Peter Cresswell has posted an excerpt from Joseph Campbell, in his 1971 book Myths to Live By, where Campbell rails against our belief in the Hebrew's God. He would rather we be like an ancient Greek playwright of the same period as Job of the Old Testament who rejects his god as he wants us to reject ours.
Yet the rejections of Zeus with God are not equivalent. One is a rejection of a false God who has been invented by man in his own image and the other is the true God who created man in His own Image. And despite our many failings, which Job recognises, He still loves us and would do anything for us. As I said to Peter Cresswell on his post:
The ultimate individualist is Satan. And all Satan can do now is hate, and what type of an existence is that? Far better to purge ourselves of all our earthly attachments as Job did through his acceptance of all the trials God sent his way than to reject the hardships that God uses to purify us as silver is purified in the fire, and thus losing everything. That is what Joseph Campbell and Satan want us to do. Those that are on the road to Hell want company, your company. Don't give it to them.
Related link: Sunday Reading: The “properly human spiritual ideal, true to the highest potentiality of our species,” is freedom & individualism ~ Not PC
...Prometheus—who was also being tormented by a god that could ‘draw Leviathan out with a fishhook, play with him as a bird, and fill his skin with harpoons’—the following stunning words: ‘He is a monster … I care less than nothing for Zeus. Let him do as he likes.’
And so say [all we Westerners] today in our hearts, even though our tongues may have been taught to babble with Job.
Yet the rejections of Zeus with God are not equivalent. One is a rejection of a false God who has been invented by man in his own image and the other is the true God who created man in His own Image. And despite our many failings, which Job recognises, He still loves us and would do anything for us. As I said to Peter Cresswell on his post:
There is a major difference between the Greek gods and the Hebrew's God; the Greek gods are man's idea of what a god could be like and therefore not based on truth, while as the Hebrew's God is real. Therefore, to reject the Greek gods is to reject false gods, but it does not then follow that God should also be rejected.
As unpalatable as the idea that a man such as Job should repent, it shows us that a man who does everything that God requires of him is still nothing in the great scheme of things. Yet this same God, to whom we could be considered nothing, became one of us permanently and offers us His love and salvation.
If we say we do not need that or Him, then we follow the fallen angels into destruction.
The ultimate individualist is Satan. And all Satan can do now is hate, and what type of an existence is that? Far better to purge ourselves of all our earthly attachments as Job did through his acceptance of all the trials God sent his way than to reject the hardships that God uses to purify us as silver is purified in the fire, and thus losing everything. That is what Joseph Campbell and Satan want us to do. Those that are on the road to Hell want company, your company. Don't give it to them.
Related link: Sunday Reading: The “properly human spiritual ideal, true to the highest potentiality of our species,” is freedom & individualism ~ Not PC