U2, Magnificent

U2's "No time on the horizon" has in someways been a 'God send'. I find most music pretty insipid, even the last two U2 albums have left me feeling nothing. Yet new album has hit the mark. It has come at the right time. Words and music which I can sing with my Soul. The song 'Magnificent' has spoken about much of what I've been pondering lately.

I was born, I was born to sing for you
I didn't have a choice but to lift you up
And sing whatever song you wanted me to
I give you back my voice from the womb
My first cry, it was a joyful noise, oh, oh

The idea of when you have found God, there is no escaping. You cannot, even if you want to disbelieve.

Richard Dawkins writes about this in the opposite direction for the athiest, using his argument against Pascals Wager::

”There is something distinctly odd about the argument, however. Believing is not something you can decide to do as a matter of policy. At least, it is not something you can decide to do as an act of will. I can decide to go to church and I can decide to recite the Nicene Creed, and I can decide to swear on a stack of bible that I believe every word inside them. But none can make me actually believe it if I don’t. Pascal’s Wager could only ever be an argument for feigning belief in God. And the God that you claim to believe in had better not be of the omniscient kind or he’d see through the deception. The ludicrous idea that believing is something you can decide to do is deliciously mocked by Douglas Adams in Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, where we meet the roboti Electic Monk, a labour-saving device that you buy ‘to do your believing for you. The de luxe moel is advertised as ‘Capable of believing thingsthey wouldn’t believe in Salt Lake City’.

For me what often frightens me about God is the 'pre-destination' stuff. It is in someways a vortex in which your life is not your own. Thanks goodness for 'Open Theism', which I can intergrate belief.