Have you fellowshipped during your gatherings about the topics we’ve been covering recently? (God, we have fellowshipped about these topics during our gatherings.) What came of your fellowship? Did you encounter any new discoveries or understanding? Do these topics that we’ve fellowshipped about exist in people’s daily lives? (All of them exist. After listening a few times to God’s fellowship on these topics, I discovered that our parents’ education and our families’ conditioning from generation to generation have corrupted us quite deeply. Since childhood, our parents have instilled these thoughts into us bit by bit, such as, “A man leaves his name behind wherever he stays, just as a goose utters its cry wherever it flies.” After having this thought instilled into me, I believed that in order to avoid being bullied and looked down upon, one must be a cut above the rest and stand out from the crowd in life. In the past, I thought that these thoughts our parents taught us to have were for our own good and protection. Through a few times of God’s fellowship and dissection, I have come to realize that these thoughts are negative and are Satan’s means of corrupting people. They distance us further and further from God and lead us deeper into Satan’s corruption, drawing us further and further away from salvation.) In short, it is necessary to fellowship about these topics, isn’t it? (Yes, it is.) After fellowshipping a few times about these things, people gain a deeper understanding of the thoughts and viewpoints instilled in them by their families, and they understand them more accurately. After fellowshipping about these things, won’t people’s relationships with their families and their parents grow more distant? (No, we won’t. Formerly, I always felt that my parents had shown me kindness, but after hearing God’s fellowship, I realized that it was my parents’ mission to give birth to me and raise me. Moreover, the thoughts they had instilled in me from a young age were corrupting me. Having recognized this, I don’t have as much of an affectionate attachment to them.) First and foremost, with regard to their thoughts, people now have an accurate understanding of their parents’ responsibilities and the grace shown them by their parents’ raising them; they no longer rely on affections, hotheadedness, or physical blood ties to deal with them. Instead, they can approach their family and parents rationally from the correct perspective and position. This way, people undergo a significant transformation in how they treat these issues, and this transformation allows them to make a huge leap in terms of their life entry and God’s requirements for them. Therefore, fellowshipping about these topics is beneficial and necessary for people, because these are all things that humans need and are lacking within them.

The topics we previously fellowshipped on concerning a person’s family conditioning primarily revolved around goals and principles for self-comportment, ways and means of dealing with the world, and one’s outlook on life and existence, and survival methods and rules, among other things. These are all topics that involve the conditioning of thoughts in individuals and their thoughts and viewpoints. Overall, none of the various thoughts and viewpoints instilled by families and parents are positive, and none of them can truly guide a person onto the right path or help them establish a correct outlook on life, enabling them to fulfill their responsibilities and obligations as a created being in the presence of their Creator. Everything that parents and family teach you is to lead you in the direction of the world and its evil trends. Their purpose in conditioning you with these thoughts and viewpoints is to help you integrate more seamlessly into society and evil trends, and be better able to adapt to evil trends and to the various demands of society. While these teachings may provide you with certain means and methods of protection as well as certain methods of attaining better status, reputation, material enjoyment, and other things in society and among groups of people, these very thoughts instilled in you by your family lead you into one evil trend after another, causing you to be rooted in the world, society, and evil trends, until you can no longer extricate yourself. They bring you one trouble after another and repeatedly place you in dilemmas, leaving you unsure about how to face the human world and how to be a genuine person, a person living in the light, being upright, kind-hearted, and possessing a sense of justice. Therefore, your family conditioning does not enable you to live in this world with more dignity, character, and human likeness. Instead, it causes you to live in the midst of various intricate conflicts and struggles, in various complex interpersonal relationships, and subjects you to numerous worldly entanglements, bondage, and even perplexities. When you turn to your parents and confide in them about all this, they will employ various tactics to advise you on how to be more sly, crafty, worldly-wise, and hard to read as you live among people, instead of pointing you in the right direction, helping you let go of all these things and liberate yourself, come before the Creator and submit to His arrangements, and recognize clearly that people’s destinies and their everything are in God’s hands, that they should submit to every requirement that comes from God, His sovereignty and orchestrations. This is the living situation of people whose families conditioned them with these various thoughts. In short, whether the thoughts conditioned by your family emphasize fame or profit, competing with others or being friendly with them, regardless of their focus, ultimately they can only lead your means, methods, and rules for survival in the human world to become increasingly sophisticated, ruthless, cunning, and