Worshipping Gods creation(s)

OK I posted something along the same lines as this over at BTS a while back. Now I think not only does this topic better belong in conspiracies in R&S but I think I have a better concept of the point I was trying to bring across.

God wants us to worship Him NOT His creation. Now I do not go out and worship the trees and flowers and birds etc..but I do appreciate these wonderful pieces or gifts of life He has created. But are these wonderful pieces of life actually gifts for us? Nature can take care of nature but we always seem to want to intervene..why?

To me, there is a fine line between appreciating, beautifying and worshipping something. When we bring plants and animals into our home to adorn and admire, is this not a form of worship for His creation?

What I'm trying to say is how can we, as human beings be expected to love what God has created on earth yet at the same time have little regard for these things?
Magestica

Respect, revere, worship, love... all in the spectrum of good.

I can't pretend that I know what God wants. I have a hard enough time working out what it is that I want in some parts of life. I'm confident if God is all s/he says he is then he can get what he wants without an overzealous protection of all his creatures and instructions to them that they must not worship each other.

Personally I think I have a high level of regard for this planet, however it came to be created, and I would like to leave it as a more peaceful and ordered place than what it would be if the temporary custodians were able to fulfill their mission of evil.

By the way, your last few hours' posts have been brilliant and you have my first TWATS vote for the month.

And I know I don't need to flatter you.

"By the way, your last few hours' posts have been brilliant and you have my first TWATS vote for the month."

TWATS vote? hahaha


anyway... you christians make all this stuff up as you go along. its crazy.
god doesnt want anything because he doesnt exist.

Hey Genius

I have been called the Antichrist.

Do you respect other creatures on the planet? Do you worship anything? Why/why not?

You are correct we cannot pretend to know what God wants and perhaps that is one reason He left some of His words in a book? I have spoken about the bible and it's importance here several time in R&S and I'm not afraid to say I've changed my mind..the bible holds a great deal of importance AND knowledge for all. I don't and will not subscribe to this and that being removed altered and changed in the bible. I'm happy to read what IS written inside instead of focussing on what was removed or changed..

Like you, I have a high level of regard and love for the earth itself. I do my part *small part* in appreciation of this for myself alone.
But this is where I have trouble and thus is my reason for posting this topic..Who says nature cannot survive without humans little or big shows of care and appreciation? Most of what we have done to the planet has been destructive, whether intended or not. Nature can no longer take care of itself. Have we caused this to happen? I'm rambling here..but I think you see my point.

Forcing something to live when nature intends it to die changes nature completely..this is our greed and our form of worship on the creation..this is my point. Am I saying I'll never water another flower or refuse to up-root nature from it's habitat and bring it into my home..NO. But I'm certainly not helping what is already bruised and dying. Everything in life was once in balance with oneanother, I'm guessing over time and by our selfish desire to become 'mothernature' we are to blame for throwing the planet out of balance. This is what I mean when I say we are not meant to worship Gods creation, again this is our way of removing God and our faith in Him and placing ourselves in charge.

Whoever called you the AntiChrist was not nice..they must have been really confused and temporarily lost their head! I hope you can forgive them if you have not already.

Genuis-"you christains" sounds really low..sounds like you are stating something horrible. Why does God not exist for you? He most definitely exist for me!! Also i'm interested to read your answers to MaskedAvatars' questions as well.
Mags

[Edited on 1/3/04 by magestica]

magestica -

This whole thing depends solely upon how you see the world...er, universe, actually. I don't know whether you do or not, but I do know many Christians believe God is omnipotent - everywhere, in everything. Then they scold us (us being unbelievers in general) for worshipping something other than God. Personally, I see this as contradictory. If God is everywhere - literally *everywhere*, then he is the very tree I worship, yes? Thus, I am still worshipping God, am I not? This isn't meant as an attack, though I'm afraid it may be taken as such... I'm just hoping to spark an intelligent debte. Intelligent is a keyword there.

What the Christians, Muslims, Jews, etc., see as "God", I see as the Tao. Actually, to be completely correct, I see "God" as something closer to what is described as "the Force" in Star Wars (before ANY of you start laughing, open your minds and and recognize the validity of this belief, lest I dash yours into the ground.). To me, God is everywhere - literally. God is in me, God is in every tree, every plant, every rock on this Earth, God, too, is THE Earth, the Void of space, the stars, the galaxies, astroids, etc. Everything is made up of God. God gives us power, we return power to It (I say "It", because, in my opinion, God has no gender. God is energy. I only use the term "God" to make things more understandable.).

Now, assuming God requires worship (which I don't believe It does), no matter WHAT we worship - a tree, a flower - another living being - we are still worshipping God, because we all are of God. God is within us. God is us, and we are God.

