—Only Almighty God Can Save the Degenerate Youth of Today
Bian Hua, Yunnan Province
Although on the surface it appeared that my abnormal humanity had improved a little this certainly didn’t mean that my life disposition had changed. God wanted to transform me, to cleanse me, and so continuously arranged situations to refine me. Because my parents had spoilt me over such a long period of time I’d become especially willful and arrogant, and if anyone didn’t agree with me I would fly into a rage. Later on, God put me in other practical situations in order to resolve my corruption. At that time, I was put with over 20 brothers and sisters to complete a big task together, and there were times when living together or fulfilling our duties together that some friction or quarrels occurred. At first, I always took offence and sometimes even stormed off by myself to sulk. I’d think: “Why are they being so unreasonable? I’m clearly in the right, so why won’t they listen to me?” There was one day when one of the sisters came to me and said: “You’ve got a flaw in your character: You don’t respect other people. When others disagree with you, you walk off in a huff and even slam doors!” I stared at her dumbfounded, all the while burning with the injustice of it as I thought: “When did I ever slam doors?!” After standing my ground for a while I decided to put on a show of reluctantly accepting the criticism, but in my mind I was muttering to myself: “No, it’s all of you who are wrong but you blame me…” Because of my constantly revealing my arrogance and self-righteousness, and holding to my opinions, God prodded the brothers and sisters into dealing with me. It was like I couldn’t get on with anybody. At the time, I was very upset and that’s when I remembered God’s words about how a poor relationship with the people around you means you have a poor relationship with God.
So I calmed myself down and began to reflect on my actions. I read these words of God’s: “What is the transformation of disposition? You must be a lover of truth, accept the judgment and chastisement of God’s word as you experience His work, and experience all kinds of suffering and refining, through which you are purified of the satanic poisons within you. This is the transformation in disposition” (“How to Know Man’s Nature” in Records of Christ’s Talks).
God’s words helped me recognize that He was using various trials and refinements to purify me of the satanic poisons inside of me. The sister’s criticism had been brought on by God in order to help me know myself and transform my corrupt disposition. Only by accepting the brothers and sister’s criticisms and instructions, submitting to God’s arrangements of my situation, the people and things and objects around me, and seeking and practicing truths in everything, could my life disposition achieve transformation. I thought about the corruptions that I’d revealed and recognized that it was Satan’s poisonous idea of “I’m the greatest” acting on me and making me unable to live and work in harmony with the brothers and sisters. I always expected that I had the final say and that everyone had to listen to me, like I was the boss. If anyone disagreed with me in the slightest I would lose my temper, and this was my satanic disposition being revealed, making me live in an arrogant, self-righteous, self-centered, satanic image. All the things that I studied in CCP schools promoted this kind of thinking. For instance, all those emperors of this or that dynasty in the history books—like Emperor Qin Shi Huang, Wu Zetian, Han Wudi etc.—were self-righteous and high and mighty. And a lot of modern Chinese people seem to take that famous sentence of Cao Cao’s—“I’d rather betray everyone than let them betray me”—as their personal slogan. It’s like they believe only people with this type of character have the mark of a leader and can make it big in life, while those gentle souls who never quarrel or kick up a fuss are all cowards. This toxic, satanic concept of “I’m the greatest” that is seen as something positive was instilled into me in those communist party schools, and it became an integral part of my life. When I think back on how unruly and rebellious I was when living with my parents, I know now that it was because I didn’t understand truths and so I didn’t think my behavior was corrupt or wrong. Now I have God’s words to help me distinguish good from evil and beauty from ugliness, and so I must accept God’s judgment and chastisement and quickly rid myself of this satanic disposition. After a long period of experiencing God dealing with me and refining me I started to act in accordance with God’s demands. If there was something to be done, I started to discuss it first with the brothers and sisters and learned how to put my ego to one side. My interactions with the brothers and sisters thus became much more relaxed. I used to be very selfish, and whatever I did or said I would only take into account my own feelings and interests, without having the slightest regards for anyone else. One time, one of the leaders was being negative, and since I also had a lot of problems and grievances that were bothering me I took the opportunity to air all of them so that the leader could resolve them for me. After she had done so, she left, and shortly after, another sister came along. I told her about