Religious Mania (excerpt and thougths)
The following is a passage from Stehen King's "The Stand", the complete and uncut edition.
"The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance.... or change. Once such incantatory phrases as 'we now see through a glass darkly' and 'mysterious are the ways He chooses His wonders to perfor' are mastered, logic can be happily tossed out the window. Religious mania is one the the few infallible ways of responding to the world's vagaries, because it totally eliminates pure accident. To the true religious maniac it's ALL on purpose."
King continues to explain Trashcan Man's journey, the section ending with the following:
" There is really nothing so comforting to the beaten of spirit or the broken of skull than a good strong does of 'Thy will be done.'"
Other then the fact I personally find these passages to be amusing, I also find them to be true. Let's break this down a bit.
1) "... is accepted as the first cause of everything... that happens" It is a known fact that some people of the 'religious' type often place little blames in themselves or others. It is simply broken down into two sections. a) That which God caused and b) that which the Devil caused. People are seldomly held responsible for their own actions.
It is in my personal opinion that people who follow this to the extreme are able to sleep at night when purposely failing to come to the aid of others simply because God must being punishing the hurt person for a reason or they take comfort in the fact that it must have been God's will to begin with.
2) "... nothing is left to chance.... or change" Those who are of the religious maniac nature tend to not like change. They dont like questionings of their ways and they dont like others who do not conform to their ways.
3) ".... logic can be happily tossed out the window." I dont think I need to address this issue as much. Logic can stand for alot of things here and have serveral different meanings. Personally I could replace 'logic' with 'common sense', though both fit nicely. There is no 'logic' in blindly following a faith. And the best part is that in blindly following a faith it is often 'ok' since God will take care of everything if you a) pray hard enough and b) if its God's will. This also relieves the religious maniac from having to take action.
4) " .... because it totally eliminates pure accident." But eliminating pure accident one can eliminate responsibility and specific emotions on the matter.
5) "There is really nothing so comforting to the beaten of spirit..... than a good strong dose of 'Thy will be done.'" Although this is very comforting in and of itself, we must look at these passages as a whole. Unfortunately I dont feel like typing up 4 pages of "The Stand" and so you must imagine a bit of Trashcan Man's background. You must also look at this last passage in connection with the first.
Why do I bring this all up?
Because in the past 2 years I have dealt with an extremely large number of 'christians' who I could easily classify as religious maniacs. And although I am choosing religion as my base for what is about to follow, even those who are not religious run the risk of falling into the same pit.
What makes a human being a human being?
Is it emotions? Love, hate, fear, etc? Is it our biological make up? When one come up to you and says " act like a human being!" you must ask yourself the following: Does this person mean I am acting like an animal or that I am acting without compassion?
It is the compassion I'd like to address now. I could easily ramble on about how Jesus preached love and all that. But I'm not going to. What I am going to address is the often seen lack of compassion in today's society. I chose to share the above religion based passages because those who claim to follow a path of love sometimes do not. And that is what bothers me the most. There is more to this but I am very much exhausted.
They may not nessacarily be cruel or mean. But their inaction tends to speak louder then their words. Be wary of falling into 'inaction'.
"The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance.... or change. Once such incantatory phrases as 'we now see through a glass darkly' and 'mysterious are the ways He chooses His wonders to perfor' are mastered, logic can be happily tossed out the window. Religious mania is one the the few infallible ways of responding to the world's vagaries, because it totally eliminates pure accident. To the true religious maniac it's ALL on purpose."
King continues to explain Trashcan Man's journey, the section ending with the following:
" There is really nothing so comforting to the beaten of spirit or the broken of skull than a good strong does of 'Thy will be done.'"
Other then the fact I personally find these passages to be amusing, I also find them to be true. Let's break this down a bit.
1) "... is accepted as the first cause of everything... that happens" It is a known fact that some people of the 'religious' type often place little blames in themselves or others. It is simply broken down into two sections. a) That which God caused and b) that which the Devil caused. People are seldomly held responsible for their own actions.
It is in my personal opinion that people who follow this to the extreme are able to sleep at night when purposely failing to come to the aid of others simply because God must being punishing the hurt person for a reason or they take comfort in the fact that it must have been God's will to begin with.
2) "... nothing is left to chance.... or change" Those who are of the religious maniac nature tend to not like change. They dont like questionings of their ways and they dont like others who do not conform to their ways.
3) ".... logic can be happily tossed out the window." I dont think I need to address this issue as much. Logic can stand for alot of things here and have serveral different meanings. Personally I could replace 'logic' with 'common sense', though both fit nicely. There is no 'logic' in blindly following a faith. And the best part is that in blindly following a faith it is often 'ok' since God will take care of everything if you a) pray hard enough and b) if its God's will. This also relieves the religious maniac from having to take action.
4) " .... because it totally eliminates pure accident." But eliminating pure accident one can eliminate responsibility and specific emotions on the matter.
5) "There is really nothing so comforting to the beaten of spirit..... than a good strong dose of 'Thy will be done.'" Although this is very comforting in and of itself, we must look at these passages as a whole. Unfortunately I dont feel like typing up 4 pages of "The Stand" and so you must imagine a bit of Trashcan Man's background. You must also look at this last passage in connection with the first.
Why do I bring this all up?
Because in the past 2 years I have dealt with an extremely large number of 'christians' who I could easily classify as religious maniacs. And although I am choosing religion as my base for what is about to follow, even those who are not religious run the risk of falling into the same pit.
What makes a human being a human being?
Is it emotions? Love, hate, fear, etc? Is it our biological make up? When one come up to you and says " act like a human being!" you must ask yourself the following: Does this person mean I am acting like an animal or that I am acting without compassion?
It is the compassion I'd like to address now. I could easily ramble on about how Jesus preached love and all that. But I'm not going to. What I am going to address is the often seen lack of compassion in today's society. I chose to share the above religion based passages because those who claim to follow a path of love sometimes do not. And that is what bothers me the most. There is more to this but I am very much exhausted.
They may not nessacarily be cruel or mean. But their inaction tends to speak louder then their words. Be wary of falling into 'inaction'.