I’m a firm believer in Socrates theory that “The unexamined life is not worth living”. I believe in challenging your beliefs and really evaluating what you believe. When we do this, we often find that one of two things will happen.

In some instances, we find that examining what we believe can actually strengthen our belief. Where once you had blind faith, that is replaced with a profound sense of certainty that resonates at your core!

Alternatively, subjecting those beliefs to close examination can reveal that there is no hard core factual basis to support those beliefs. This of course doesn’t mean that they are wrong, it just means we can’t be absolutely certain that they are right. This may lead us to the realisation that we don’t necessarily need to disregard those beliefs but we perhaps need to at least be more open to the possibility that there could be other explanations to those which we have traditionally relied upon.

In the latter case, if we find that there is no hard core factual basis for our beliefs then after re-evaluating everything we may find that the fundamental core of what we believe doesn’t change but in the process we may gain new perspectives and new ways of thinking about things.

Perhaps the best example of this would religion. It is a subject that divides opinion, for true believers it’s a bit of a taboo to even examine or question the nature of their belief. For non-believers it seems irrelevant and pointless to question this as it’s not something they believe in anyway.

However, this is the perfect example of something where both believers and non-believers alike can maintain their respective fundamental beliefs about religion, but in examining the nature of their beliefs it may open them to new perspectives.

Imagine For A Moment This Were True…

Let me challenge you with a thought provoking example. Religious people believe in the concept of an eternal being called God. Who always was and always will be. A benevolent God who created the entire Universe.

This benevolent God is a God of love. God loves every person uniquely and wants the entire world to live together in peace and harmony. God wants each person to do good deeds and is most happy when he see’s people doing good. He is also a jealous God who wants to be worshiped.

Into a perfect world created by God came evil in the form of the Devil. The Devil corrupted people to do evil deeds. Anytime that a person does something wrong, that is the work of the Devil.

But What If…

What if, instead of that, the eternal being who always was and always will be was NOT God, but in fact the Devil. The Devil created the entire Universe including the human race. The Devil is NOT a benevolent being of love. The Devil is a creature of hate! He thrives on the misery of people and is most happy when people are doing their worst to each other. He is not particularly jealous and definitely does NOT want people to worship him. Worship is a form of reverence and this is something that the Devil distains.

Whilst the Devil takes delight in people DOING bad things, what he really loves most is when people act out of a real genuine FEELING of hate or evil.

But the Devil faced a massive problem. The people who he created in this world were not all that he had hoped they would be. They were easy to manipulate into DOING evil things through coercion, threats and even bribes. However, the mere acts themselves left the Devil feeling empty. What he really wanted was for people to harbour a real sense of hatred within their hearts towards their fellow man. People, he reasoned, when motivated out of hate will do far worse things to each other than what he could ever hope to accomplish through mere coercion and threats. Hate will lead people to war, hate will make people genuinely WANT to kill each other. Yet no matter how hard he tried, HATE was just something he could not instil into the hearts of people.

Clearly, a new approach was needed. It has been said that Thomas Edison had over 1,000 failed attempts to create the light globe before he finally had success. Well the Devil had time on his side, over millennia her tried countless ways to get people to act out of hate and NOTHING worked.

Then finally, after failure after countless failure, he hit upon a stroke of genius. He created the concept of God. The mythical God that he created was a benevolent God of unconditional love. It had immediate effect, nothing could inspire hate and evil in people as passionately as a God of unconditional love.

The Devil could force and coerce people into doing pretty much anything, but if there was no force or coercion then people just wouldn’t do what he wanted by their own initiative. But for a God of unconditional love however, people would voluntarily go to war and willingly kill thousands of innocent people “In the name of God”. No threat that the Devil could come up with would ever sustain people to travel to distant lands and kill innocent people. But for a God of unconditional love, people would themselves organise “Crusades” to travel to distant lands and to “Kill the infidels in the name of God”.

This God was also a jealous God who demanded that people follow a strict set of rules otherwise the God of unconditional love would condemn them to eternal pain and suffering in eternal damnation. The Devil figured that people would be too stupid to figure out that condemning people to eternal pain and suffering was not consistent with a God of unconditional love and was pleasantly surprised to discover that to a large extent he was correct.

The Devil’s eyes beamed with delight when he saw that “in the name of God” people were willing to burn people at the stake for such things as suggesting that the world was round, as such statements they believed violated God’s laws.

With a deep sense of pride, the Devil looked upon places like Australia where an entire generation of children were stolen from their parents “in the name of God” because, those of whom the Devil was most fond, believed it was better to kidnap children and rob them not just of their loving parents but also their history and culture. Far better to have those children condemned to religious institutions where things like paedophilia ran rampant.

Ever since the inception of the God concept, the broad smile has never left the Devils face. Today it remains there fixed in place.

But What If…

What if this did not have to be the case. What if there was a way out. What if people gave up the notions of needing to kill or spread hatred against others “in the name of God” and instead realised that these ideas we inconsistent with a God of unconditional love. What if people started to believe that the number of “Conditions” which the God of unconditional love placed on his love was in fact ZERO. What if people turned 2000 years of dogma on its head and adopted a radical new notion that “Unconditional” love meant love without conditions. Such a God would not require anything of them. A God who did not require anything of them would have no need to punish them with eternal damnation.

Free from this old dogma, people would no longer have any reason to kill “in the name of God” because a God of unconditional love would not require that of them. There would be no reason to persecute anyone or spread hate “in the name of God”.

What if the thing the Devil feared most came to fruition? What if people stopped having hate in their hearts.

Just A Thought To Ponder…