As for all this crap about how people should lead false lives, deny their feelings, try to fit in, and conform to the expectations of others... Soren Kierkegaard described the inability to be one's self as "the sickness unto death." Self-sacrifice is one thing, but if you hide who you really are, then that is dishonest, and healthy relationships are not founded on dishonesty. (Watch Brokeback Mountain if you think LGBT people who made the mistake of marrying the wrong person in their youth should just fake it for the sake of their spouses and children. It doesn't work.) And pretending to be someone you're not is a kind of spiritual death. Q: If you are not who you are, then who are you? A: Nobody.
S.K.'s thinking was a thousand times more profound than these jot and tittle fundamentalists. They interpret the Bible in light of their own prejudices, but because of their insistence that they are only following the literal Word of God, they can not accept that something of themselves exists in their beliefs. In their minds, to disagree with them is to disagree with God. And that is self-serving and prideful.
Socrates, another profound thinker, said, "I know nothing but of my own ignorance."
When I think of all the libraries in the world with all of their books that I will never read, filled with ideas that I'll never even know about much less understand, and how these ideas that are not mine and never will be are dwarfed when compared to the vastness of the universe we live in, it amazes me that there are people in this world who insist that they know the "mind" of God with an absolute certainty and are not at all ashamed to demand--not merely advise or voice their opinion--that others live their lives in a certain way because they speak for God.
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