In the Christian purview, God can read our thoughts. Is there any evidence for this? No. It just says so in verse after biblical verse. “O Lord, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether” (Psalm 139).
I’m very glad my thoughts are private. I have illogical thoughts. I have unkind thoughts. I have envious thoughts. I have lustful thoughts. This doesn’t make me a bad person, of course; it just makes me normal. The point is how we deal with thoughts like these, and whether or not we act on them.
It’s borderline insane, first to imagine that a divine supervisor has unfettered access to our thoughts, and, second, to insist that God is judging us - and probably condemning us - for the content of these thoughts. In Matthew 5:27-28, for example, Jesus warned his disciples that looking lustfully at a woman was just as reprehensible as committing adultery.
We can’t control the content of our thoughts; they bubble up unbidden like water from a spring. We can’t even control what kind of thought will enter our minds in the next few seconds, and yet we are told that we must. Any deity who commands us to attempt the impossible - and then punishes us when we fall short - is not a “loving God” at all… but a psychopath.
Public transport in the village of Wheldrake...
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