The Possibilities

O.K I am going to take a risk of loosing popularity here and confess something.  I am a Practising Christian.

I am a Christian in that I believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God and that he came to show us humans a better way to live with one another.  I am Practising because I haven't got it right yet.

As such I am more than willing to talk over the points of view of others, be they atheist or a different denomination from me.  As such I have had friendly and very interesting contact with the Jehovah's Witnesses.  Granted they have some view points on which I totally disagree, however, I have come to the conclusion that it is only through contact with people of other faith that your own faith can grow.

Coming to the point is this - one of their resent publications contained an article on the promises that are testified to in the Bible.  As I read through the list it dawned on me that the only one of these promises that lays outside of the grasp of humankind, right now, is the ability to bring the dead back to life.  For example:

"No more war"

Just because it has never been done in the past does not mean that it cannot be done in the future.  We have the Internet, we have freedom of speech, we have blogs so that we don't have to rely on the newspapers who dress up the facts to say what they want them to say.  We have organisations like 'Muslim for a Month', which work tirelessly to bring understanding and acceptance between different people.  We don't have to accept what the governments of this world say any more when they are trying to point out enemies to us.  So we are different people?  If God wanted us all the same he would have made us tins of beans.  There is not nearly as much separating us as we thinking there is.  Every human being bleeds red.  Can we go on ignoring that common brotherhood?

"Plenty of Grain Upon the Earth"

If you take this to mean all food then we already have more than enough.  America has 'food mountains'.  England has a third of all food bought being thrown away.  Half of the fruit and vegetables grown in Britain are thrown away before it even reaches the shops because it fails the 'asetics' tests.  All that food thrown away just because it doesn't look quite right.  If people would stop
being greed then instead of our cargo ships sailing out to Africa and the Third World using sand as ballast, they could use all that (to us) unwanted food.  If humans valued the common good above gold then no-one would have to go hunger.  Maybe the Western World won't have so much but won't that help with the obesity crisis?

"There will be no more sickness"

'If people would stop wasting money on war we'd have the care for cancer by now.'  A professional doctor told that to my Nan twenty years ago and what is really sad is that we have the cure for cancer (search for Salvestrols) but the man who discovered it could not advertise because he will not sell the patent to the big pharmaceutical companies because he believed (quite rightly) that they would make people pay thousands for each pill.  Because he won't sell out to the big companies they told the University where he researched that if he ever advertised his discovery the companies would stop all funding to the University.  So he didn't advertise but the knowledge starting spreading word of mouth.
When the death threats started on his family he lost his mind.  It's only because he was able to set up branches in America and Canada before hand that the work has been able to continue in his absence.
Again the Internet can help us take back the power from those who would abuse it.

Looking at in that light the only thing that stops mankind taking a huge step towards a world paradise is greed and laziness.  Think of the possibilities if we started standing up for what is right instead of for what is easy.


PS. I have tried using a different computer to upload my photographs but still no luck.  Will keep trying.