundreds based upon them; Why do innocent children suffer in the hands of sinful parents? Do you only instill grace on white people?" Okay, that's it. I'm waiting. . . . . Still waiting. . . . Okay, no answer today. Maybe tomorrow. Or when you appear.

I won't hold my breath.

Author's Bio:

Anagarika eddie is a meditation teacher at the Dhammabucha Rocksprings Meditation Retreat Sanctuary
www.dhammarocksprings.org and author of A Year to Enlightenment. His 30 years of meditation experience has taken him across four continents including two stopovers in Thailand where he practiced in the remote northeast forests as an ordained Thervada Buddhist monk. He lived at Wat Pah Nanachat under Ajahn Chah, at Wat Pah Baan Taad under Ajahn Maha Boowa, and at Wat Pah Daan Wi Weg under Ajahn Tui. He had been a postulant at Shasta Abbey, a Zen Buddhist monastery in northern California under Roshi Kennett; and a Theravada Buddhist anagarika at both Amaravati Monastery in the UK and Bodhinyanarama Monastery in New Zealand, both under Ajahn Sumedho. The author has meditated with the Korean Master Sueng Sahn Sunim; with Bhante Gunaratana at the Bhavana Society in West Virginia; and with the Tibetan Master Trungpa Rinpoche in Boulder, Colorado. He has also practiced at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, and the Zen Center in San Francisco.

Dwight Clough

He will. Are you ready?

That is your belief, and I respet that, but sorry, I don't buy it because some book or preacher says so, although I did for awhile when I was a child and couldn't think for myself. Best.........e

Hi Penelope! I try to write articles that both encourage people to think for themselves, and to talk about universal conventional truths that we can learn about from each other and promote brotherhood rather than separation of religions.

anagarika eddie

Critically viewed, the New Testament is a self-fulfilling prophecy. That is, its miracles and fulfilled prophecies were made up after the fact, using fragments of Old Testament prophecy to fill in the blanks to create a legend out of a man. It is literally made up around the life time of a man who probably lived, but is not a literal representation of the man.

There is not overwhelming evidence that the Bible is a reliable reflection of history. The authors of the four canonical Gospels were certainly not eyewitnesses to the life and times of Jesus, they were reporting secondhand accounts, and probably much worse. First of all, the very earliest gospel was still a generation after the purported date of Jesus' death. Secondly, that means details of his birth, of his mother and father, would be very unreliable. Thirdly, there is no credible evidence that John, named for the apostle, was even written by the actual Apostle named John. Luke never knew Jesus. Mark was a consort of Paul, who himself never met Jesus. That leaves Matthew, the tax collector. Modern scholars question that Matthew wrote the Gospel of Mathew, and its date is placed later than Mark, between 70 C.E. and 80 C.E.

Dr. Shirley Cheng, Blind Author with Vision (Motivation)

I'm sorry, but I never said that I know everything. I will never know everything, as a matter of fact. Only Jehovah knows everything. I said that it's my responsibility only because I've taken up Jesus' Great Commission. I see the world as a huge family. If someone tells you to warn your family of a raging fire, would you ignore the order? This is why I can't ignore the order...not for my own sake, but for others' sake. I don't have to if I don't want to. It shouldn't be a matter of want; it's a matter of I "should." Well, someday we will all know the truth.

But religious fundamentalism is a raging fire - look at the Middle East. They want to convert everyone as well. Can't you understand the harm you are doing in the name of religion?

Religion is a raging fire only when it's not based on love. God is love. All good things come from love, so all good things come from Jehovah. Religion is really manmade. God isn't about religion, and no convertion should be done through force. When people don't accept your messages, just move on, without hating one another. Jesus was a great example of love, of how we should treat one another.

For you, it is the love of Jehovah, for Islam, it is the love of Allah. Don't you get it! We hide behind the word of our God's for our own agendas. Keep an open mind. Can you? Or is too late for you? I'll bet you were a nice person before you were saved :) Remeber, Critically viewed, the New Testament is a self-fulfilling prophecy. That is, its miracles and fulfilled prophecies were made up after the fact, using fragments of Old Testament prophecy to fill in the blanks to create a legend out of a man. It is literally made up around the life time of a man who probably lived, but is not a literal representation of the man.

