Biblical advice -- not what you'd expect

The scene, as described in Judges 6:

Villagers are enraged at a mortal's insult of their god and seek to bloodily avenge the slight.

One man, Joash speaks up:

"Will ye plead for Baal [the god]? Will ye save him? If he be a god, let him plead for himself."

If humanity had applied to this to all religions and all permutations of deity, consider the difference that would have been made in the world.

A Thought is Born

In the warm darkness, sheltered beneath a lid of bone, nourished by a salty soup, a collection of certain cells send electrical impulses rushing along a neural circuit.

A thought is born.

By the billion, by the trillion, human thought waves circulate, some becoming speech, others never passing the lips. If there is a God, He interprets all of them, spoken or unspoken we are told, whether in Hindi or Hungarian or the clicks of an African Bushman. How unfathomable, then, the interpretation center of His divine mind!

So many of our thoughts are dull, petty, gross or even evil. And yet, among the filth and tedium, shines now and then a grain of mental gold. What of the thoughts that gave us Moonlight Sonata, or the extant verses of Sappho? Or air conditioning? The polio vaccine? What of the inspiration that led to the deliberate fermentation of a bitter little bean and the blending of that substance with sugar and vanilla to produce what we now call chocolate?

If there is a God, did He take pleasure in the pattern of neural circuitry that resulted in the radio, ravioli and rhubarb pie? Does He sense and savor the beauty of the unique new rythm, as we sense and enjoy the tangible results of it?Do evil thoughts and deeds poison a place, do they taint it with terrifying miasma, like some kind of toxic gas, that later become interpreted as paranormal visitations?

Thoughts about worship

Suppose I answered a knock on my door one day.

Upon opening it, I beheld: A) A kindly-looking bearded gentleman, a sort of grampa with a glow. B) A terrifying creature with multiple heads, dripping blood from its mouths and roaring like the bonfires of hell. Or C) Absolutely nothing at all.

I now heard a voice: "Worship me!"

And I answered, "Why?"

And the voice said either: A) Because the [insert Holy Book here] tells you to, B) I will blast your crops and bring the world to a horrific end, or C) You figure it out.

I waited, puzzled. "I am all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving," the voice said. "I created you."

"My neighbors have talked about you," I answer. "Some see little evidence of your power, your knowledge or your love. And my parents created me, or so they say, yet they don't demand worship. And what of this eternal punishment scheme? What kind of parent does that to a child?"

The grandfather figure says that people should have more faith. The monster god flies into a rage, proclaiming his power and sending other people to slay me. (How ironic). The invisible prime mover says nothing.