Originally posted by cheezwhiz
It is people that feel the need to justify His perfection, because their belief system would come crashing down without it. It is people who seek to justify their wrongs through Him, or be revealed as the despicable individuals they are.
(1) Both of these attitudes, I think, “smack of some truth,” to steal Halitose’s phrase.
(2) Neither of these attitudes are universal among religionists, theistic or otherwise, on these forums or elsewhere. (And I didn’t take that as your assertion.)
(3) Both have, I think, at least a quasi-idolatrous aspect to them—“I don’t dare see
my ‘graven image’ of God crumble, so I’ll cling to it come hell or highwater.”
(4) All of us probably ought to keep self-vigilance and beware of clinging to our beliefs as some kind of security blanket, refusing to challenge them (or permit them to be challenged) for fear of insecurity. [Alan Watts once wrote a book called
The Wisdom of Insecurity; that’s all I remember of it offhand, but the title probably says it all.]
(5) People who
use their religion (or any other ideology) as either a security blanket or a justification (or cover) for bad behavior are doing just that—
using their religion. To draw an analogy that I’ve been playing with in my head: Abraham’s true act of faith
was when he put down the knife.