Happy things.
Who cares about Amanda Todd?
I recently discovered the so called Internet-hype, the suicide of Amanda Todd, and have come across several reactions to it.
I don’t really want to think too much about the bullies that kept vultering even after her death, it is hard for me to comprehend what drives such people. I only hope that they will grow up to be decent humanbeings realising that what they did was wrong to say the least, and if they ever have children, I hope they will do all in their power to make sure their own children don’t repeat their mistakes.
Shortly after her death, a great deal of people got involved and wanted to pay their respect, people felt for her and her story, many people thinking about the Youtube-video including her story, that she had posted some time before her taking her own life.
What really got to me however, was the strong anti-reactions. After doing some research, people came back with new evidence that her story was not the whole truth.
To summarize it, she claimed in her video that she made the mistake once to show her breast to one man who happened to be an adult, this man later blackmailed her, telling her that if she did not show herself to him again, he was going to spead the pictures of her bare breasts to her family, friends, school etcetera.
This all began in 7th grade, in other words, she was probably 12(!) when a grown man convinced her to show her topless body, This grown man appearently returned with his threats one year later, when the girl was 13.
Anyone who does not know the story can easily look the rest up.
What happened afterwards was that people started investigating the case, finding new evidence that Amanda Todd had not done one single mistake, but had obviously repeatedly showed her half-naked body, and supposively even masturbated online on several occations.
Now, a lot of kids judge her for her choices, and we all know this is how kids are. It takes time to develop a sense of compassion and realising the psychology behind people’s actions.
What really pains me is when actual adults are ranting about how she brought it to herself, that she should have known better, that she was only dealing with the consequences of her actions etcetera.
I do not understand these people at all, she was a teenager and people should know, teenagers can be really stupid.
If she had done what she did say, 15-20 years ago things would probably have looked very different. She would not have done this over the Internet, but might have met older men and they might have convinced her to pose for them. It would have been less likely that people would have found out since the paedophine who did use her would have had a harder time staying anonymous. He or some other adult man would probably have ended up raping her.
And all those people who say she was at fault, would it have been her fault also if she got raped? A 12-13 year old girl getting raped by an adult man because she posed naked in front of him. Because yes, that is a very likely consequence if you show your body to a paedophile, you are probably going to get raped.
Would these people then, if it came out in the open have made sure to let everyone know that she brought it on herself, that it was her own fault she got raped. Perhaps because she did not only do it once, but she repeatedly met with older men, wearing suggestive clothing and maybe going home with them. Is it then justified to rape her?
It really saddens me that people, adult ones at that, honestly believe that because she did what she did, and evidently did not learn from her mistakes, she is at blame and suddenly, these is no reason to feel for her?
It is such a horrible thing to say, no matter how you look at it.
As an adult, does it not pain you to think that this girl did those things while an adult watched and enjoyed it? Does it not make you feel uncomfortable knowing that something very wrong was going on inside her mind when she decided it was a good idea? And does it not make you sick to your stomach that some adult pervert encouraged her to do it?
Should this 12-13-year old little girl have gone up to a gang of perverts and said straight out “You can never have a girl like me” and they would have raped her, it STILL would not have been her fault. The only one to blame for what happened to her is the sick ADULT man who destroyed the life of a CHILD.
It does not matter what she looked like, or what she did, people please realise that she was a CHILD. When she showed her breast on the Internet she was a CHILD, when she supposively masturbated on the webcam she was a CHILD, when she posted her video that recieved critique also because she had taken time to tend to her looks while claiming to be depressed and down she was a CHILD and when she finally took her own life she was a CHILD.
I am going to say it again, CHILD, CHILD, CHILD!
You think she seemed smart enough to have made better choices, but evidently she did not. You think her problems were not severe enough to take her where they took her? She ended up killing herself, no matter what you think about her actions. To HER, the only person in this world who could have known exactly what it felt like, it was serious enough, it was so bad that she choose to kill herself.
She changed schools twice I believe, just to escape the torment, which followed her everywhere. She kept on making mistakes, being a teenager in desparate search for attention, affection, acceptance, anything. We all know how STUPID teenagers can be, we have all been teenagers, and perhaps some are smart enough to stay out of troubles, but many are not. Many teenagers turn to vandalizing things, beating people up etcetera, all Amanda did was to put herself in a situation she could not handle. She was a teenager, and a teenager is just a child expected to be more like an adult. Even themselves thinking they are adults, but in the end, they can’t handle the same responsibilities as adults. It is as if they have gained enough information to comprehend alot of things adults do, but emotionally they are still immature, they are not rational at all. They do not think about consequences, they are selfish and self-centered, they have no perception of things. Alot of teenagers are very intelligent humanbeings, and we should let them choose for themselves to take as much responsibility as they can handle. But we should still consider their young age and be there to catch them IF they fall instead of mocking them for not knowing better.
