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Is it bad to hate another sect?
One day, my whole school was visited by this sect, I live in the Philippines, btw... So anyway, they showed us films that was supposed to enlighten us. It started out fine, until the afternoon part. I'm study psychology, so I knew more than to just watch. I analyzed what they showed us.
1.)A video about a two friends, one being christian, the other, not.
a.) At the beggining there was a small note saying it was a work of fiction. But then after the video, the speaker told us that it wasn't fake. And he gave us locations and stuff where it happened.
b.) It depicted so much fear it didn't seem Christian
2.)A video about a korean painter getting a fieldtrip with God to a place called Hell.
a.) The speaker told us that if we sinned, we wouldn't get to heaven. and stopped there.
b.) They included sins like "masturbation" and told us that masturbation is wrong. If we wanted to shoot sperm, we should do a wetdream instead. (But isn't the sin lust, and not masturbation? Isn't lust a sin of thought? Aren't dreams made up of thoughts?)
After that traumatic event (srsly, the scenes were graphic and would take your spirit away) My classmates went straight to their sect and signed up. I was devastated, but I dont think it's right...
I mean, they only want to worship God, you can't hate them, right?
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Maybe give some free advice about: Spirituality?
I think as a student of psychology you might look at this 'visit' from the sect with their audio/visual material as subversive. Propaganda, and no more than that. I believe the Nazi Party in 1930's Germany gave similar 'information films' and lectures. About how Judaism was evil and corrupt. About how the Jews were a blight on Germany, holding her back. On the whole world in fact. The films were packed full of historical and pseudo-scientific 'facts' to back-up their arguments. It led to a very effective attemp at genocide. You're dead right it's not right. Use your discernment and judgement here. See it for what it is. As for your classmates falling under the spell, I'm afraid a certain number of people will always be led to follow religious and nationalistic extremism. The sects choose their target-audiences carefully, not by chance. The speakers project extreme committment and fervour which 'carries the aduience along'. They are often convincing and charismatic people. As it happens, a lot of those who study psychology and human behaviour have spent much time analyzing the speeches of Hitler at Nazi rallies. He used just about every stage-craft trick of movement and oration in the book to attract the listeners. He could whip-up a frenzy of support, to the point of near hysteria. He was not only charismatic, he was almost hypnotic. There's enlightenment in what you saw and heard. And no light either. Just radicalisation and subversion. Put it out of your mind.
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Hon, you'll find bad apples in every religion out there. Gods attitude is to hate the sin but not the sinner. And that in our society becomes a very tangled mess. We can't allow for example killers to run loose, able to kill at any chance they get. However out of self preservation, it becomes necessary to lock them up for life or sometimes in self defense the bad guy gets killed. Its hard not to hate the person. In some circumstances, a person who steal or does other things against society, is due to the life they've had growing up, if one really got to know their history. If one person had loved them and taken them under their wing or protected them from abuse growing up, they might be a different person today. therefore, its important to keep in mind to hate the sin but not the person doing it. I like that we try to rehabilitate some in prison. But when ove time they show no desire to change for the better even a little, yes it can be hard to not be disgusted with let alone feel anger towards someone like that.
As to what you witnessed, I will try to explain what is going on and why it seems to work. there are some religions who believe their way is the only 100% correct way. THE truth is that all religions have some truth to them and all have some misinterpretations to outright lies and manipulating ways. Although I've seen it alot in Christianity. I come from a Christian background and can say that the reason you see some extremists come up with this garbage is because they've chosen to become 'head hunter's'. What they want to see is a higher count of heads in church on Sunday for whatever reason. Most others believe that all people who don't accept Jesus as savior have only this one life to get things right so the pressure is on to get them to switch to Christianity or go to HELL. This means these well meaning people have chosen to not only believe in Hell and a Devil but also that there is no such thing as reincarnation. If one believed in reincarnation, then the whole basis of the Christian belief system falls apart and crumbles. It can't stand up to that. As far as I've seen since broadening my spiritual beliefs, al the other beliefs for the most part beleive in reincarnation.It really doesnt make sense that if God is so loving and patient with us all that after just one life, our loving creator and parent would condemn us (his children) to Torture and Pain for eternity in someplace called Hell. I know there are some twisted human parents but most could never easily do anything like that to their own children let alone even think about it.
It is actually the place of the Holy Spirit to be working inside each individual turning them slowly around to seeking to grow spiritually, and wanting to love God and be part of his family which means treating all his other children...everyone on this planet, as family, loving them. Our job is only to continue to try to live as much a life as what we believe god to be like. Christians have Jesus as an example and other faiths have their own persons they model themselves after. Using Jesus as example, the bible shared many stories of people gathering in crowds everywhere he went. He did not have to use horrific scare tactics to get peoples attention. they have a will and choice and all he did was be his true loving caring self and that spoke higher than threats and doom speak. In fact, preaching the gospel wasn't his first concern. If your family is starving or sick, you would either go grocery shopping and help make a meal, or go to a food bank if need be. If sick, you take them to hospital because you can't stand to see your loved ones suffer. If Jesus is of Gods family, then why would he not be concerned about our immediate needs first. Often Christians fail to do that. Or if they do, they expect to be repaid in return for their help but the individual accepting Christ as savior. I saw this often. If a person didn't respond to financial help or such by accepting Jesus, then they with drew their help. So it was conditional and came with a price (this is nothing at all like God).
