1 result for (book:nome AND session:817 AND stemmed:god)
[... 18 paragraphs ...]
If someone is caught in a natural disaster, the following questions might be asked: “Am I being punished by God, and for what reason? Is the disaster the result of God’s vengeance?” A scientist might ask instead: “With better technology and information, could we somehow have predicted the disaster, and saved many lives?” He might try to dissociate himself from emotion, and to see the disaster simply as the result of a nonpersonal nature that did not know or care what lay in its path.
In all cases, however, such situations instantly bring to mind questions of man’s own reality and source, his connections with God, his planet, and the universe. He interprets those questions according to his own beliefs. Let us then look at some of them.
[... 5 paragraphs ...]
In this part (2) of the book, we are more or less dealing with the events of nature as you understand it. It will seem obvious to some, again, that a natural disaster is caused by God’s vengeance, or is at least a divine reminder to repent, while others will take it for granted that such a catastrophe is completely neutral in character, impersonal and [quite] divorced from man’s own emotional reality. The Christian scientist is caught in between. Because you divorce yourselves from nature, you are not able to understand its manifestations. Often your myths get in the way. When myths become standardized, and too literal, when you begin to tie them too tightly to the world of facts, then you misread them entirely. When myths become most factual they are already becoming less real. Their power becomes constrained.
[... 15 paragraphs ...]