Amanda Todd, no matter what was a CHILD.
I also find it terrible that people say we should instead focus on REAL bully-victims. To me, that is like saying that we should care less about children being persuaded into having sex with adults, or even being seductive towards adults, and focus more on “real” rape victims who were pinned down to the ground and had no chance.
After all, children who were persuaded had a choice to say no, could have ran away etcetera. Or perhaps they were motivated by candy, or the modern candy; an Iphone, clothes or other luxuries. If a young girl or boy agrees to engaging sexually with an adult after being promised items or money, are they to blame? NEVER.
I ask all of you ADULTS without compassion for Amanda Todd to imagine you had a daughter just like her. Would you still be that cold and cynical? It would make a very lousy parent.
One should never diminish the problems of another, no matter how insignificant they seem to the outside. What goes on inside the heart of a troubled child should always be approached with respect, especially from a parent to their own child. That is why I ask of you to imagine for a moment that you had a child like Amanda Todd. You have to realise that this imaginary child of yours, no matter how you try telling yourself that you would lecture her and tell her to stop whining about nothing at all, is going to end up taking her own life. That is your child, dead.
Then there are people who claim that the only reason she recieved so much attention was because she was beautiful in the eyes of many. This while pople killing themselves due to shortcomings in their appearence are forgotten.
I think these people are looking at it the wrong way. Surely, she is not the only beautiful person choosing to end their life. I think the reason it became such a hype was because of the video she posted on youtube and other circumstances surrounding her situation.
Internet is a form of advertisement, and many bully victims rather choose to isolate themselves, in other words, not advertising themselves.
This is how the world is build up, you can create a really great product, but hardly anyone will hear about it unless you advertise it. Mouth to mouth is a great tool once you are already inside. But many bully victims, often due to low self esteem remain anonymous.
Amanda Todd chose to make herself known, and she became known, even more so after her death.
If you are one of those people who feel empathy for anonymous bully victims, I dare you to start a campaign or build a memorial site for these people. Get people involved, or better yet, I dare you to help a bully victim that is still alive today. I dare you to make a difference instead of complaining about the people who care for Amanda Todd.
Sincerely.
You do have a choice.
You can use the Holy Spirit to do good,
or you can abuse the name of the Holy Spirit to do evil.
Indeed you can use the Holy Spirit to spread joy and love,
or you can abuse the name of the Holy Spirit to spread fear and hatred.
God is Justice
Because this post is only valid if God actually does exist, so let’s assume he does exist for the purpose of this post, regardless of your actual belief. If God does not exist, there is no room for discussion and reflection upon his works.
After all, opinions part, the one thing we truly have in common, believers and non-believers is that all we actually have are our own assumptions and convictions. What you believe in is true to you, you cannot persuade another person to believe what you believe, the way you can proof to someone that the earth is round. I think most of us can agree on this.
So, as I wrote before, let’s assume God is real. Now opinions can be different, some feel they want God in their life while others don’t see the need for it.
I’ve come across one statement, possibly by agnostics(?) claiming that even if God did create us from scratch, we don’t have any moral obligation to follow his commands.
Simply creating something, especially something with a free will and own thoughts, does not give you the right to claim yourself as the sovereign ruler of all your creation. Even if you technically could do just that, enslaving people under your will is wrong. If God want people to submit to him in every way possible, he should have made it easier for us. Instead, he lets us live like this, either in fear of oblivion, only to punish us if we choose one of the many faulty paths, instead of the one true path which surely is very hard to figure out. Not to mention all the people who never even heard of God, and therefor have no chance of submitting to a will they don’t know about.
We can start by looking at it from nature’s point of view, not many people accuse nature of being morally injust. This, despite the fact that nature will “punish” you for oblivion, even though you are not really to blame. If a child never hears about the dangers of heights they might not be scared to fall, thus, some children will climb and some children will fall, a few will even fall to their death. Nature has no consideration. Wether the child climbed that tree, defying its parents will, of if it climbed the three being encouraged by careless parents, the worst possible punishment for doing so would be death.
God created nature and allowed the possibility for fatal accidents to happen, and did not include any kind of discriminating safety system that would prevent fatal accidents just in case the person was not directly responsible for his actions.
We could stop here, and believe that God is the creation of life and nothing more. He has set up the world to separate the strong from the weak, the foolish from the unfoolish. With this reasoning, God actually has all right to demand humanity to submit to every one of his wishes.
But in order to settle with this explanation, we must somehow look at God as something distant and very different from ourselves. Is God just that, a cold and cruel being with a “suit yourself-attitude”?
