Who is doing molding, Individual or God?

Watched a Movie Titled MUTE (2018, TV-MA)

It started with an Amish proverb:

“In order to mold His people, God often has to melt them.”

Imagine you are a cheetah running to catch a deer. The hunt is on, and you are running at full speed with all your effort, but the deer is running and turning faster than you, getting away. The thought comes to you that you have to feed your babies, and you start to pray to God. “God, please give me some more speed and let me catch this food.” Now, imagine you are the deer. You are running for your life with all you have, and the thought comes to you, “God, please give me some more speed and save me from this certain death; I have to stay alive to feed my baby.” Both sides are praying to the same God but for completely different reasons. This puts God in a pickle about what to do. If God lets the cheetah catch the deer, is this the same as letting Bambi starve to death? Is God mean and merciless to the deer and its Bambi? If the deer gets away, the cheetah’s babies might die of starvation. So, is God mean and merciless to the cheetah but merciful to the deer and Bambi?

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?

Everything is wrong when you bring this scenario into humanity with high expectations from God. Since we all have knowledge of our mortality, things are different. First, it’s not a life-threatening situation for us. Second, we are evolved enough to understand. This is why we can’t, or should not, shoot or drop a bomb on opposing groups and chant it in the name of God.

Our wars have always been, are, and will always be based on our group politics. To keep our group’s morale high, we all tell the group we belong to that we are good, and our opponent group is evil.

Regardless of who is guilty, both sides use politics to convince their group that the opposing group is evil, and ours is good, so God is on our side. Both sides fire or drop bombs with chants that, “God is great.” God has been put in by the cheetah and the deer. The cheetah and the deer don’t have the same comprehension as human beings, so when humans put God in that situation, they are responsible for their actions. They are individually or collectively responsible for their actions because they are not at the level of the cheetah or the deer.

Human beings usually are cunning enough to put the blame on their God or their Devil to deflect responsibilities for their political actions. We have been able to use our politics until now to kill each other, including innocents from both sides. It’s about time we came clean and accepted our responsibilities, whether these responsibilities are individual or collective.

Putting God and the Devil on the top and humans in the bottom corner is clever and political but not honest or truthful. Deep inside, we all individually and collectively know that as human individuals, we are responsible for our actions because we have been blessed with free will. If we justify politically and hide our guilt behind the politics of our groups, we, as individuals, would feel the power of guilt. That phenomenon has been seen in modern-day war veterans with invisible disorders. Many people who have returned to civilian life after serving their country in wars suffer trauma from their service. They live their lives in trauma, and some kill themselves or die because they cannot understand or get over their time serving in the war.

When it comes to the cheetah and the deer, it is a matter of life and death, so we need to seriously look at it. If the deer gets caught, then the cheetah will have food to feed her babies. If it does not, the cheetah will go hungry and may not be able to feed her babies. This dilemma will cause the cheetah to come up with new strategies to continue to evolve.

How much will, or should I say free will, is playing a role in this life-and-death drama? Is it sheer luck, and does God have everything to do with it, or is it personal will?

If you put God on that high pedestal and say everything is done by God, even a leaf on the tree can’t move without God’s will. That means you should believe in God 100% in everything else as well. For instance, if you believe in that, you should not or will not have a concept of revenge related to emotional reactions to punishment. The concept of the justice system itself falls apart if we start to believe God is doing everything and human individuals have no say in what may happen. If that is the case, where would you fit God-given free will and the ability to put personal efforts into the game of life to survive?

Let’s take ourselves out of the bush and caves and come into an urban jungle. During this evolution from cave dwellings to high-rise living, a lot has happened to us. This journey has been tough, but it has been a worthwhile process so far. If we destroy everything that we have built during this evolution, it would be a colossal mistake by a spiritual God or, I should say, humanity.

Just look at us. We can dig deep into the earth without claws. We can swim deep into the ocean without gills. We can fly without wings where no winged bird can fly. This all is done by using free will to evolve. If we were to listen to the people who thought the earth was flat, we would still be in caves fighting for survival. This evolution has not been done by our prayers and worshiping. It usually comes from those so-called “religious people.”

