Blue Eyed Ennis: God, Free Will And Taxes : How Would You Respond ?

God, Free Will And Taxes : How Would You Respond ?

When I was looking for material for reflection for this coming Sunday's Scriptures and Gospel I came across a series of three short videos produced by an atheist on the theme of God, free will and taxes.

The Gospel parable is pretty well known and involves Jesus telling his questioners about rendering to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's.

The Scripture passage is here in case you want to read it in full

The videos are well done and so I'm putting out two of them here as a devil's advocate type of thing - because they merit a response and I would welcome comments and some help in providing answers to them.

It also links well to something the Pope Benedict said during the Mass on the last day of his German visit when he issued this unusual and provocative message " it is better to be a searching agnostic than a fake believer. "

Benedict XVI praised the "agnostics who cannot find peace due to their questions about God, people who suffer because of our sins and are desirous of a pure heart."

Pope Benedict said they are "closer to the Kingdom of God than "routine" believers who only see the apparatus of the Church without their hearts being touched by faith."

Instinctively I know that the videos portray a vengeful and controlling God and this is not the God most of us who call ourselves Christians believe in and yet the producer of these videos already knows that this will be my response so where do we go from here ???

Is there even an answer at all ???

This is the full text that accompanies the second video taken from You Tube:
* ( I STRESS THESE ARE NOT MY VIEWS !!)

"The script for the taxman in this video is made up of Christian responses to my first "Free Will" video, in which I made the point that the "choice" that Jesus apparently gives us is woefully unfair, loaded, and far from "free". Basically I copy/pasted their arguments from the comments page, adapted them to a new scenario, the "choice" to pay taxes, to see if they stand up to scrutiny in a different context. You can be the judge of how they fare.

Our tax-payer friend here almost falls for it... how about you?"

So here's one of the videos- it is about 4 mins duration.

and in this one the commentary/arguments advanced from the person who produced it becomes even more complex- here they are below :

"Here is the third and final installment in what turned out to be the Free Will series!
Perhaps by now you've heard it all before. The first two installments generated debates that each led to the next one being written, in order to demonstrate the illogical nature of the arguments I kept getting.

Most argumentative responses focused on words. Free and choice were bounced back and forth again and again, from dictionary to dictionary It seems that apologists for the Bible are happy to accept a choice that is almost identical to blackmail, as long as it can still bear the label choice, which, yes, blackmail does too, I guess.

The other main response Ive gotten is the charge that I'm angry at Yahweh for giving us such a loaded, coercive choice. Ahh no, I don't believe in Yahweh, I don't believe Yahweh has ever done anything, so I'm not angry at him. Do you deny Santa because you're angry at him for not giving you presents at Christmas any more?

So, this final part is intended to acknowledge that yes, in fact, blackmail, coercion, threats, and extortion ARE categories of choice. It is focused on what KIND of choice one might expect from an infinitely capable, infinitely loving, and infinitely wise deity. If nothing else, I hope it demonstrates that the free choice that Christians praise Yahweh for is nowhere near as free or loving as what a perfect being could offer. Its more like that free choice (YES, OK, it IS a choice!!!) given by the store robber pointing the gun at the guy behind the counter and demanding that he hand over the cash. Therefore, if we follow logic (ahem) we come to the predicament of acknowledging that Yahweh's choice doesn't measure up to anything LIKE being worthy of being credited to the divine, in fact it fails dismally, and therefore, the whole damn thing is a bunch of bullshit.

Do you find this video offensive? Well, I'm offended that throughout history, and even still today, people have been, and are being, paralysed with fear of being condemned to an imaginary torture chamber after death- indoctrinated from childhood that they need to grovel and beg for mercy, and that nothing they can humanly do can save them from endless pain and suffering.
I'm offended that people I know, love and respect have had these bullshit ideas put into their heads, and had it influence their choices ALL their lives, constantly weighing their thoughts and actions against the need to please the imaginary slave master who alone can rescue them from the imaginary torture that he himself threatens to dole out.

An honorary mention will go to the first person to make a comment claiming that I am angry at God.
Another honorary mention will go to the first person to make a comment saying that I'm saying there's no choice in Yahweh's arrangement when in fact, in a dictionary sense, there actually is.

And a third honorary mention will go to the first person to try to correct my position by quoting a merciful-sounding bible verse, whilst ignoring all the bloodthirsty, torture filled ones about Jesus judging us and sending us to hell."

Here's the next video ...................

Any thoughts and comments on these anyone ????

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More from Seamus Heaney

“History says, Don't hope
On this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime,
The longest-for tidal wave of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great sea change
On the far side of revenge
Believe in miracles....”

“The aim of poetry and the poet is finally to be of service, to ply the effort of the individual into the larger work of the community as a whole.” ―

“I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.”

and five more......

On his inspiration: 'The completely solitary self: that's where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis”

On which animal he'd prefer to be: "I might enjoy being an albatross, being able to glide for days and daydream for hundreds of miles along the thermals. And then being able to hang like an affliction round some people's necks."

On fame: "The gift of writing is to be self-forgetful, to get a surge of inner life or inner supply or unexpected sense of empowerment, to be afloat, to be out of yourself. The prizes can’t help you at all.”