While many of us have heard that God in fact made man to his image, in other words, us humans possess traces of God and should be able to sense him in some way we must allow us to admit that he is a sentient being. Most of us do not like the consequences we are faced with because of the laws of nature. We know for example that a high fall might result in death, so we do what we can to protect ourselves and our children against injury. This is our instinct, and as most would agree, a good instinct. And since God is good, we should be able to agree that this is an instinct we have inherited from God, our father.
With this in mind, it should be easy to believe that God will do anything in his power to protect us from ruining our souls. Because he is a sentient being, he is not as cruel as nature, so the laws of nature must apply only to this life, while God has a greater plan for his creation in the afterlife. So the harsh and absolute rules of our lives here does not reflect God’s idea of divine justice.
Firstly I want people to be able to look beyond the very common argument; If God is good, why does he allow evil to happen?”
We need to remember that this life that we are living right now, though important for our measurements is very small and insignificant in comparison to a possible eternity ahead of us.
It is in this life that God has given us completely free hands to proove ourselves, if he was here to interupt and prevent all evil, we might aswell give up our free will right now. As it has been said, God is not the ruler of the world, but the ruler of heaven. And just like parents can have reasons for letting their children solve their own problems and arguments from time to time, so might God have reasons for not interrupting us. Keep in mind that what we see as small, our children might see as major, and what we see as major, God might see as small. At some point we must realise that God has given us a great responsibility, and we are probably to resolve our differences here on earth without his interference, perhaps even so that we ourselves can learn that we are able to do so.
And more importantly, God does not start any war or hurt any person, it is humans doing it in God’s name. Humans wrote the bible, inspired by God. And if humans are as insignificant as many believers claim they are, in comparison to God, we must understand that there is a very great possibility for misinformation in the bible, due to humans incapability of interpreting the true word of God.
God taunts us this way, he made nature, the world is not a place for fools. If fools interpret the bible, if fools spread the word of hate instead of the true word of God, and if fools believe it instead of using the very mind God has granted them, then fools will also rule the world, not God, not even the devil. We are to learnt he true meaning of God, and we have been given the ability to understand it, but we limit ourselves. We are not ready to fully submit to God’s will, and thus we also cannot blame God for all the suffering in this world, we can only blame ourselves. Why should God have to do something that we are fully capable of doing ourselves, if we only tried hard enough? He trusts us to do the right thing, even if it takes time.
So, let’s continue. God will not allow people to suffer in heaven, but keep in mind that God probably has not planned on robbing us of every ounce of free will, but possibly is hoping for us to freely make the better choices and choose to be good for the sake of being good, and not for a bisquit.
So, God’s job is not to protect us from bodily harm, but rather to save us from spiritual harm. Our bodies are vessels, and though our vessels we are able to feel pain and suffer, God also has the power to take all that hurt away once we become one with God.
God does not punish, but it does make sense that people cannot go to heaven with evil intent, they would ruin heaven. And if he forced the evil to be good, that would honestly not be fair either.
So, God does all in his power to save our souls, but does not interfere with our free will. And for someone evil to be in heaven, it would be torture to them, so the most merciful thing God could possibly do in this situation, is to throw the rebellions into the pit of fire, the only place completely separated by God, which they have chosent for themselves. Simply, God is graceous and merciful event to the worst of sinners.
Some christians are satisfied with this as an explanation to why not all people can go to heaven. But is it really that simple? Is that God’s idea of divine justice, or is it the believers way of justifying unneccesary cruelty?
If we are to compare God to ourselves, we need to realise that his intellect, his sense of justice and righteousness is superior to us in every way. The difference between God and us is so great, no human can comprehend it. If this is believers logic, it cannot be questioned by that particular believer.
But to flatter ourselves, let’s say that our human intellect reaches the level of a severely retarded 3-year old in comparison with that of God.
Since God is our father. And we, as parents are to be a lesser version of God. Would anyone as a parent let their retarded 3-year old wander their own way completely, against better knowledge and eventually end up severely damaged or dead. And as a defence claim that as a parent, you love your child so deeply that you must respect their own will. That retarded 3-year old wanted to go out on the big motorroad and look at the big awesome cars and got hit as a result, that 3 year old mentally challenged child is now dead, but that’s okay, because it was what he/she wanted, and as a parent, I love my child so much that I allow it to do as it pleases, and I will assume that my child would suffer more under my forceful hand than he will on that road.
I am using too many words here, but I am only trying to make a point.
Since no good parent would allow this, should we still believe that God would? And if so, should we take after his example and let our children roam free in this physical world, letting them jeopardize their bodies as God our loving father lets us jeopardize our souls? Or does God have a plan for every single being, does he work in his own mysterious ways on each and every one of us, bringing us closer to him though we are not yet fully aware of it?
