Failure and the Divine Constant

The ancient spiritual traditions teach the idea of total personal responsibility. Much like atheism does. They may go further than what the atheist is comfortable with into cosmic and etherial responsibility, but in the basic assumption it is Mechanistically acceptable and obvious that the circumstances and outcomes in one's life can be traced back to the series of decisions made, big and small, one time and habitually throughout your life. Outcomes, such as, I am poor because I didn't get an education, or my marriage sucks because I am a self-centered prick, or I don't have a job because I continue to chose to live in a city with high-unemployment. Taking responsibility would be getting an eduction, improving my relational skills and moving if necessary to a city with a booming economy. In that sense CREATING the world around me, just as my decisions past create my current reality. Really nothing esoteric about that.

Now if anyone would have cosmic responsibility it would be the God of the Bible. Christianity however, and the Bible story and most importantly BibleGod himself stand in stark contrast to this teaching of personal responsibility.

In fact, by example, the judeo-christian model teaches exactly the opposite. I am not to blame. the problem is out there, the problem is you.

It begins with the divine personage, a personal diety, who claims to create everything. Just like I create my world around me, he claims to have created the world down to the smallest detail. This creation, from the mind, and voice and hands and breath of the Perfect Being, then proceeds to Fall - apart. What does Christian God do? He does not accept responsibility. His outcomes - rebellion of both angels and man, failures, pain, etc - is not his fault. He remains perfect. The problem is his view is man, is lucifer. The problem is in them. They have sin in them. They think evil thoughts always. They do bad things. It isn't Me it's them. But since I am so great I will provide a fix to their sin from outside of them. I will give them a piece of my perfection to fix their sin problem. And when this infusion of his perfection still fails to solve the sin problem in the individual, the church fights, divides, splits, and points likewise to the world without as being the problem, and 2000 years after the fix was "Finished" pain, sin, death, genocide, rape, poverty, sickness, greed, still are business as usual.

But, is it God's fault? No. It is MY fault. I am to blame. I don't have enough faith. I don't pray enough. I don't go to church enough. I watch the wrong tv shows. listen to the wrong music, I'm proud, lazy, carnal. And as good children imitating their father the Christian has been trained to do the same. The problem with the world we have created around us is not us. THEY have problems. THEY are screwed up. THEY need to get right with God, THEY need Jesus.

If you ask God, "What is the problem?" His answer is, "The problem is sin, "out there"". There is no looking inside Himself and taking responsibility. And yet in all the story, from the angelic rebellion, the fall of man, the gross failure of the Christ Project, there is one constant: God.