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| | | Book Name: The Dhammapada - The Way of the Buddha, Vol 3 | Previous Next | |
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is not like the Old Testament God who says, "I am very jealous."
Buddha says: God and jealous? Then who is going to be beyond jealousy? Buddha says even man has to become nonjealous, only then will he be able to know God. But can it be a condition that you have to become nonjealous and then you will know a jealous God? Can it be a condition that to know a jealous God first you have to drop all your jealousies? That would be very illogical! The Old Testament God says, "I am jealous, I am angry. Those who don't listen to me will be condemned forever!"
Bertrand Russell has written a book, WHY I AM NOT A CHRISTIAN. In the book he gives many arguments; one of those arguments is worth considering. He says the Christian and Jewish God seems to be utterly unjust, unfair, because Christians and Jews believe only in one life. Bertrand Russell says, "As far as I am concerned, for all the crimes that I have committed, even the hardest judge cannot sentence me for more than four years. And if the sins that I have not committed but only contemplated are also included, then too, at the most, eight years, ten years."
In a life of seventy years, how much sin can you commit? In a life of seventy years one third is spent in sleeping, the other one third in working for bread and butter. What time do you have to commit sin and how much can you commit? And, Russell says, the Christian, the Jewish Gods say you will be punished for eternity! Now, this is unfair! Even if you punish a man for seventy years, okay; seventy years at least he lived. If life itself is sin, if to breathe is sin, then send him for seventy years to hell -- but sending him to hell for eternity, for ever and ever he will be in hell... Russell says that this is unjust. If this is your idea of God, then what is your idea of the Devil? How can God be more devilish? This is a very evil conception.
But because the so-called religions are based in fear, such ideas create more fear in people. And the priests exploit your fear; they say you will be condemned, punished. And they have created pictures, paintings of hell, hellfire and all kinds of tortures they have invented in hell.
These
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