I respect religious beliefs and the fundamentals of mortal living. I also believe that free oxygen, free will, and all abilities a living and breathing body has, with a God or no God.

Now let’s look at how and where God fits into our mortal lives.

Our awareness of personal mortality automatically creates a new world beyond the present life, but it is all based on the assumptions of the groups we have chosen to belong to. Our present ability to think takes us beyond our living years, especially when one starts to think spiritually. We have an evolutionary and exploring nature, with broad imagination, so potentially we create our future with our present thinking. Most of us have the unrelenting need to know why, how, and what happens after we die, so there are several schools of thought giving their versions or scenarios of what will happen. Since no one has been known to return from death and been able to tell us what happened when they went to Heaven, there is no evidence about what happens when we die. So it has always been dependent on the belief system of groups to instill in their members what will happen when they die and go to the heaven they believe in. Now it comes down to the individual whether to benefit or harm one’s living experience and what they are willing to believe.

How much effort you put into your personal life is almost always relevant, so do you use God? Do you rely on God and have expectations from God to take care of your life’s everyday affairs? It is highly dependent on the knowledge you have been instilled with growing up as an individual.

Where do you fit in as an individual to take responsibility related to your everyday life? How much effort you put into your personal life is almost always relevant, so do you use God? Do you rely on God and have expectations from God to take care of your life’s everyday affairs? It is highly dependent on the knowledge you have been instilled with growing up as an individual.

If you are not taught to fend for yourself and evolve, then are you taught not to follow your evolutionary nature? You are taught to believe that if the cheetah catches the deer, it is God’s will. If the cheetah does not catch the deer, this is God’s will also. So logically, you are taught that the cheetah, the deer, and you have no personal free will.

Remember, you can’t believe halfway in free will. Either you believe that you have free will or you do not. You, as a spiritual entity, make a choice to create your physical actions. So if you are making things happen in your life, you are using free will.

Just like our thoughts have the power to create physical changes in our bodies like the healing process and even the creation of diseases, spirituality creates physicality, and physicality makes spirituality meaningful to complete a mortal circle of human individual life. Always remember, the purpose of humans and God is to make things happen physically. Good and bad is not an issue here; it is all about what is important for us as mortals with the gift of thinking, breathing, and a living body to experience this life. Should we mess it up or take charge to live this life on personal terms and responsibilities?

UNDERSTANDING IS REQUIRED.

If you don’t think, you don’t create. Say for security reasons, human beings created cities in the jungle to survive from the predators but forgot about the dangers within the social settings from their own kind.

Sure, we have removed ourselves from the food chain, and no longer can other animals eat us. Unfortunately, we are doing a pretty good job with our social crimes and wars to kill each other. Yet still, it’s so-called human progress, depending on how you look at it.

In favor of personal efforts versus prayers, one has to be fair as an individual. Sure, I believe in the God-given path or story of life because it is evident all around us. We all have different paths, but they all lead to the same destination. All jobs are helping humanity, so helping each other is our purpose in individual life. God does not need help, but needs help from us to turn spirituality into physical actions. So the importance of the human individual is beyond all the religious books and their narrations.

Society and God are made up of human individuals, making each person the most important link. Just as a chicken lays eggs to create more chickens, human beings form masses, societies, and humanity. It may seem less important to you as an individual, but without each individual thread, no fabric can be woven. Therefore, respect yourself as an individual. As a collective, we need to respect the individual so we can survive as a mass.

For instance, if you feel small and weak, you might want to build a bigger, more muscular body with higher levels of testosterone to become assertive and aggressive. Now, think about what you would do to achieve this. Would you go to a mosque or church to seek help from a priest or mullah and pray, or would you take charge, go to the gym, and work out with the help of a personal trainer instead?

This is a common-sense decision that we all make, even if we are very religious. God or not, religion or not, there are certain levels of understanding we all possess.

