As a practice, I like to keep up with religious news. Utilizing the wonders of the “beanterneteriffic world of tubes,” I have amassed quite a collection of daily-updating, religiously-based RSS feeds. From time-to-time, these feeds will produce an article that catches my eye and forces it (or both) throughout it’s text, thus promoting my brain to process written language into perceived analysis and contemplation through thought. Once this system plays out, my soul is then overtaken by an outside force that I can really only label “the holy spirit,” that compels me to articulate my feelings right here, in all of their blobbical sweetness. This being the case, take a look at the following:
http://www.ntm.org/news/5869
Knowing God Brings Peace, Answers
(Article) - New Tribes Mission
At an Ayoré church service recently, tribal believers shared about the difference knowing God has made in their lives.
As they spoke their words were translated into English for a team of college students from Canada and visiting missionary-teacher Rachel Tims.
One man told of how this once fierce and violently aggressive tribe has learned to live in peace with each other because they now have peace with God.
Another man shared that he once worshiped the sun. “One day he prayed for something but the sun god got his prayers confused and gave [the man] something else that is called by the same name in the Ayoré language,” wrote Rachel. “The man realized that his god did not understand him, and so he stopped praying.”
Now that Ayoré man knows the true God, and prays to the One who understands his needs even before he asks.
Please pray that more missionaries will be raised up and sent to those who have not heard, so that more testimonies such as these can be shared.
I know, this is a very small article, from a very biased source. And yes, I know that the whole thing is chaulk full of craziness that could be scruitinized and debated over in length, but there is one little bit that gets me the most…
“One man told of how this once fierce and violently aggressive tribe has learned to live in peace with each other because they now have peace with God.”
Allow me, if you will, to express myself.
First, I just want to point out that if a group of people can’t choose to live peacefully within their own community without an almighty father figure hanging over their heads, then their concept of peace, and morality for that matter, are horribly askew. This article doesn’t detail just how they found “peace with God,” or how this would produce peace within their once violent tribe, but I would wager that it has something to do with them being told that the god of the bible is a loving, peaceful god. Let’s just hope they never READ the bible.
Yeah, not so peaceful, but wait.. didn’t Jesus say… Matthew 5:39
Hmm, so I’m confused. Are we to despise evil and emulate god in his jealousy and anger, or are we to excuse it, turning the other cheek? What’s that? Oh, so god is the only being that is validated in the jealousy and hate of evil because he is ultimately holy, and we are to suffer through the existence of evil because we are mearly followers of God, and sometimes even the cause of “evil” things? But I mean, didn’t God create the ability to commit evil? And isn’t God supposed to be the root of just, righteous, holy morality?
It’s time to stop being silly. Morality is a human construct that exits outside of any idea of a god or gods. For example, in the bible, Solomon, supposedly the wisest man to have ever existed (sorry Jesus), had a multitude of wives and concubines. While Solomon was indeed warned that his wives would lead him astray to other gods, not once is polygamy spoken out against by God. Now, good, old-fashioned, church-goer, do you agree that a man should be able to have as many wives as he chooses? What’s that, you think this practice is wrong? Immoral? Why would you say that? I’ll tell you. Because of your region in the world and the morality of your accepted society, the commonplace thought on marriage is that one man, should have one wife and that anything else is considered cheating, or adultery. King Solomon had no issue with having more than one wife and it never shows us in the bible where God called him down for this whatsoever. Were you in Solomon’s place, you would have had many wives as well, and it would have been just fine. So what is it about God’s moral stance that says it was ok for Solomon to have many wives but it is not ok today? Is your god morally inconsistent? How would we even know that the actions of your god are good, unless we have a moral grounding in which to base it’s actions? Well, your god doesn’t exist, but that’s beside the point. What I have established here, is that we, as a species, cannot and DO NOT depend on an external deity for morality. So Christians, you can keep saying it, but it’s just not so.
One can use any number of philosophical approaches to the concept of morality. Personally, I like a mixture of applied Kantian ethics through the use of categorical imperative with a touch of the Ubermensch ideology embracing a strong personal determination to provide independent ethical checks and balances, but that’s just me. Applying a supernatural entitiy to the issue of morality, as an eternal parental figure is displacing the human from their role in upholding a common morality. The reason that the common man is not out raping and murdering, etc. is not because they fear a god, but because we have all entered into an unspoken contract with one another that we won’t do these things so that we can all go about our lives relatively protected and secure in the knowledge that life will be somewhat predictable and managable. We have agreed to form a society.
So here is where you make the argument that rape and murder, etc. do in fact take place, so my entire philosophy on the common morality of mankind is debunked. Well, tell me, right now, as you sit in front of your internet capable device, strolling through my small corner of the blogosphere, do you find yourself taken by the uncontrollable urge to randomly kill someone, or to rape the next person you see? Probably not (if so, write to me and I’ll try to get you some information on couselling). Our society has deemed these types of actions “criminal.” As a whole, we do not want these actions committed upon us, nor do we commonly agree that we should be allowed to commit these actions upon others. Those who commit these types of actions are the fringe of society, no matter how many dramatic movies get made about them, or how regularly they are covered by the local news to boost ratings. It is much more common to uphold accepted ethical standards, then it is to go against them in our society, no matter how much Christianity will tell you otherwise. So there it is, applied ethics, legislated and commonly upheld. No god’s necessary.
If we spread this message to the Ayoré tribe instead, I bet we would see the formation of an ethically strong tribe of people, who can come together to agree upon and embrace common ideas of justice and right action vs. wrong action. Utilizing the current message they have been given, we’ll probably just witness division and sectarianism once they start to uncover just how morality and ethics are dealt with in the bible, especially by their newfound god.
All of this being said, I am going to give the New Tribes Mission article 
3 halos for being 3 things: way too short, non-informative and self-gratifying.