I do worship trees. I have literally thousands of deities. Each thing has its own guardian spirit, made up of smaller spirits (ie, every tree in existance makes up the guardian spirit; in a way similar to that of every human in existance making up a species). These guardian spirits are of God, as well. By worshipping the tree - that is, the spirit of the tree, or the "image" of the guardian tree spirit, we worship God.

I hope this makes as much sense to you as it does to me. I find this kind of thing hard to explain correctly without leading people in circles and leaving them dizzy.

For the record-could people who don't believe in God please stop showing up in a conversation randomly saying God doesn't exsist? We already know that viewpoint.

Anyway, I understand the idea that we shouldn't worship anything but God. Thus, we're not supposed to put anything BEFORE God. God always comes first. Then we can admire what we will.

Maybe.

But when you think about it, everything in Christianity is a sin. We can't even try to be perfect because then we're trying to be God and that's a sin. It's some pretty crazy stuff. I was just having a discussion about this last night.

So the way I see it-if nearly everything we do is a sin then in Christianity's sense all we have to do is repent. So I suppose I'll stick with that and try not to analyze everything I do.

"Do you respect other creatures on the planet? Do you worship anything? Why/why not? "

i respect other creatures - why kill more than we can eat?

i dont worship anything.

No cannons came flying in my direction while reading your response

I understand most of that which you have written and I think pretty much the same as you about God being everywhere and inside everything. If respecting, taking care of and appreciating Gods creation is wrong or is a sin, then I'm a HUGE sinner there. There is a fine line between caring for something and worshipping it, a very fine line, maybe too fine. Just look up the word worship in the dictionary.

I'm finding it difficult to make my point of thought with this. Especially to those who don't even believe in God.

OK, I do believe that everything that God created has Him inside of it. I do not think that we, as Gods children should place more emphasis on-for example-a tree, just because we feel "God is there" or "God *IS* the tree. He is not the tree and by placing the tree in this position, we are saying the tree *IS* God. Then by doing this, we are removing God from the picture altogether and placing the tree where God should be. And..to make matters worse, we take a *different* tree, still Gods creation with God inside,chop it to pieces and either place it in our home no longer rooted and now dying(christmas tree, plants, etc) or toss it into a place for burning. Is one tree less worthy then another?
And being that most people think like you and I, that God is 'everywhere' and in 'everything' then why are we destroying God or thinking He is not capable of taking care of Himself? Am I making sense at all?

Any thoughts?

[Edited on 1/3/04 by magestica]

I don't mind non believers showing up and posting their 2 cents in my threads. I think by entering into a religious thread titled with God-then there must be some search inside going on..and this a good thing

You are correct too, being a Christian is tough work! Especially if we try to live our lives as the bible reads. But it doesn't have to be so hard. We as humans can only be expected to do so much, this is WHY God sent His only Son onto the earth and this is why Jesus died for us..because God must have known we would be surrounded and consumed in a world full of sin and sinners.

I believe in God, and I admit I am a sinner..I don't beat myself up about it. I just do the best I can within myself and if see there is something I'm able to change or *better* about my life in accordance to God, then I make that a goal for myself.

Nice thoughts all

Originally posted by magestica
God wants us to worship Him NOT His creation.

Do you really think that?

Should we just no care about ALL his creations, flaura/fauna, abuse and destroy everything, but have a little statue of *place name of a God* here and worship and pray in front of that statue each night, and we would still be good 'believer' ? Doesn't make sense to me.

I thought we shouldn't worship idols and deities..Maybe I got it all wrong, maybe I didn't understood what you were trying to say...

Originally posted by m0rbid

Originally posted by magestica
God wants us to worship Him NOT His creation.

Do you really think that?

Should we just no care about ALL his creations, flaura/fauna, abuse and destroy everything, but have a little statue of *place name of a God* here and worship and pray in front of that statue each night, and we would still be good 'believer' ? Doesn't make sense to me.

I thought we shouldn't worship idols and deities..Maybe I got it all wrong, maybe I didn't understood what you were trying to say...

If you read my posts from beginning to end you might understand and thus I won't have to repeat myself like a broken record for those who just choose to enter into a thread and seek out a certain quote that 'jumps out at them'.

I do believe I have made myself clear. Ask me a question in a better tone of typing and I do not mind at all responding in a better tone in return.

Hi Magestica

I quoted this line because it's the one that struck me the most. I don't understand why you find something wrong with appreciating all those little gift from God.

Do you think that say Joe Somebody, who have a few plants in his house, like 'em and appreciate 'em, and spends a few minutes a day to take care of 'em, and feed 'em, etc etc... Do you think all this is useless because at the other end of the globe, big corporation are cutting out entire forests ?

