God's Love
Bad Religion
The Empire Strikes First
Striking at mental apparitions
Like a drunk on a vacant street
Silently beset by the hands of time
Indelicate in its fury
An aberrant crack as skeletons yield
To unrelenting gravity
While viruses prowl for helpless victims
Who succumb rapidly
(Tell me!) Tell me; where is the love?
In a careless creation
When there’s no “above”
There’s no justice
Just a cause and a cure
And a bounty of suffering
It seems we all endure
And what I’m frightened of
Is that they call it “God’s love”
Twisted torment, make-believe
There’s a truth and we all submit
“Believe my eyes,” my brain complies
To all that they interpret
[Chorus]
I know there’s no reason for alarm
But who needs perspective when it comes to pain and harm
We can change our minds; there’s a better prize
But first you’ve got to…
[Chorus]
They call it God’s love
My pain is God’s love
"It's all part of God's plan."
If you want to immediately lose my respect say that phrase to my face. Not only does it not give me any comfort at all because God doesn't exist, it doesn't encourage me at all to even want to try to believe in God.
Tell me that unfortunately there are many things in life that are beyond our control. Even tell me that things will probably work out alright and that maybe I'll be a better person for my experiences.
Is it part of God's plan that a woman was just raped? Or that five thousand people will die of AIDS today?
Graffin says they call it "God's love," but he means the same thing.
I guess this is the scary thing: If Christians call it God's love, and if they actually believe that, then what incentive do they have to try to make a difference in the world? You wouldn't want to mess with God's plan would you? Unless that, too, was part of God's plan.
On second thought, let's not go down that road, huh?
1 comment:
Is god willing but not able to prevent evil?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is god able but not willing to prevent evil?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he willing and able to prevent evil?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither willing nor able to prevent evil?
Then why call him god?
I can't help but look to the last two parts of this Epicurus quote when I hear this song (which may be my favorite Bad Religion song).
If I may quote a section from "The End of Faith" by Sam Harris which I just re-read...
"The perverse wonder of evolution is this: the very mechanisms that create the incredible beauty of the living world guarantee monstrosity and death. The child born without limbs, the fly with no eyes, the vanished species - these are nothing less than Mother Nature caught in the act of throwing her clay. No perfect god could maintain such incongruities. It is worth remembering that if god created the world and all things in it, he created smallpox, plague, and filariasis. Any person who intentionally loosed such horrors upon the earth would be ground to dust of their crimes."
How can there be an omnipotent, benevolent god when the world in all it's beauty, complexity and splendor, and all the creatures in it is so obviously rife with conflict and pain and suffering and is far from imperfect.
Perhaps there are things that I cannot explain or understand about the universe but to simply say that "it is all part of god's plan" is downright ignorant.
I personally try to live by and preach the gospel of "I don't know."
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