So some Christians I guess stooped to human tactics when being kind didn't work to get a person to accept their religion and their God. They resorted to scare tactics, using some basic human psychology, and that's why it seems to work. But you watch and wait and see how many stick with it after time goes by.
Humans when they think they are faced with personal danger (in this case, going to hell) they react naturally in two ways, fight or flight. So humans will either accept the stories as a true threat, actually believe them and therefore go through the motions needed to preserve themselves, not out of a conscious mind and thoughtful heart position of wanting to have a personal relationship with God, but out of a fear and a want to preserve their future. I can guarantee you that the gOD I know doesnt want numbers who comes to him out of fear but those who come to him out of love. You can create a child but you can't force your child to love you, only manipulate their emotions to receive a false show of emotions like love. We all were given a will by God. He would never manipulate his children to accept him out of fear so trust that watching others of his children trying to scare and bully people to accepting only Christianity, probably hurts his heart very badly, makes him really sad. However he doesn't step in and stop it because He gave each of us a will, and wont take our choice away if we make choices He doesnt approve of. Thats somewhat like what human parents do to get their kids to fall into line as they teach them and rear them. Not God though.
God is spiritual and seeks relationship with all his children only if they are willing and approach him, not by scaring them into it. Its like the little kids who view a horror movie and go to bed and have nightmares for a while until they begin to forget about how scary the movie was after time goes by.
YOu wouldn't believe what some people do in the name of God. theres plenty in history of those who went on killing sprees of any they thought were not fit to live because of the way they interpreted the bible or perhaps twisted it in their sick perverse minds into something totally different. I was shocked at the last church I had attended long term when a pray meeting was set, to pray for God to provide some property for us to build our own church building rather than to continue to rent a no longer active school building. Pastor and elders started out the prayer, asking for God to bring hard times, even evil upon those who owned the current property because they refused to sell it to us. This is nothing less than black magic spellwork of trying to curse someone. It was shortly after that, I left church and never went back. I had been growing out of that narrow minded belief system and spirituall was ready to move on with God and learn to love and accept all the rest of his children and their many ways of belief and paths toward being spiritual and one with god.
Do I still hate my last church or the people who go there? I don't. I feel really sorry for them that they are so blind and so mistaken and have such a warped idea of who god really is. If reincarnation is real and theres such a thing as the enlightened ones who no longer have to reincarnate to learn more, then these misguided people most certainly have quite a lot more lifetimes of having to learn to become more god like because their actions show they are no where near that state yet.
Just for the record, many of their beliefs such as masturbation being sin are so warped or wrong. God gave us humans the sexualness we have. Orgasms are scientifically proven to be good stress relievers. Why would he expect a person who chose to never marry to never relieve their sexual needs by themselves? It is only mans twisted interpretations of what Gods original intent and message may have been that we end up with such directives today. If you have ever played the kids game 'telephone' or telegraph, you'll understand what I mean. the premise of the game is that there is a circle of kids. One has a sentence to whisper in the first persons ear. they can not ask for it to be repeated, only pass on to the next person next to them, what they think they heard. In a group of 20 to 30 kids, by time what we thougt we heard, or some didn't repeat word for word but paraphrased in their own words, the last person in line who had to speak aloud what they thought was whispered to them was vastly different than the initial statement. I would laugh in hysterics as without fail the ending sentence was always ridiculous and made little sense often. Something odd like "the red fire is in the basket when you are late." Fun for a party game. But seriously bad when you believe that some of the religious scriptures of all the beliefs out there today are exactly like the ones first issued.
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You shouldn't hate people, and you shouldn't make generalizations like "I hate all people from that sect, or that school, or that country, or that race."
However, you can decide that you don't think people should be doing something. Even if you think that worshipping God is a good thing, it's perfectly right to not want people bullied, attacked or manipulated into it.
You are intelligent and aware to look at the techniques of fear and lies that these people used to get people to sign up. That was wrong of them. The ends don't justify the means. That saying means that just because you are trying to achieve a good thing, doesn't mean it's okay to lie or hurt people, or do other bad things to make the good thing happen. It's always wrong to lie and manipulate others, even if you tell yourself it's for their own good, it's still wrong.
Just because they want people to worship God, doesn't mean they weren't behaving badly. What they wanted may have been good, but what they did was wrong.
It's okay to a take a look at this sect, and their behaviour, and think it's not friendly, respectful or truthful. It's okay to dislike what they are doing, and think they are very, very wrong.
It's never okay to hate people, even when they are behaving badly.
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