Maybe this would have been a better quote. (and I did read your entire post)

What I'm trying to say is how can we, as human beings be expected to love what God has created on earth yet at the same time have little regard for these things?

Sorry if I didn't got straight away what you were trying to say, again, english is my second language, so sometime when you people say stuff with multiple significations or meanings, I can have trouble to understand straight away.

As you can see, I just cannot and will not tolerate being attacked and especially when it pertains to my beliefs! English had nothing to do with how I perceived your initial inquisition.

I cannot answer the questions you are seeking answers to. And if you HAD read my entire post you'd plainly see the location I am in 'mind-wise' as to the entire concept of this thought of worship.

I plainly and openly stated somewhere above that I am not intending to remove any plants or flowers from my home (if I had them there to begin with) I'm not presenting the side of a holier then thou attitude here. I'm simply trying to understand the difference between worship, love, admiration, care etc etc..just as MaskedAvatar had written in first response. Perhaps-and to really throw this thread out of whack-the dictionary is incorrect with the definition of worship? It's a thought.

We cannot help that we do admire what God has given into the world. I admire my daughter and the man in my life, I also love both of them dearly..Does this mean I worship them? Well yes it does by definition. Because I also admire and love God and I do worship Him.

I am getting a little closer to understanding what He is talking about in the bible when He says Do not worship my creation, worship only me. Again I will use the example of a tree, that by placing the tree with the spirit of God, we are somehow removing God Himself from the picture. A tree is a tree, and most definitely is a creation of our Lord, therefore would most certainly have a piece of Him within it-if not entirely! But on the same token we take a different tree which is also created by God and would thus have God in it and chop it down and decorate it with whatever the choice of the year is during Christmas..for example and then toss it out after the spirit has died. Makes no sense to me now, although I have been doing this for years!

Again, why is one part of Gods creation more worthy of worship or admiration then another?? Why is we can feel that a certain tree or a piece of nature should be left alone, yet another can be up-rooted or chopped down and burnt? I am asking questions within this thread, hence I have not the answers myself. I am asking YOU for answers. Do you have them? Can we work amongst eachother to find them?

This is why I really do think there is way too much of a fine line between worship and admiration or *love* Maybe then, we just think we are worshipping God when in reality we just love and adore Him. The possibilities within my queries here are vast..atleast to me they are.

[Edited on 1/3/04 by magestica]

Originally posted by magestica
As you can see, I just cannot and will not tolerate being attacked and especially when it pertains to my beliefs! English had nothing to do with how I perceived your initial inquisition.

I'm not even attacking you ! I just try to better understand how you think. English is only affecting the way I understand everyones else posts, as my english is still poor compared to native english.

Perhaps-and to really throw this thread out of whack-the dictionary is incorrect with the definition of worship? It's a thought.

On that I can only agree with you. I never liked the concept of "worshipping" anyway, and I think we should only 'worship' our-selve, so to speak.

Again, why is one part of Gods creation more worthy of worship or admiration then another?? Why is we can feel that a certain tree or a piece of nature should be left alone, yet another can be up-rooted or chopped down and burnt?

Nothing should be more or less worthy of admiration/worshiping IMO. And yes, we DO see that in the current society, but tastes are in the nature! Some people will like some stuff that others people won't. It's the way it is. One should be free to decide whatever he want to like and admire and what he don't. Ie: (stupid example) I would love to have a pet snake, altho most people prefer to have a cat or a dog. (I know it's stupid)

Again, I wasn't attacking you or your belief. I was questionning merely to try and get a better understanding of your belief. But I can see how there seem to be so much conflict between us, since you're obviously religious, and I attached less importance to this...Anyway, that's not the point.

On topic, were you just trying to say that, whatever we love or admire, we should always keep a tought that whatever it is, it's more than what it is, because it's a part of God's creation? Say whenever I say "Oh gosh, how beautifull is this flower", it would be better if I only judge the flower as any equal god's creation? (I think I may be way off the track again, but I'm really trying to understand what you said..)

I'm following you here. I was already feeling in the line of defense from the previous thread. It is true that a non-Christian will look for any which way they can to attack a Christian. This cannot be denied. There is a difference I believe in Christianity though just as there is a difference in people.

I apologize for being on the defense.

I do think this is a valid concept that we should look further into, but at the same time the further we seem to go in trying to justify, rectify or understand something pertaining to God, the more confused and flustered we can become.

I honestly think the confusion I'm having is the defintion of worship. It's much to vast. I do not worship the creation, whether or not I bring it into my home. I appreciate, love and admire the creation. I praise,love believe and depend on God-this to me is worship.

