Last night I was driving home and I noticed the message on a sign by a near-by church “God is the potter, we are only clay”….this has really been bothering me. Now, without trying to sound like the she-devil, I’d just like to say that I find this metaphor not only illogical, but also irresponsible for the following reasons.
1. Last week while walking to the LRT, a man a couple people in front of me fell down the steps, losing his shoes, bag, and dislocating his shoulder. Absolutely nobody other then me stopped to help him or see if he was all right. Every other person (and it was pretty busy) was completely passive, thinking “Someone else will help him.” We can see this passivity everywhere, people litter because “someone else will pick it up.” People just don’t care about things because “someone else will care.”
“Passivity is bred by the forces of society today. A desire to be entertained is nurtured from childhood, with increasing efficiency, cultivating generations willing to be led by whoever proves skillful at appealing to superficial emotions.”…. – The Universal House of Justice 2010
I find myself “stepping in” often, perhaps too often at times…(I try not to be as exhausting as Barbara in “The Way we Were”) but I find this world and its people frustrating. It’s so popular to negate yourself as being shallow, materialistic and passive.
2. Passivity versus Conviction. Although I harbor myself in the grey areas of absolutism, I strongly believe in the ability to form the skills to negate one’s own opinions and path. To argue this point in the same domain, I believe that God would want us to hold an empowered understanding his reign. As a religious person is never condoned to shame or passively misplace their faith…would God therefore not want a true believer instead of a complacent lump of thoughtless clay?
3. To go against all that I was saying, people aren’t that insipid and terrible. Don’t they deserve a little credit towards themselves? Has the world fallen to pieces through secularization? No, it’s as good-bad as ever. Perhaps giving our true heroes credit as being a regular person who made the right decision will empower others to do the same.
4. Really? You mean I can’t clone myself or jot down to the nearest sperm bank? And if a fifteen-year-old girl gets raped in the street by a serial killer and is impregnated, it’s God’s will for her to keep it?
I’m getting ahead of myself, the argument becomes cyclical at this point…but truly, I do see merit in religion. It may not be for me personally, but I do see it as an opportunity to bring light and hope into peoples lives, but this message to me gives the same hope to its believers as the lottery does to the superstitious.