I still refuse to be judged by that standard. You cannot give me a task you know I cannot even hope to complete and then punish me for failure. I did not fail, God failed by giving us a task he knew was impossible.
what is humanly impossible is possible with the help of god.
the funny thing is that we cannot even hope to
begin a task without the aid of god, let alone complete it without his help. god gives us the commandment to love, and then he gives us the love to love, that is, he is the love with which and in which we love, and without god, there would be no love. he gives us a task that we cannot even hope to begin or understand without his help. and this task of loving and becoming a good person, though it may be impossible, is worth doing. it's the only thing worth doing, in my opinion.
I've got various translations(and the original actual-Greek) of the Greco-Roman myths. Sisyphus rolls a boulder up a hill eternally as a punishment. This is not aiding your case if you think that is an apt analogy.
do you happen to know a person called albert camus? such beautiful writing!
one of his books is called the myth of sisyphus. he writes that one must imagine sisyphus happy. to understand why, one must read the book...
but to help you understand, isn't this endless, eternal task of sisyphus the exact same task of nietzsche when he tells us of a demon stealing away into our chamber at night, and offering us the burden of eternal return? the heaviest weight that crushes some and lifts others.
do you want to be the one who is crushed? or the one who falls to his knees in joy at the thought of this unsupportable burden?
to love fate - amor fati. the good and the bad.
I do not believe in the God of Abraham. My Gods are the Aesir and Vanir.
And they do not ask me to belittle myself. They do not hold me or anyone to a standard we cannot achieve, or any standards at all. They simply are, living their lives and I mine.
That is a good fable. But that has to do with personal standards, not ones set by a divine force.
my personal standards are ones that are aligned to that of the divine forces. i seek to live in accordance with god. i do not recognise my religious life in your description.
i want to explain why a religious person who knows they are a sinner may live a different kind of life from the one they live, one that aims at love, because they know they are a sinner. the firefly chooses to live with his inadequacy not in despairing rage, but in hope.