We too are Gods creation and we are no better or more important then the sun moon and stars. However, we are in a postion to destroy the creation and this does not sit well with me at all. The destruction has come so far that it almost seems to me that there is no way we can correct what has happened to the planet. But it does not mean that we should continue to remain part of the pattern.

I'm very glad you have an interest in this thread M0rbid.
I can be civil, for the most part

No offense Mag, and no need to appologize. Sorry if I got you on 'defense-mode' because of the previous thread, I admit that my first inquiry could have looked, to some eyes, like some form of attack? It's all a question of perception I guess.

But divergance of perception is only normal, just as divergance of opinion is. I agree that the word "worshiping" can have such a broad and vast meaning, it's hard not to fall into the confusion.

If the entire world were appreciating, admiring and loving equally every of God's creation, then it would be a perfect world. Unfortunatly, we're far from that.

I, for my self, have read lots of stuff in the past year, and my perception have changed a lot. Even Wicca philosophy have greatly influenced how I generaly think. I now try hard to remember that every living being, be it an insect, an animal, a small plant or that annoying neighboor (j/k), have the same right to be a part of existence, as a living being. That seriously changed how I think. And I'm dead serious about that, the other day I even reached and took a beetle out of my pool, because it was 1. Obviously still alive and fighting to stay so and 2. Could easily be reached by me without any great effort and 3. Could not sting me or anything lol.

I respect life as a whole, and every being should be respected equaly and be free to enjoy their part of life.

But I'm still wondering... Can it really be THAT bad to have a slight preference on some of Gods creation?

I can't imagine no entity besides God that could love everything equaly.

Maybe if we were made to become gods, this is one step we haven't took yet, and will probably have a hard time to...

(I probably got a little off-topic, sorry for that...)

[Edited on 3-1-2004 by m0rbid]

Originally posted by LOBO

What the Christians, Muslims, Jews, etc., see as "God", I see as the Tao. Actually, to be completely correct, I see "God" as something closer to what is described as "the Force" in Star Wars (before ANY of you start laughing, open your minds and and recognize the validity of this belief, lest I dash yours into the ground.). To me, God is everywhere - literally. God is in me, God is in every tree, every plant, every rock on this Earth, God, too, is THE Earth, the Void of space, the stars, the galaxies, astroids, etc. Everything is made up of God. God gives us power, we return power to It (I say "It", because, in my opinion, God has no gender. God is energy. I only use the term "God" to make things more understandable.).

Now, assuming God requires worship (which I don't believe It does), no matter WHAT we worship - a tree, a flower - another living being - we are still worshipping God, because we all are of God. God is within us. God is us, and we are God.

I was going to post nearly the same thing, as this is also the way that I view things.

On to the question posed in the original post:

Good question. IMO, it all comes down to a person's interpretation of their religious texts and their definition of worship. In my mind, there is a vast distance between admiration or adornment and worship. I feel that a person can appreciate a plant/animal/person/object without actually worshiping it. I feel that as long as a person does not hold a plant/animal/person/object above their religious beliefs, then they are not truly worshiping it. That, of course, is just my interpretation of worship based off of reading the Bible and the Quran *although I am a Jedi, I stay open minded about other beliefs*, and may be completely wrong.

I apologize if my answer comes off as hostile or offensive, I assure you no offense is intended.



[Edited on 4-1-2004 by kaoszero]

If we are good people of good conscious, then we will have a great deal of respect and sympathy for mankind and all the creation. Obviously things were placed here on earth for a reason, again not real sure of that reason. As it stands the only thing I see is our destruction of much of the planet. Maybe this is all part of Gods plan. Who knows.

I'm reading the bible 'religiously' these days and possibly placing too much strain on myself and the world around by some of which I am finding written for the first time. I'm a newbie lol! But I do so have such a great desire to understand and become a worker for Gods word and His plan. It is an underlying commitment we all have made by being birthed into the world. We are all chosen and all special one by one, to God. Each of us have a goal *to God* and for God, some the same, some very different. When trying to mesh out and capitalize what our goal is, this can become very struggling, especially when we wake up to the notion that we do in fact have a specific purpose as part of the plan for God.

I think I've severely gone off topic now.

So..back to the topic at hand. My answer is no to your last question, I do not think it's bad or wrong to give preference to certain parts of the creation. This is something we sometimes just cannot help as humans. This also can be perceived as a form or prejudice and judgment though..if you are overly analytical like someone I know

I would say, let's just do what we can to help our planet and assist eachother to acheive our goals. The first goal for humans should be to believe in God and get some faith going inside. That's pretty major if you are someone who does not believe in God at all...or someone who has walked from God.

Placing oneself in a position to become one of Gods soldiers is a mighty task in itself.
Mags

[Edited on 1/4/04 by magestica]