* If you felt completely in control of your life, would you have any reason to appeal to whatever entity may be out there for help?
* When you have no reason for being here, doing what you do, is God who you turn to for a sign as well as guidance?
* Is God to be held accountable for that which is mainly inexplicable? Then what would would happen if you could explain everything you came across?
* Is it weakness to require that there be a God for your salvation, for your life to have meaning, for there to be hope?
* In strength, would you turn to God to say thanks for everything?
* Or, would you say that you have not resigned yourself to what God has deemed as your fate? Instead would you say that what has become of you is a result of favourable circumstances as well as who you are and what you have done with your life?
If you are in control, God need not feel that he must bestow upon you his attentions and bother with pulling you out of the hole you were planted in to grow from. You will make it out of the dirt yourself and you will be stronger and better off as a result of the struggle. Don't rely on someone else's help. Do yourself and everyone else a favour and help yourself out of your troubles and into success. And if you have time, effort and resources that are not needed for your own triumph, start pulling others out of the muck with you. The secret to making the world a better place is first fixing yourself and ensuring your own strength and security. Then and only then should you attempt trying to fix anybody or anything else that needs bettering.
7 comments:
ekanta, you seem to be assuming that "God" = "lack of self-autonomy." Yet, if that is true, you are failing to consider any other scenario. All of your questions are re-formulations of the first. It makes discusssion difficult as the questions are all biased/predisposed to a certain set of beliefs.
("ID" + "human needs/desires" + "missunderstood&unknown chaos") = ("All-mightly-lord that we cant ever figure out or get any real answers from")
ekanta, i feel you are appealing to imbalance. we need all the help we can get.does anyone reading this thread NOT need all the help you can get?!?
i know what point your trying to put across:dont rely on god to fix everything while you sit on your ass doing nothing.
god will act if he indeed is real which he is.
the key is to work with god and his rightous will to your own benifit. (and other's benifits,inclusivly.)
hope that helps this thread.
What if you derive your own strength and security from bettering those around you?
What if everyone waited for one's own strength and security ? Who would help those who needed the help desperately?
Nice to see you back. To your first question, well, that would make you a good person. To your second point, it's not a matter of waiting but doing and to your third...
The last time I was in India, I moaned about the lack of charity the average Indian showed for those worse off than themselves who were not part of their own family. The wise person I was moaning to told me that it wasn't a lack of charity that I should be concerned about and he was right. He said that his and everybody else's concern should simply be about making sure that they can look after themselves. If everybody was good at looking after themselves then there would be no cause for charity. People need to be able to look after themselves and not have to depend on handouts from other people. It is essential for us as a race to realise that those who continue on must be those who have the capacity within them to strive to survive.
I'm not saying you shouldn't help. I guess I'm saying that it isn't safe to do so until you are strong and secure within yourself. By all means, help those who need it but do so by pulling them up with you when you succeed. Just don't let being charitable get in the way of bettering yourself further because you don't want to be limited as a person by your social conscience when you could be achieving greater heights for yourself from where you could make a greater impact later on if you would wait. I think that even if you didn't actively go out to help others, your success would help to improve the prospects of your family/friends/locality anyway. When you succeed as a person, the increase in wealth, knowledge and morals you have a person has a flow on effect for your community and surroundings as well.
What should be provided to those who need help desperately: a forum in which to be heard and to garner support within and opportunities to improve oneself in the form of work (which also involves the setup of food, living space and sanitation) as well as education. Throwing money at people does nothing to solve a problem. People don't learn how to use money wisely until they have understand how much work is required to attain it.
Ekanta,
I suspect you are not convinced with your own arguments - hence the attempt to emphasize and re-emphasize ;-)
Anyways - I totally agree that each if each individual could realize his/her own ability to take care of oneself there would be no need of charity.
However, there are two categories of people :
Children - who need to be made to realize that they have this ability.
Seniors - who had the ability, but are now at a second childhood, when they need some care.
Your concept of self help will remain an impractical theory for these two categories of people.
What goes around comes around - what you do for others comes back to you. If you help others, you will be helped in one way or the other - even if it is self help!
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