Many of the mainstream teachings of Christianity, from what I can tell after reading the Bible, don't come from the Bible, but are rather manmade. This is one reason why non-Christians are confused about the messages and don't feel Christianity is of love. Instead, many "Christian" countries promote wars, etc. There are many things about true Christianity that many people sadly don't know. This is why it's vital to study the Bible on our own, without any middleman.

Sorry Shirley, I respect your faith and your right to believe in whatever you wish to, (and I was indoctrinated as a Catholic for many years) but to think that it's your responsibility to warn others that they are wrong and that you know everything, to me, is controlling, hateful, hugely egotistical, just plain ignorant and against everything that good people value such as humility, compassion, and respect for others. Remember, Christianity to a non believer is a child's fairy tale, and regardless of what you say or quote, the Bible is seen as fanciful myths, nothing more, and Jesus as a hapless rabii that was used by Church fathers to promote their agenda. Perhaps your devil has you by the throat! As you say, he is tricky!! Peace.....e

Jehovah isn't about religion. He is about love. Christianity isn't even a new religion--it's a fulfillment of God's promises found in the Old Testament. We shouldn't believe everything we read/hear; this is why the Bible tells us to test everything. I've read the Bible seven times (seven different versions). I base my beliefs solely on the Bible, not on any articles written by man. Unfortunately, many Christians haven't read the Bible on their own, and therefore base their beliefs on what people tell them.

True Christians don't force people to believe their beliefs. Jesus said that people will know if we're Christians by our love for one another. True Christians don't condemn people. Many "Christians" today aren't true, as the Bible foretold. Many "Christian" celebrations don't have Christian roots. For example, Jesus wasn't born on 12/25. Christmas actually comes from a pagan religion.

That was quite a blow to the Church's dogma and entrenched beliefs that people were willing to die for, dogma and beliefs that proved to be false. Keep an open mind if you can. Otherwise you might be irreparably psychologically harmed when the truth comes out, and it slowly but surely is. Meditation is safer - no beliefs, no indoctrinations, just a simple observance of mind until mind disappears and you get out of the way, then you may really catch a glimpse of God (in Christian terms) for yourself instead of just reading and talking about it.

Have you ever noticed that Buddhism, arguably the most peaceful religion historically, never proselytizes? We put info out, but never twist arms because we have found that until people reach a certain level of spiritual and intellectual capacity, which is beyond simple, blind beliefs that can be anything from Christianity to Islam, and based wholly on what we read or what a preacher tells us or what we dream of, they won't understand Buddhism. I can see this clearly every day. Don't forget, it took the church 300 (That's three hundred - poor Galileo!) years to get over the fact that the earth wasn't the center of the universe! "A classic example of why religious entities should not have power to enforce their beliefs." (Key in: Galileo VS the church.)

Sometimes we read only what we want to believe and turn our backs on other information without even considering it. It's a power and loss of power thing. We hang on to our beliefs because it is exactly that - a controlling, power thing. That's why religions proselytize. Proselytizing never comes from a loving place, but from a place of power thirst. Nothing more than a salesperson who has to fight all the objections to make the sale = and he or she must win. It's very aggressive and hateful, actually.

So what is really true? No one can really say, and it really doesn't matter as long as you are satisfied with your beliefs and your life is going well. But time will tell, and the truth about religions, all religions, as well as with everything else, will eventually prevail in this blossoming information age. To get an independent perspective on the whole bible, Christ thing, key in such things as "Christ's birth date, and Who Wrote the Bible, etc. Many people view the Bible and Christ quite differently than Christians i.e.

Yet no one who is Christian can accept these things, because Christians, understandably, are attached to their religion. It has become their entire reason for living. But if the non-Christian view of Christianity proves true in the future, this could possibly explain why many Christians don't seem to follow their faith regarding how they should live - in poverty and giving everything away to others. Could it be that Jesus' teachings were made up by human minds? And that Jesus never existed as the Church fathers depicted him to exist? And if he did in fact exist as a Jewish rabii, was he merely a creation of the church father's imagination, and not, in any case, as the religion has made him appear to be? This is how a non-Christian might look at the religion from non-biased standpoint.

Hi! Jesus never taught that Christians should live in poverty and give everything away to others. He asked the rich ruler to sell everything he had and follow Jesus because the young man was putting riches before Jesus' calling. Jesus' parable about a rich man illustrated wrong priorities in life; instead of focusing on earthly treasure, one should focus on eternal treasures: love, goodness, gentleness, meekness, etc. God actually blesses people with riches of every kind as long as they follow in His ways. We are told to work to make a living; in turn helping others as we work. We are also to care for others with what we have, and give willingly from our hearts. Riches are good in the right proportion. Have a good day!