Does he let us mock him and blame him because he knows that we are not ready to understand him, does he, like any loving parent perhaps not hold a grudge against the foolishness of humanity?
God is wiser, fairer, intellectually superior and everything we are not, he knows this and he still loves us. He is allmighty, so he has the power to lead every single being on the right path, no matter at what time he chooses to do so. Also keep in mind, God is not obliged to protect us from bodily harm, we are fully capable of doing this ourselves, God is to protect and save our souls.
In this life, we are all mentally retarded 3-year olds, or rebellius teenagers at times. We don’t know any better, but this does not mean that deep in our hearts and souls, we would be rotten and aweful beings, no matter how much evil we spread. Teenagers can be horrible, children can be horrible too. We are all children of a much wiser God, and no matter what we do in this life, none of us are able to comprehend the things God comprehends.
As a parent, your responsibility lasts until your child is mature enough to take their own decisions. You still allow your child some responsibility, but as a good and nurturing parent, you are always there to back them up when they need you. No matter what your child does, and no matter how foolish they are. Because you know that they don’t know any better.
And since we are all children of God right now. And God is a loving father, is it not fair to believe that God would wait for each of his children to be mature and aware enough to take such a heavy desicion which will affect their entire existence for the rest of eternity?
To God, we are legally incompetent, so even if it saddens him and breaks his heart, he is strong and patient. He, like any loving parent, takes his responisibility fully, even if it is painful. If we can believe all the other wonders of God, should this really be so hard to believe?
Is it not fair to believe that after we die, those who have not yet accepted God, will be given the chance to truly comprehend what God is. To see God right before their eyes. And is it then not reasonable to believe, that if God is as wonderful and uncomparable as he is being described, not a single soul who sees God right before them will be able to reject him? Instead, won’t their tears be filled with joy at the very sight of him, and instead of begging for God to spare them from his wrath, will they not cry and tell him that they love him, and that they are no longer blind, but they can see and believe, that they are truly sorry for all the evil they have done. Will they not be overwelmed with love and compassion, and will not the very presence of God wash all their uncleanliness away?
And if by any chance and against all odds, there would be a single soul so dark and devoid of good, that they reject all that is good once it has been made aware of what is good. Once they feel all that is good streaming right trough their bodies, all the love that God represent, they cannot bare this feeling. If there is such a soul, then would not a God that is merciful and just, a God that does not interfere with the free will of man, instead of condemning this poor soul into eternal damnation, into being tortured in the pit of fire for all eternity. Will the God of justice and love not instead destroy this poor soul and take it out of its misery?
Is it not so, that God is so full of love that there is no satisfaction for him in punishing someone that he has no intention on saving?
I believe, that God is so wonderful, not even the devil can resist him. And one day, all that is evil will be turned into good. I believe Lucifer was a fool, and that God allows him to play his childish game, and that there is no evil so great that it can be compared with the good of God. And therefore, whatever we like to think the devil is, or the source of evil, or whatever we might call it, it is not evil enough. It will all happen when God wants it to happen, when God thinks that all creatures are ready for it to happen.
Just because Jesus said that no one comes to the Father except trough me, and that the road to salvation is narrow, and that many enter the wide road to damnation, it does not exclude the possibility that all will be saved eventually, when the time is right. We as humans, do not have what it takes to interpret all that is said by a divine creature.
And we people should not be so grumpy and bitter that we put this trait onto God, as a revengeful and resentful spirit.
Also for those who believe there is no justice if everyone goes to heaven, look at your values one more time. Is the reward for being loyal to God knowing that those who were not are facing eternal damnation whilst you are in heaven? Is that a reward to you? Do you believe that you will enter heaven with so much jealaousy and resentment in your heart? Or do you believe that the reward for being loyal to God, God himself? Meeting him in person, being close to him, without suffer. Does God need an antipole in order to matter to you? Or is his presence enough for you, even if you have to share it with people who were evil on earth but changed their minds in heaven?
We can be as bitter as we want in this life, but in heaven, we will not feel the need to compare ourselves to others, why should we? Leave your bitter-backpacks on earth. Once again, if you truly love God in your heart, then he is your reward, and not the punishment of other people. Should it not also make you feel better as a humanbeing, knowing that God was even more powerful than sending people to eternal damnation, he was so powerful that he could spare every single creature that ever breathed from it?
I believe, that God is so great, so powerful, so loving and wonderful, that once man has truly sensed God in his entire essence, no man will be able to reject him. And this will not be done by force of any kind, but it will be done willingfully and with deep love and admiration.
I believe, that God is so powerful, and also willing to use his power, I believe that if God loves his whole creation, and as he sais, is not willing of anyone to perish, then he will also make it so.
If you are a believer, are you ready to give your indispensible God this much credit? I know I am.
<3
Because God rocks.
