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Meditation 151
Be your own god!

by: JT

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The local First Assembly of God, like so many other churches, has a sign outside on which it posts various supposedly uplifting messages. This week's message was:

EXPECT GREAT THINGS FROM GOD

ATTEMPT GREAT THINGS FOR GOD

This is not a message I agree with. Nor do I find it at all uplifting. Rather it degrades humanity by placing us in an inferior position to a being for which there is no evidence.

I've written enough already on the expectations side of the equation. What we should expect from a god? Nothing at all! That is in line with the evidence and in line with our second Article of Faith. With those expectations, I am unlikely to be disappointed.

And what great things should be done for the First Assembly of God's god? As for most believer religions, this usually entails the congregation finding more money to further the cause, to build another church extension, to finance yet another unwanted missionary in India, to pay for some television time, to force their beliefs and their ideas about morality on the rest of us. The great things demanded are never productive.

As Robert Ingersoll once said:

Religion supports nobody. It has to be supported. It produces no wheat, no corn; it ploughs no land; it fells no forests. It is a perpetual mendicant. It lives on the labors of others, and then has the arrogance to pretend that it supports the giver.

How would I amend the posted message? I would drop god from it entirely.

EXPECT GREAT THINGS FROM YOURSELF

ATTEMPT GREAT THINGS FOR YOURSELF

Be your own god. Be responsible and accountable for yourself. That way, "great things" might actually come to pass.