God, forgive me for such crassness, but this has to be said: God is not a rapist!

It’s simple. God says (I’m paraphrasing here), “THIS is how to find green pastures. Trust Me, and I will lead you there, because I really do love My creation. But it seems you prefer to do it your way. You prefer to worship the golden calf, the bull god, the whore of Babylon, the god of celebrity, the god of cool, and every other false idol of corrupt desire in your heart that you don’t even seem to know is there. Ok. You’re free to choose. Let’s see what happens when you choose badly.”

This isn’t coercion. This is the reality of karma. Choosing wisely leads to good outcomes. Choosing badly leads to bad outcomes. Humanity has collectively been choosing badly for a long time now, and it’s coming up time to reap what we have sown.

Today, when life is not valued, when souls are cheap and cheapened, when the culture tells people that their existence is just a meaningless accident of a meaningless universe, it’s no wonder that so many people don’t take their choices in life very seriously, and so never arise to the shining station that we’re created for. Instead, they get treated by the world and by themselves as virtual trash to be thrown on the trash heap when the world is done using them. 

In fact, the word for “hell” in the New Testament was translated from the Greek word “Gehenna,” which at the time of Jesus, was a place near Jerusalem used as a trash heap. Before that, it was used as a place of child sacrifice. This heinous practice was still being carried out during the reign of Israeli kings, even though it was completely outlawed in the Torah. So this was a place where psychopathic idol worshippers, in a twisted fit of passion, threw living children on a fire, and then befittingly, this profane place became a garbage dump. What better metaphor to describe the cheapening of human life and the condition of souls that stay stuck in the wilderness of corrupt desire, separate from God’s will for them.

“O SON OF SPIRIT! I created thee rich, why dost thou bring thyself down to poverty? Noble I made thee, wherewith dost thou abase thyself? Out of the essence of knowledge I gave thee being, why seekest thou enlightenment from anyone beside Me? Out of the clay of love I molded thee, how dost thou busy thyself with another? Turn thy sight unto thyself, that thou mayest find Me standing within thee, mighty, powerful and self-subsisting.” Baha’u’llah, The Hidden Words #13 (Arabic)