Not really. It reflects that humanity doesn’t care. It reflects on the character of humanity.
Playing the blame game, IMV, somehow soothes our conscious on the reality of what we are not doing.
-
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:- Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
- Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
- Access to private conversations with other members.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
What do you think about this?
- Thread starter Madsaac
- Start date
Playing the blame game, IMV, somehow soothes our conscious on the reality of what we are not doing.
Indeed: in the end, the character of the gods humanity creates is an expression of the character of those who create them.
A person's God is a personification of their ideas of perfection. If someone sees no imperfection in leaving people to starve despite being able to feed them, this says something about that person.
I was talking about the character of God within the belief system of the Christians in the meme, not the character of some actual God.
The problem that the meme calls attention to isn't with God; it's with Christians.
False statement as if those are the only two options.
What you construe from the meme (even as I interpreted it) are vastly different.
Which, I explained, is a wrong interpretation.
Tinkerpeach
Active Member
What connection would that be?
Do you think that Christian family has struggles those other kids don’t?
Madsaac
Active Member
When I saw this I felt that.....
It shows the inequality of the world, which Christians are well aware of and clearly have not done enough to solve the problem.
This meme is represents the western Christian, someone who MAY help the less fortunate but probably doesn't because there wouldn't be so such suffering in the world.
So the process of thanking your god for your amazing dinner is demeaning, shameful and wretched, to those in so much pain and suffering.
Finally, who's to blame, god or his followers?
It shows the inequality of the world, which Christians are well aware of and clearly have not done enough to solve the problem.
This meme is represents the western Christian, someone who MAY help the less fortunate but probably doesn't because there wouldn't be so such suffering in the world.
So the process of thanking your god for your amazing dinner is demeaning, shameful and wretched, to those in so much pain and suffering.
Finally, who's to blame, god or his followers?
PearlSeeker
Well-Known Member
Why not feel gratitude for the gifts of nature and the work of people who produce food?
PearlSeeker
Well-Known Member
... or corrupt governments in the countries where people starve?
RestlessSoul
Well-Known Member
Do you ever ask yourself, What am I doing, to address the injustice in the world? Or do you just point the finger at others?
How do you know?
Do you think that it is the Christians that are causing the suffering and not other people or organizations? why?
Above, the fault was the Christians. Now it is God. Where are you in the picture?
Neither…
Mankind
Gargovic Malkav
Well-Known Member
The "inequity" that produced the outcome is based a personal judgment call, which is a projection that reduces the concept of divinity to something creature-like so that it can be assessed, understood, and judged by humans.
This defies the definition of what "God" represents for a believer (In my faith at least, not sure how much I can speak for others..).
I think I understand why you find it weird, but toxic?
Why toxic?
I'm talking about the belief system, though. Regardless of how "mysterious" a believer considers their god to be, the act of saying grace before eating is based on the idea that the god did something that deserves thanks.
Judgment is inherent in saying grace. If the believer hadn't judged God's actions (or rather, the actions he attributes to God) to be good, saying grace would make no sense.
If you decide that God is the driver of outcomes we see in the world, and also that God is fair and just, then it's very easy to come to the conclusion that the outcomes we see in the world are fair and just as well.
IOW, the Christian with plenty has plenty because he deserves it; the non-Christian starving child is starving because she deserves it; when people get cancer, they deserve it, etc., etc. Even if it's not apparent how an outcome can be just, we can be sure that it is.
I think it's fair to call a viewpoint like this toxic.
RestlessSoul
Well-Known Member
But it’s your own viewpoint you are calling toxic; a product of your own thought processes, which I don’t see anyone but you expressing.
These days, it's prevalent in Prosperity Gospel theology especially, but the attitude is old enough that it was around for Robbie Burns to criticize in the 1700s.
The toxic views I'm describing flow naturally from two ideas:
- God provides for humanity
- God is just
Both of these are very mainstream Christian ideas (as, I would argue, are their toxic implications).
Gargovic Malkav
Well-Known Member
I tend to compare it more as to why people often say that forgiving someone can be for the benefit of the one you forgive, but is mostly for the benefit of yourself.