my talk with the leader and how she had said that she was also negative. So the sister asked me: “Did you fellowship about this with her?” I said that I didn’t think of fellowshipping about it with the leader, and she replied: “That’s shows how selfish you are. You don’t know how to help people.” I felt very bad after being criticized like this, but later on I opened a book of God’s fellowship and saw these words of God’s: “In the past, when the words of God have not become people’s lives, it was Satan’s nature that took charge and dominated within them. What specific things were within that nature? For example, why are you selfish? … Right now you all have understood that this is mainly because of Satan’s poison contained within. Satan’s poison can be fully expressed with words. … ‘Everyone for himself and the devil take the hindmost.’ This one phrase expresses the root of the problem: The logic of Satan has become people’s lives, and no matter what they do, whether it’s for some purpose or other, they are only doing it for themselves. People all think that ‘Every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost,’” (“How to Take the Path of Peter” in Records of Christ’s Talks). I was able to reflect on my actions and behavior by comparing them with God’s words. I discovered that at every point I’d only been thinking of myself, and how to get rid of my own negativity, so that I wouldn’t suffer so much. I hadn’t thought for a moment that other people were suffering with their negativity and also needed help and support from the brothers and sisters. I’d been too deeply corrupted by Satan, and in my heart there was only a place for me. I never considered other people’s feelings or made an effort to care about, support, or look after other folks. This is when I understood that this kind of selfish, despicable expression was the revelation of a corrupt, satanic disposition. It was a result of the long-term effect of such toxic, satanic ideas as “Every man for himself and the Devil take the hindmost.” All this school education, social conditioning, and satanic knowledge was what had corrupted and poisoned me. In later years, it was through experiencing negativity, weakness, failures, and setbacks many, many times that I was able to fully grasp how hard and bitter it is to live in darkness, and how much I need the help and support of others. Even if it’s just a word or two of comfort it can still give me a small measure of strength. After experiencing God’s work, and then seeing brothers and sisters who were experiencing negativity and weakness, I am now able to understand their predicaments and how they are feeling and I try my best to help them. Now when I think of how I used to behave at home I feel that I let my parents down badly. They brought me up, but I only took from them and never repaid them with anything. My attitude toward them was usually awful, and I see now that I was corrupted by Satan to the point of having no conscience or rationality, or even a shred of basic humanity. Later on, the church asked me to look after those brothers and sisters who were wanted by the CCP government and so couldn’t return home, and also some who had been away from home fulfilling duties for such long periods that their families were suffering financial hardship. In terms of clothing and other household items, they needed to be consulted and helped quickly, and this duty gave me the chance to learn how to care about and look after others. As God’s words put it: “In believing in God, if man desires transformation in his own disposition, then he must not detach himself from real life. In real life, you must know yourself, forsake yourself, practice the truth, as well as learn the principles, common sense and rules of self-conduct in all things before you are able to achieve gradual transformation” (“Discussing Church Life and Real Life” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). Being in The Church of Almighty God has allowed me to understand at a very deep level just how the schools founded and controlled by the CCP teach children to focus on striving for fame and status. They teach children to try and be better than others in the struggle to make a name for themselves or become experts. But these are things that are out of reach for most people, and the more they pursue them the more arrogant and conceited they become, and the more they consider everything and everyone to be beneath them. By revealing their satanic disposition in this way they harm themselves and their families. By contrast, Almighty God taught me how to behave properly; He helped me to pragmatically equip myself with the things that my humanity was lacking. Experiencing God’s judgment and chastisement is to enable me to live out the likeness of a true person, which is good for me and good for others, too. I feel that the biggest gain from believing in God has been gradually learning how to self-reflect: In the past, I never knew myself and always felt that other people were wronging me, and so was full of resentment. I was living in the middle of Satan’s trickery but didn’t know it. But after reading God’s words I know that we should self-reflect on everything, and so I no longer blame the people or things around me. I now feel free and liberated.
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