The non-Christian keeps in mind that even a few minutes after a car accident, eye witnesses all have different stories, and to believe that a myth or legend could go down through history unchanged, not only after a few minutes, or hours, or years, or decades, or hundreds of years, but thousands of years, is not viable in a non-Christians mind. Add to this all the heavy editing of the bible in different ages with different agendas, and the bible could have become the most incongruent hoax every played on humanity - again, according to a non-Christian. This is possibly why quoting Biblical passages to a non-Christian goes in one ear and out the other!

In attempting to start this new religion, they ran across one of Jesus' disciple's writings . . . and what may have happened is a made-up deification of a hapless rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth, where the original Church fathers borrowed heavily from pagan religions for many of their ideas, even stealing the main story lines of the Buddha's birth story (and again the Buddha was born 550 years before Christ) and created in their own minds the Christian religion. Furthermore, from a non-Christian, unbiased approach, the bible itself, from which the church fathers were trying to fulfill a prophecy (i.e. a prophet and savior), could be considered historically a mish-mash of legends and myths carried forward by word of mouth by scores of different people from thousands of years ago.

Jesus' mentor on earth was an Essene; John the Baptist, who lived in the desert with a group of followers, again in the footsteps of Buddhist monks. Then Jesus co-incidentally formed a group of followers as well, again in the footsteps of the Buddhist Sangha of monks and the Essenes, which was again very radical for a Jewish rabbi to do! Another example of a non-Christian looking open-mindedly at Christianity might be that when observing the Bible and looking into its history, a non-Christian might more easily make some conclusions that a Christian would find unacceptable and upsetting, i.e., it's being hinted at, and someday may be resolved, that the original church fathers, over 60 years after Jesus of Nazareth's death, were looking for someone to be their savior, the Son of God, so that they could say that they have fulfilled a biblical prophecy (and hopefully create a new religion)!

2) The Bible says that Adam "begat sons and daughters." (Genesis 5:4, American Standard Version) Family trees in the Holy Scriptures often list only names of sons, not daughters, so we are only told of Adam's sons. The first generations had sexual relations with close family members (between siblings, for example). After the Earth had enough human population, God forbade people to continue with incest. So we are all a huge family.

3) People often want Jehovah to appear, but don't realize the significance of the request or its outcome. God is an absolutely holy God who cannot live among sinful people. When He stayed with the Israelites during the wilderness journey, people had to be consecrated (set apart as holy) in order to go near Him. People doing sinful acts in His presence were immediately punished. If it weren't for Moses' intercession, the entire Israelites might have been wiped out. So in order to have God with us, we must make ourselves clean first by obeying His commands, which aren't hard to follow at all. All of His principles are to benefit us.

Hi Shirley, thanks for commenting. I appreciate that very much. Non-Christians view Christianity quite differently than a "believer" who may have been indoctrinated since birth. A non-Christian, after reading many of the open minded articles that are now all over the internet and backed by compelling historical facts, may more easily conclude that Jesus of Nazareth was doing something during the lost years, and perhaps wandered to the East and picked up some Eastern ways. The Buddhist religion was well established for over 500 years before Christ was born. Buddhist monks were arriving in Jerusalem over the trade routes by the time of Jesus, and through the power of their advanced meditation, could heal, walk on water plus many other powers, etc. Jesus was able to master some of these as well, but this was all strange to the common Rabiis of his time.

Hi, Anagarika, you're most welcome! The Bible is the oldest-surviving religious text; its earliest books were written about 3600 years ago. The miracles Jesus performed were not unique to him. Prophets of God in Old Testament times performed some of the same miracles, along with many other miracles. The Bible says supernatural signs aren't done just by God only. Jehovah's adversary Satan and his followers also perform signs and give their human follower the same powers. This is why we're told not to follow any other miracle performer other than people of God. Satan's goal is to rebel against God in every way possible, and he wants worshippers. People who perform miracles in a name other than God's become Satan's worshippers, either unknowingly (most are unknowing worshippers) or purposefully.

Satan is a clever imitator, so we need to be very careful; he's no laughing matter, and many have already fallen victims to his deceit. It's our responsibility as a huge family to warn our brothers and sisters of this.