Free will, personal effort, and the use of our brains have been around since the dawn of civilization, just like our politics of control and power. If you take charge and put effort into your life, you will automatically be ahead of those who don’t. How do you justify poverty despite efforts? Well, this is where politics comes in. We have used our brainpower to achieve control and power over others, creating groups or belonging to groups. We have even passed other people as property, just like kingdoms. Yes, we still have kingdoms in the present world, and royal families have children to ensure their wealth stays in the family.

The modern internet has exposed everyone to democratic values, equal human rights, and a sense of belonging to humanity as a whole. This modern trend is growing rapidly, and the majority of educated individuals want to be part of it.

Authoritarianism, kingdoms, or ideologies like communism and socialism must modernize their way of governing. From South Africa to Russia and China, things are changing, but these changes are slow for some and too fast for others. A changing world is like an open can of worms—you just can’t put things back and close it, so there is no going back. You can claim to be a nationalist, but the world is changing right before your eyes. Especially with the internet and information highway, nothing can be kept secret.

Efforts to suppress freedom of expression, like flogging a blogger or dismembering a journalist, are attempts to put the worms back in the can. Americans are trying to return to the old days, and the British tried with Brexit, but the question is how long they can hold on until changing times sweep them away. Humanity is growing closer together. When UN leaders laughed at Trump, it wasn’t about the issues at hand; it was a reflection of the power of shifting times.

Problems like global warming and the awakening of politics related to equal human rights can’t be controlled by big guns or high walls. These problems can only be dealt with by the united efforts of all humanity. We have come full circle. If we don’t change according to the demands of changing times, our survival as humanity will be in question. There would not be a winning nation; everyone would be a loser. Remember, everything is valuable on the face of the earth because humanity puts a value on it. If the planet becomes uninhabitable, nothing will matter.

If a whole city goes underwater due to climate change, all human beings—rich, poor, or middle class—will lose. So, it is time to care about humanity as a whole. Our wars can destroy nations and their budgets, but global warming-related problems have the power to destroy beyond national borders. Refugees have to leave everything behind to survive, and the assets left behind can’t be valuable until they are rebuilt and repopulated. A ghost town is a ghost town, no matter how you look at it.

At the end of the day, it’s a game of survival. Whether you are a cheetah or a deer, you need to know that free will is there to make a choice to put in more effort to survive. God stays out of your affairs after you have been blessed with an able body, oxygen, and free will. So take charge and make decisions that create peace so humanity can evolve in all aspects of life, not just in war-related weaponry.

Sure, there are things beyond human control, but if we don’t acknowledge the value of our free will, we would end up going to a mosque or church to pray for bigger muscles or stronger bodies instead of going to the gym.

Don’t let anyone tell you that human efforts are not meaningful. Just look into history and even today—every single progress has been made by the efforts of human individuals. Acknowledge the importance of God by remembering that it is all done by able, living, and breathing bodies. Since we can’t live without oxygen or an able body, nothing is done without the blessings of God. So, back to square one. Did the cheetah catch the deer with personal effort and free will, or did the deer survive by personal effort and sheer will? Go figure, but don’t be egotistic and believe that there is no God.

The question is: Is God melting to mold human beings, or are human beings doing the molding by their evolutionary nature?

God has done a godly job by providing us with oxygen, able bodies, and free will. Now it’s up to us to catch our food or avoid becoming food.

I believe in a God who is merciful and has given me oxygen, an able body, and free will. Now, it’s up to me how I live with a belief system to do my job without questioning God’s existence. How I live my mortal life is up to me. I can’t blame, and I don’t want to blame, God for my actions. I have been blessed from the get-go, so my molding is done by me using God-given free will.

Adapting and evolving according to the demands of the time and era I am born into is my quest. We should not have to run from our own kind to survive, nor should we have to think twice about saving our planet. As physical components of God, human beings have far more responsibilities than religions have taught us. Since God’s work is done by us, we need to get our acts together and take charge of what we have been assigned to do.