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I’m not going to spout a mouthful of cliches about how sad this is, or how I regret what happened, instead, I think it is worth watching this documentary for how ideals – religious and otherwise can be perverted. For what it’s worth, even in the early footage of Jim Jones, something feels not quite right about him. His followers are sincere, and the man even had a positive side to him, i.e. he was practicing forms of racial integration long before other people were.
I was actually surprised at the Baptist/Pentecostalist feel of their worship songs too.
Part 1 is here
It was this documentary that got me questioning faith. I know that by definition that faith is belief in things you can’t see, but which are true, and that Jim Jones did not have the truth, judging by what he did. However, multitudes of people followed him in faith. They didn’t know he was a controlling indiviual, and would eventually kill everyone who tried to leave — they had faith. Just as I had faith in the LDS Church being true, as I had faith in Christ, God, and all other things choose to believe without physical evidence.
As a result of this questioning, I reached the conclusion that God requires faith, even though it is subject to so much abuse from designing people like Jim Jones, in order to lessen accountability. When things aren’t totally clear, then God can be more lenient with us for not measuring up, while wholeheartedly rewarding those who do. It’s the same principle as why Jesus taught in parables. I think it was Talmage in Jesus the Christ who said that He spoke in parables so that only those with the necessary spiritual maturity would be accountable for what they heard.
Apparently, sparing us from undue accountability is so important, He allows people to believe in things that aren’t true, even to their deaths as we saw in the People’s Temple.
However, I see one flaw in my argument (and Talmage’s therefore). Why spare us from accountability when we have the atonement to cover for our sins, provided we repent?
I really think that one thing people tend to forget and one of the things fundementalism/cults destroy is the uniqueness of body, soul, and mind. Religion is only a guideline to help us maintian faith. Only God/HF can judge us ultimately. He is the only one who truley knows us. Religion, belief, faith, and dogma are simply there as filters for the mind. At some point all of us have a fundamentalist point of view, the problem is when we can’t snap out of it. I watched a doc about Jonestown the people there showed varying levels of belief at points in the doc. The problem and tragedy was that they couldn’t escape when they felt it was time to leave. I actually wonder at the effect drugs had on Jones. He started taking narcotics in the 1970s, and according to the people in the documentary he became more paranoid as a result. If he had stayed off narcotics, Jonestown might still be there.
In certain ways the early parts of the documentary are the most interesting as we know the ending.
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