On becoming a poet: "My quest for precision and definition, while it may lead backward, is conducted in the living speech of a landscape and a language that I was born with. If you like, I began as a poet when my roots were crossed with my reading."

On authority "At home in Ireland, there's a habit of avoidance, an ironical attitude towards the authority figure. "

Easter Hope All Year Round

Celestial spirit that doth roll
The heart's sepulchral stone away,
Be this our resurrection day,
The singing Easter of the soul -
O gentle Master of the Wise,
Teach us to say: "I will arise." ~
Richard Le Gallienne

"The great gift of Easter is hope - Christian hope which makes us have that confidence in God, in his ultimate triumph, and in his goodness and love, which nothing can shake."
-- Basil C. Hume

Celtic Christianity may offer us a lifeline in the form of an approach to faith which is rooted in the imagination...[Celts] excelled at expressing their faith in symbols, metaphors and images, both visual and poetic.
They had the ability to invest the ordinary and commonplace with sacramental significance, to find glimpses of God’s glory throughout creation and to paint pictures in words, signs and music that acted as icons opening windows on heaven and pathways to eternity
Ian Bradley The Celtic Way

Favourite Quotes from Pope Francis

“Thanks to magnanimity, we can always look at the horizon from the position where we are. That means being able to do the little things of every day with a big heart open to God and to others. That means being able to appreciate the small things inside large horizons, those of the kingdom of God.

This offers parameters to assume a correct position for discernment, in order to hear the things of God from God’s ‘point of view.’ … However the risk in seeking and finding God in all things, then, is the willingness to explain too much, to say with human certainty and arrogance: ‘God is here.’ We will find only a god that fits our measure. The correct attitude is that of St. Augustine: seek God to find him, and find God to keep searching for God forever.”

-- Pope Francis

Carlo Caretto's Love Letter to His Church

How much I much criticise you my church and yet how much I love you !

You have made me suffer more than anyone and yet I owe you more than I owe anyone. I should like to see you destroyed and yet I need your presence.

You have given me much scandal and yet you alone have made me understand holiness. Never in the world have I seen anything more obscurantist, more compromised, more false, yet never have I touched anything more pure, more generous or more beautiful.

Countless times I have felt like slamming the door of my soul in your face – and yet, every night, I have prayed that I might die in your arms!

No, I cannot be free of you, for I am one with you, even if not completely you.
Then too – where should I go? To build another church?

But I cannot build another church without the same defects, for they are my own defects. And again, if I were to build another church, it would be my church, not Christ’s church. No, I am old enough. I know better!"

Did the Woman Say ?

Great Quotes

A blank piece of paper is God's way of telling us how hard it is to be God.

Sidney Sheldon

There are things you can’t reach. But
you can reach out to them, and all day long.
The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of God.
And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.

Mary Oliver

“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.”

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"There is an Indian proverb or axiom that says that everyone is a house with four rooms, a physical, a mental, an emotional, and a spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but, unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person."

~Rumer Godden, A House with Four Rooms, 1989

“And

"
"You can get all A's and still flunk life."

"Lost in the mystery of finding myself alive."

Walker Percy

"The day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom”

A tough life needs a tough language-and that's what poetry is. That's what literature offers- a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn't a hiding place. It is a finding place.
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- C.S. Lewis

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Pat Robson – The Celtic Heart

People are itchy and lost and bored and quick to jump at any fix. Why is there such a vast self-help industry in this country? Why do all these selves need help?

They have been deprived of something by our psychological culture. They have been deprived of the sense that there is something else in life, some purpose that has come with them into the world."

-- James Hillman

Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government only when it deserves it.
--Mark Twain

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
--George Orwell

We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice: - we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
-- George Orwell

Never for the sake of peace and quiet deny your own experience or convictions.
--Dag Hammarskjöld

If you want to build a ship don't herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupery

For what are we, without hope in our hearts, that someday we'll drink from God's blessed waters?"
-Bruce Springsteen

"Sometimes grace works like waterwings when you feel you are sinking."
-Anne Lamott

"A prayer may be a wordless inner longing, a sudden outpouring of love, a yearning within the soul to be for a moment united within the infinite and the good, a humbleness that needs no abasement or speech to express it, a cry in the darkness for help when all seems lost, a song, a poem, a kind deed, a reaching for beauty, or the strong, quiet inner reaffirmation of faith. A prayer in fact can be anything that is created by God that turns to God."

Paul Gallico

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Dag Hammarskjold

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world.”

― Paul Hawken

The greatest religious challenge of our age is to hold together social action and spiritual disciplines. This is not just a theological necessity, dictated by the need to integrate all of life around the reality of the living God. It is a matter of sheer survival. The evils we confront are so massive, so inhuman, so impervious to appeals and dead to compassion, that those who struggle against them face the real possibility of being overwhelmed by them.”

~ Theologian Walter Wink

One day you will ask me which is more important? My life or yours?
I will say mine and you will walk away not knowing that you are my life.

~ Khalil Gibran

Blue Eyed Ennis

God, Free Will And Taxes : How Would You Respond ?

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