It makes it easier to find peace in yourself and to better deal with the things you can't control.
Saying grace can have a similar effect.
Finding inner peace tends to make people more empathetic and altruistic IME.
They are "fair and just" in the sense that you can't argue with it, whether you like it or not.
What matters is how people deal with it, and I don't think saying grace before dinner is a factor that determines whether someone is doing enough for the less fortunate or not.
I think a lot of this represents the profound disconnect between the opulent, insular West and the far less affluent developing world. We're disconnected by distance, geography, and geopolitics - among other things.
Whether or not people are "doing enough to solve the problem" is itself a difficult question to resolve.
The Christian family in the picture thanking God for a nice meal is thousands of miles away from where those starving children might happen to be. If those starving kids were right outside their front door, I'm sure they probably would have taken them in and fed them. But since they're so far away, what can they do, realistically?
These are issues that have to be decided by governments, and in the case of the Western democracies, "not doing enough" could be defined as not supporting the politicians who have political views directed towards solving these and many other such problems facing our world.
I would defer the question of "who" is to blame. I would say we're seeing the consequences of conflicting values and various forms of ideological intransigence where people become somewhat arrogant and overconfident into believing that their way of thinking and their ideological faction is better than others.
So, rather than make any honest effort to reach a solution, many people choose to fight whatever they see as "enemies," "unbelievers," "deplorables," etc. This is especially true in many parts of the world which have been heavily exploited and political unstable, susceptible to civil war, outside agitation, and/or military coups. It's in those kinds of situations where we see most of these horrific, tragic pictures of starving children.
If there is a God who created all of this, then one might observe some design flaws which, hypothetically, could be blamed on the "designer," if there is a designer. Barring that, then, yes, it is a human problem that has to be resolved by humans.
I see quite a bit of danger in people with means writing off suffering of others as "things they can't control."
I'm not sure what saying grace before eating would have to do with finding inner peace.
You couldn't swing a cat on RF without hitting a dozen people who probably say grace before meals but are far from peaceful.
What does that have to with something being fair or just?
Oh, I agree. I think most people who say grace before eating don't put much thought into it - it's just a habit that they were trained to do.
... but the meme invites us to reflect a bit on the actual meaning behind the practice.
While I would never make that assumption, it certainly does appear to be the reason for many of the prayers of grace I've heard. In the OP the phrase "Let us thank Him for our food" seems to make that assumption explicitly. When I was 6 years old, I was in the Children's Aid Receiving Centre in Toronto, and before meals we were made to sing:
"For health and strength
And daily food,
We give Thee thanks
Oh, Lord, Amen"
That again seems to assume that these benefits for which we are grateful come directly from God. A little later, at an orphange in Ottawa, the grace prayer was a little more ambiguous: "For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful. Amen." That isn't quite so explicit about the provenance of the meal -- only that we are enjoined to be grateful for it.
This touches on one issue I do have with the meme: it plays on the old - and IMO false and pretty racist - trope of starving people being black and from some far-flung corner of Africa.
The reality is that there are plenty of homeless and hungry people in the wealthy West.
I think some of this comes down to how starving African children are "safe" victims in a lot of ways: a random white Christian family living in a Chicago suburb can probably feel sure that they had nothing to do with a famine in Ethiopia, but if there's a homeless family sleeping under a bridge 2 miles from their house, Mom and Dad's voting history and political donations may very well be part of the reasons that family is homeless.
Right.
We're not allowed to be thankful for anything in our lives if all other humans don't have what we have. We should all be miserable ingrates, apparently. Never give thanks, never celebrate anything, never take stock of our blessings, ever, under any circumstances. Joy is BANNED.
Right.
We're not allowed to be thankful for anything in our lives if all other humans don't have what we have. We should all be miserable ingrates, apparently. Never give thanks, never celebrate anything, never take stock of our blessings, ever, under any circumstances. Joy is BANNED.
Would you like me to respond as if:
- you misread my posts so badly that you sincerely think that this is a fair rephrasing of what I said, or
- you're deliberately misrepresenting me?
I'm fine to go either way.