Y'know, I'm glad she was able to stop a destructive habit.

[conuly]

Really. But... I don't know. It's always seemed a little arrogant, mihi, to attribute everything good to God. No, really. Instead of being humble (I couldn't've done it without His help!") it sounds more like "God took the time to help me. I'm very special because of this. If you aren't being helped by God, it's because there's something wrong with you".

And something else. If God is running around stopping people from smoking and tanning and eating too much, why isn't he also stopping them from being hateful, robbing the poor, and killing each other? Or aren't those important enough to merit God's personal interference?

Comments

[wakasplat.livejournal.com]

And something else. If God is running around stopping people from smoking and tanning and eating too much, why isn't he also stopping them from being hateful, robbing the poor, and killing each other? Or aren't those important enough to merit God's personal interference?

I actually know someone who was ready to kill a bunch of people — literally had the gun in their hand and was getting ready to do it — and attributes the fact that they didn't to divine interference (which involved more than just saying "Don't kill them"). They don't attribute that to being special or get particularly arrogant about it though. They just see it as that's how it happened for whatever reason, and say that if it's psychosis that prevented them from killing people, well then more people ought to be psychotic.

But... yeah. The amount of people willing to attribute various weird things to God really confuses me, especially when it's said in a way that implies there's something wrong with the people they're not happening to. That's similar to the people who claim that if someone's disabled then it's because they don't have enough faith — I'm really uncomfortable around that one for obvious reasons.

[leora.livejournal.com]

Well, if you're about to hurt others, you also have a get out of arrogance free card if you choose to play it - because you can say that you believe god interfered on behalf of the other people, not because you're so special, but because killing people is very, very bad. The downside of that is, of course, well what about the people that do get killed and there is no interference? So, it doesn't work that well. But at least it isn't: look at me! I'm going to show how the bad things I do only show how truly saintly I am.

[wakasplat.livejournal.com]

Yeah. It's one of the least arrogant people I know, in fact (my experience in general has been that actual experience of God tends to decrease arrogance dramatically, sometimes in pretty painful ways). The way they described it it sounded like they still could've done the wrong thing if they'd chosen to, but they listened (they were also told what to do instead). So it's kind of like the person in a reply lower down than this said, they could've stuck their fingers in their ears, but they didn't.

[conuly]

Killing people gets you a special out from the arrogance thing, just like leora said. I'll even agree that "I didn't kill myself because of God" is a fair sentiment.