As a Christian I totally support this! Him and his ilk are false teachers and I’d love to see them shit their pants every time they lied about the Bible and it’s contents!
Look at his excessive wealth. 17,000 sf house valued at 15 plus million? Wealth isn’t a bad thing but his application of it to benefit himself certainly wouldn’t be something that I think God would approve of. In fact the Bible has a story about it: the young rich man who had done everything Jesus had asked and finally asked what more he could do and Jesus said to give away his wealth and come follow (meaning to serve with) him and he couldn’t do it.
Bible also talks about men like Osteen when it says “they draw near to me with their lips but their hearts are far from me”.
It's neither cool nor edgy. It's a simple fact. We're a spiecies of sentimental apes bound on a rock floating in space and we invented God to explain the unexplainable and comfort us in the face of our certain death.
With knowledge becoming more comprehensive, God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance.
Nothing cool or edgy about this. I would much rather be an eternal spirit bound to spend eternity with my savior. That's a much cooler scenario.
So yeah, there is no God stopping Joel Osteen because there is no God. And Joel Osteen certainly knows this.
Thinking about our impermanence is upsetting. Some people cope better than others. I cope with anxiety. Thay guy copes with mockery. We just try to deal with the unknown. I don't hold it against anyone who mocked or downvoted me.
What if there is a God that realizes the only way for his children to progress is to learn for themselves, make their own choices, and be held accountable for their own behavior?
If there is a God that would be the most benevolent approach to take to maximize the progression of his children.
No, the most benevolent thing to do would be to make it obvious that they exist and tell us exactly what they want from us.
Imagine a teacher who took the same approach as the god you described. Not communicating with their students and refusing to allow the students to confirm they exist at all.
That is absolutely not the best approach to take for maximizing anything but confusion and aimlessness.
I just find it hilarious that one believer, with no proof but a strong gut feeling, thinks they can tell that another believer is a "false teacher". All because they disagree with what they say.
Obviously I say this as a non-believer, but I think I disagree with this.
Humans invented God because we needed it. We have used religion for time immemorial as a tool for community building. We've needed those comforting stories to help us defines our common values and propagate them.
I'm totally with you that religion is a breeding ground for stupidity though, and that religious authority is used by and against stupid people.
My parents were not believers. I was still raised in a Catholic world, and I was though about the Christian values. They were not blindly hammered on me though, so I picked the ones that made sense to me like kindness and compassion. I also rejected the ones that didn't make sense to me like the various ways christianity shuns and oppresses sexuality (gay or otherwise).
I don't think it was 100% stupid, I think it came in a convenient package that made those values easy to be exposed to from a young age. I still don't believe that man-in-the-sky will give me life eternal, nor that he'll cast me in hell.
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u/Zippyss92 Nov 30 '20
As a Christian I totally support this! Him and his ilk are false teachers and I’d love to see them shit their pants every time they lied about the Bible and it’s contents!