God's Failure

hey will you please read my poem'God's Failure', it is quite 'non-religious' so if you are deeply religious i advise you not to read it. Could you comment on it and i will on yours?
Julie
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Hi Julie. I read some of your other work and admire your talent. And I really don’t think this poem God’s Failure would offend a clear thinking person of deep religious beliefs. However, I disagree with the basic premise of this poem which seems to be focusing on the world’s hopelessness and placing the blame on God’s for it.

There are a lot of things wrong in the world but there are a whole lot more things that are right with this world. It all depends on how you choose to perceive things and what you dwell on. You can see the glass as half empty or you can see it a half full.

A belief in the existence of God doesn’t mean we also believe are all his sock puppets. People are endowed with a brain and a free will that they can use as they choose toward good or evil but those are the choices of individual humans, not God. People do have the capability to control their own destinies.

I’ve gone through some immense strife and inner turmoil in my own life. I do know how hard it is to get moving ahead again. But I also think that dwelling on hopelessness is really counter-productive.

I'd be happy to hear your response.

yes i understand what you are saying. But as i have mentioned fate as in gods fate, i was trying to say that (because if you believe in fact then theoretically you indirectly dont believe in free will) that perhaps God doesnt have a choice on how the world turns out he can only place the pawns on the chess set but can not control what the opponent does. Also that not perhaps God is controlling us, but it is most deffinately our own fault the world is like this, and i do not blame God, but perhaps things have not turned out the way he planned, so in a sense he has failed.
However i disagree with you saying there are more right things in the worlds than bad. But we both have different perseptions of what is good and what is bad. I hope you didnt take offence, if you did i am sorry but that is how i feel for some reason or other,
Julie
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Julie, thanks for your response and no, I didn’t take any offense. I accept the fact that reasonable minds may differ and I appreciate your thoughts on this.

I think a lot of sadness arises over things that are just part of life such as death and disease. But then I also see an upside to this. Science, for example, is always working on ways to eliminate disease. Science has already overcome many formerly dreaded diseases such as cerebral palsy. In a large part of the world, people are generally living and enjoying longer lives than ever before.

Most of the world’s evil is, like you say, the result of human misdeeds. But I place the blame on the individuals and don’t hold all of humanity collectively responsible for this. But even here, I see reason for optimism because evil can be overcome. I am old enough now to remember when people’s greatest fear during the Cold War was the constant threat of imminent nuclear war between the world’s Superpowers. But instead, what happened was that 40 years of Cold War ended, the Iron Curtain came down, former world enemies became allies and hundreds of millions of people gained their freedom from totalitarian rule. And incidentally, it is because of those events that this web site can freely exist and operate from its base in Latvia.

If I viewed the world as static, then maybe my perception would be less optimistic. But I tend to look at the world and its problems in a historical context and see evidence that it is dynamically changing and progressing. I also see plenty of mistakes going on in the world But I look at them not as something to fret over, but as something we can learn from. I don’t know if that is just my optimism or maybe a product of age. (lol)
Sorry to carry this out so long. ---Lydia

I also just wanted to say that this poem is well written, well expressed and it gives the reader a lot of thought to reflect on. It definitely deserves to be read and commented upon. ---Lydia

Thank you :) and i completely agree with what your saying but i suppose there are different ways on viewing the world, i appreciate what you are saying, thank you,
julie