Thank God for religion (?) -- (6)

One of the problems of religions is that they consider those who are in their group as the family, but for those who are not in their group, they don't consider as their family member. Thus, they apply the principle of revenge toward those people. When your family member is hurt, you will hurt those who hurt them. This principle of revenge helps them to justify their anger and their murdering people who are "not their own family". And yet they talk about only one God, from whom all human being came out. What kind of nonsense is that?

Is there any way that they can admit that those who are not under their religious belief are also the member of the same family--human family? Can those major religions become humble with their ability to understand this simple point? If one of your child hurt your another child, you would not use the principle of revenge to kill that child. Why is it not possible to get through this simple principle? If anyone can find a way to make this happen, I would pay him one billion dollars!

Thank God for the protection!

I don't know how much I understand him, but he does protect me somehow, whether I understand him or not, whether I recognize him and appreciate him or not, whether I am going his favorable direction or not, even whether I insist on hating him or not, and even whether I insist on denying his existence or not. I recall so many occasions in my life in which I could have been killed. And yet, I am still here!

Therefore, it is good to recognize his work and appreciate it. You won't lose a thing by doing so, and you would definitely gain something out of it even if it might not be visible to you at this point. And eventually we all will find out when we get to the other world. No, you don't even need to wait to get to the other world to find this out. You will experience "happier" life by doing so, and this happier life will just be carried on as you move into the next world.

Thus, when you fall down and your right knee now begins to bleed, just say, "Thank you God for protecting my left knee!" Sometimes he may not intentionally have protected your knee. If that's the case, he would say, "Oh, my son, how can you appreciate me for something I didn't do?" Then he may feel bad and he will make sure next time he will surely protect you. What I'm saying is by thanking God you will catch God's attention and God will be closer to you. God will be attracted to you. So, you are not losing anything.

Jesus said to love your enemies, but why...? (2)

Whoever you feel like is your enemy--those who have hurt you, hurt your beloved people, it is not easy to just "love" them. But we need to take Jesus' words seriously. What we can do at least is to deal with them with prayer--or with a prayerful heart, so that we could involve God in our life--involve God in dealing with them. The reason is if we don't do it, then the devil will be the winner. The devil will accomplish his purpose; we fail and God fails. We may end up "labeling" our enemies and making the same mistake. We may win a battle by hating our enemies, (we may feel good/righteous about what we do, or we may feel our pride, or we may be satisfied) but we will lose the war against the devil. So, what we can do--be prayerful, which will enable us to involve God and all the great spiritual support.

Jesus said to love your enemies, but why...?

Jesus said to the people to love their enemies and "pray for those who persecute you". (Matthew 5:44) I had a question. Why then those followers of Jesus began to hate certain people and certain faith group and even justify their killing or murdering them? Not only that, why did the followers of Jesus begin to hate even their own people who love the same Jesus, just by the name of heresy? What about witch hunt? And again, not only they hated them, but justified their murder.

Here's what I came to understand. Of course, my understanding may be still very shallow. Somehow in the course of time, the number of the followers of Jesus grew and they overcame many obstacles. As they attempt to defend their faith against many oppositions, they began to put the label on certain people. You are the Christ-killers. Who could kill the Christ? Only devil could. Thus they labeled certain people as the devil. Of course Jesus told them to love their enemies, but he never told them to love the devil! Therefore, when they labeled certain people as the "devil", that gave them the justification of their hatred and even the murder of the people. This labeling is so powerful to destroy people, and especially when it's done in the name of God. Therefore, when Jesus looks at today's world, especially those "followers of Jesus", he would be in so much pain and suffering.

Therefore, when you are about to label someone, just be careful. When your friend is labeling someone, just be aware. It is a good time to remember that he said "Judge not that you be not judged." (Matthew 7:1) Who am I to make a judgment on someone by labeling him? We need to be aware that, as he said, if you judge people, you are also placing yourself on the table of judgment without even realizing it. You are digging your own grave. Therefore, before you make that one choice to place judgment on someone, just talk to your conscience and figure out what God would want you to do. I believe human conscience is an amazing resource for us to connect to the Divine. We just need to polish it. And I believe our daily effort of thanking would help.

Can we thank God for a doubt?

I know I didn't study about "doubt" enough to say anything, but anyway it is just an inspiration.
When you doubt someone, your conscience knows that you are not doing a right thing. Your conscience knows that you should trust people's good nature within no matter what kind of person he/she looks like. Especially when we know that person believes in the same God, then we should trust him/her more because he/she might have the same idea about what his/her good self would want to do and/or what it wouldn't want to do. If you cannot trust someone who share the same belief system, then how do you expect to trust someone who share a different belief system? At least, once you justify yourself to doubt someone even to its slightest degree, then it would immediately develop into further doubt and skepticism, which would persuade you to put on him/her many different "labels" which would further prevent you from seeing his/her good nature, and would build walls around you, which would make you not free in looking at and dealing with that person. Then you will find yourself treating him/her in a way which you would never want, but you wouldn't be able to control yourself any more because already certain power is produced beginning from that initial doubt as a seed. Therefore, when you allow yourself to justify your first doubt, then you may be selling your soul to the devil, of course without being aware of what you do.

Thus, doubting is so powerful. We have to at least be aware of this when we are in the situation which could tempt us to doubt someone. The battle is how I can keep myself to have a basic trust on people's good nature while many temptation comes to me to act otherwise. And of course, when you already doubt someone, it is still not too late. You just need to be aware of what's happening, and try not to benefit the devil any more. After all, the devil is the one that wants you to doubt people so that he could eventually claim all. People doubt other people and they hate other people, and they attack and kill other people. Then who becomes happy? No one becomes happy and the devil's claim just remains and only his purpose fulfilled.

Thank God for a salmon!

Even salmon knows where she should go back. Why not human? Even if it seems from your viewpoint that she is in the wrong place at this moment, let's see. At least making a quick judgment wouldn't help so much anyway. Just need to have faith and do anything we can do to offer our best support.

Water goes from high place to low place. Our conscience know where we should go. What is the best way to enlighten our conscience, though?

Thank God for the rumor

If someone spread a rumor about you, maybe it's a good chance to see who is the real friend. It is a good chance to see how each person looks at you, and what is the standard of judgment each person might have in dealing with people.

If some rumor is spread about your friend, it is also a good chance to see how you are real friend to him/her. It is also a good chance to examine what is the standard of judgment I have in dealing with people.

It will also be a good chance for many things: good chance to think of what "trust" means; good chance to think of what is the most important thing for me; what do I really want?; what do I want to do in my life?; what is the destination and the purpose of my life?; what do I see is good and evil inside of me and outside?; what is the importance of human relationship to me?; I can also find inside of me a lot of cause of problems such as anger, doubt, hatred, arrogance, pretension, lying, cheating/deceiving, hypocrisy, taking things for granted/lack of gratitude, lack of sincerity, lack of authenticity, etc.