A Few Questions To Ask About God, I Mean, Ask Yourself First (4)

Regarding God, we have dealt with three rounds of questions. The first round is about how to realize God , the second is about the definition of God as you know it, and the second is about God’s relationship with you .

Today comes the fourth question, and perhaps a little more practical.

"What if you don't believe it?"

Yes, this question is the most direct. Even if there is a god, what will happen if you don’t believe in it?

Good question yay! In fact, even if I am a Christian, I like to ask this question to others. For example, "non-religious" believers have been advocating atheism, thinking that if they believe in science, I will ask them what would happen if they did not believe in you.

Or causal religions (Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism are both), I will return to them. I don’t believe in reincarnation, so what? Many people will rush to come up with many examples of past life memories.

Even Christians I ask the same question and watch their response, especially when they don't know I'm a Christian, ask this question to observe a lot.

Okay, this part is the part of religion that cares about people's grudges, but it is actually the core and crucial part of religion. If you avoid this problem, don't tell me how devout believers you are.

Indeed, there is a school of thought that "if you don't believe, you won't be governed", which is characteristic of shamanic or indigenous religions, where God has jurisdiction or territoriality, or class. But this is directly a mirror image of the power and resources of the human world. To put it simply, if you belong to a certain gang and have a tattoo of a certain gang, you have relative power and obligations, and other gangs cannot interfere with you, and you do not feel interfered with others. fight or fight).

Of course, as far as secular "religious organizations" are concerned, this is an understandable and normal way of operating, but it's funny to use it in the "world of gods". After all, regardless of the fact that people in shamanism are basically "creatures", they are not at the level of being called "true gods" (I said that there can only be one true god, and that is the one who created the rules of the universe. The gods of the gods, since the gods in polytheism have to abide by these rules, they are actually not worthy of the title of gods. Some classifications will say that these are called "gods" or "giants" - we will not talk about evil spirits first, there are other mean).

Well, if you don't believe in the traffic rules, deny the value of the traffic rules, and deny the validity of the traffic rules, then you won't be fined for running a red light?

Yes, if you're going to talk about theology, it's important to distinguish this point first, which is, "Wherever God is, whether you believe it or not, there are also God's rules, just as you can't resist gravity."

You say you'll be fine if you go to space? Wrong, the "no gravity" in space is actually a manifestation of the rules of gravity, so you will circle the earth's orbit, and the earth revolves around the sun, all obeying the rules.

So what happens if you believe it or not, I can only tell you that I am sorry whether you believe it or not, the truth is there.

I said before that I "know God", right! So for me, there is no question of whether or not to believe, so I can only tell you that if you don’t believe in God, God is still there, so the loss of unbelief is on you.

Wait, then the question is not the same, what do you want to believe? These questions go round and round like a maze, so which god do you want to believe in? What kind of god is that? What does this god have to do with you?

For example, I don't believe in reincarnation at all, and karma is a funny idea, so all religions (starting from Hinduism and all the way down, including Buddhism and Taoism) that are based on these two arguments are completely unbelievable, because no matter from the science. , philosophical or logical point of view can not be established, persuasiveness is too low.

But, yes, let's make an assumption here. Assuming that these two arguments are true, then I don't believe it, and these two arguments can't control me?

You know, many people say that I will not be controlled because I belong to Christ... Wait, do you mean that your religious truth can be denied, not only denied, but rejected? ? You must know that in the Christian point of view, if you deny the truth of God, you will end up under the control of the devil, and the devil is not a force capable of opposing God, but "a group that has failed, waiting to be punished" ( This is a common misunderstanding of monotheism. The god of monotheism is the rule maker who transcends these. You should not talk about rules with God, but God himself is the rule, and the devil is just a creature. Dualism is the characteristic of Zoroastrianism. , Monotheism is monistic, and it is a common layman misunderstanding to think that monotheism is a binary opposition—in fact, even some Christians get it wrong).

So if you ask me what happens if I don’t believe, I will tell you that I don’t believe, but God won’t change just because you don’t believe. It’s you who loses if you don’t believe, but I don’t know how God will treat you.

You say go to hell? No, I don't think so. There are too many human ideas in this too many traditional interpretations. In fact, the Bible does not explain it this way, but we will talk about this later.

However, there is a more ponderable part of this question, which is "you really don't believe it" or "you hope this is fake".

Yes, this question is very similar to what we covered in the first article, but it is a very important part of thinking about theology. It is to clarify "what you think", "what you expect" and "actually". Distinguish the problem attributes, and you will get lost.

This is why "meeting God" is very important. The influence of a real divine experience is not so simple. Of course, you have to tell me that many religions have such divine experiences. Are all other religions fake?

On the contrary, this is the "universal revelation of God" that I often emphasize. The problem is that God's revelation of Himself is different from the truth that you recognize. For Christians, God manifests itself to Buddhists and makes them mistakenly believe it is. Buddha, or manifested to Mazu believers, let them think that seeing Mazu is not a strange thing, the problem is what interpretation you do after seeing it.

This is why God simply used the Israelites as a model after seeing a bunch of people interpreting them indiscriminately, and finally even showed it to you himself. You have to understand that revelation is indeed universal, and the reality that truth requires special study to understand "a little", so theological dialectics are very important, and those that cannot be tested by theological logic should be regarded as cultural assets or video game settings.

By the way, not to mention that the devil has the ability to play this kind of illusion, so distinguishing these phenomena beyond the scope of common sense requires more caution.