malicious, rather than making you more honest, kind, and upright, or helping you better understand how to submit to the Creator’s arrangements. Therefore, your family conditioning can only distance you from God, from the truth, and from positive things, leaving you unsure about how to live in a way that humans truly ought to live, in a way that is dignified. Moreover, the thoughts you acquired from your family conditioning will make you progressively more numb, obtuse, or to put it colloquially, thick-skinned. At the beginning, lying to your colleagues, classmates, and friends would make your face blush, your heart race, and your conscience feel guilty. Over time, these conscious reactions will all fade away: Your face won’t blush, your heart won’t race, and your conscience will trouble you no longer. In order to survive, you will resort to any means, even deceiving the people closest to you, including your parents, your siblings, and your best friends. You will seek to profit from them in order to improve your own life and enhance your honor and enjoyment—this is numbness. Initially, you might feel a tiny bit of self-blame and your conscience may tremble slightly. Over time, these sensations will disappear, and you will use more convincing reasons to soothe yourself, saying, “That’s just how people are. You can’t be soft-hearted in this world. Being soft-hearted to others is being cruel to yourself. In this world the weak are prey for the strong. The strong thrive and the weak perish, the winners become kings and the losers become criminals. If you succeed, no one will investigate how you succeeded, but if you fail, you will have nothing left.” In the end, people will employ these thoughts and viewpoints to persuade themselves, making these the basis for how they pursue everything, and, of course, a means to an end. So, where do you all find yourselves right now? Have you reached the point of numbness, or not yet? Suppose you were to engage in business, and this business related to your future, your quality of life, and your reputation in society. If your methods were cunning enough, and you could deceive anyone, then you would live a life above the rest, you would have piles and piles of cash, and you wouldn’t need to bow to anyone’s wishes anymore. What would you do then? Would you become so numb, so unfeeling, that you could deceive anyone and make money from anyone? (I probably would.) You probably would. This needs to change; this is the corrupt disposition existing deep within humanity. When humanity is absent, what remains is a life lived according to one’s corrupt disposition, as well as various thoughts and viewpoints instilled by Satan. Without conscience, reason, and a sense of shame, a person’s life is reduced to a mere shell, an empty vessel, and it loses its value. If you still have some sense of shame, and when you lie, cheat, or harm others you are able to choose who is on the receiving end, you don’t harm just anyone, then you still possess some conscience and humanity. But if you can deceive or harm anyone without reservation, then you are truly a living Satan through and through. If you say, “I can’t deceive my parents, relatives, friends, guileless people, and especially not my brothers and sisters in God’s house, and I can’t cheat God’s offerings,” then you still have some moral boundaries, and you can still be considered a person with some conscience. However, if you lack even this small measure of conscience and boundaries, then you don’t deserve to be called human. So, what point have you reached? Do you have boundaries? If you had the opportunity or an actual need, could you deceive your parents, your siblings, and your closest friends? Could you deceive your brothers and sisters, exploit them, or even cheat God’s offerings? If such an opportunity were presented to you, and no one would ever find out, could you do it? (Now it feels like I can’t do that anymore.) Why can’t you do it anymore? (Because I am afraid of God, I have something of a God-fearing heart, and also because my conscience wouldn’t allow it.) Your attitude is that you feel afraid in your heart and have a God-fearing heart, and your conscience wouldn’t allow it. Let other people speak. Do you have an attitude regarding this? If you don’t, if you’ve never considered this issue and feel nothing when you see others doing it, then you are in danger. If you see someone doing such things and feel no hatred, don’t have an attitude toward it, and feel numb, then you are no different from them and might act similarly. However, if your attitude toward this is clear, if you can hate and rebuke such people, then you might not commit such actions. So, what is your attitude? (I ought to have something of a God-fearing heart. God’s offerings are set apart as holy and absolutely cannot be tampered with or taken for personal use.) Offerings must not be taken for personal use: This is done out of fear of punishment. But what about other matters? If you were involved in a pyramid scheme, could you bring yourself to profit from your closest friends, deceive them with flowery language, and make them join, making profit and earning money from this? Could you do this to your closest friends, relatives, even your parents or brothers and sisters? If it’s hard for you to say, then when you say you wouldn’t take God’s offerings for personal use, that might not be possible for you, would it? Let somebody else speak. (In one respect, we should understand the righteous disposition of God in this matter. God’s offerings must never be touched. In another, we feel that doing something like this lacks humanity. At the very least, the lowest baseline one should have should be that their conscience allows it.) Your attitude is that doing such things lacks humanity and that one should act in ways their conscience allows. Is there anybody else? (I think that, as a human being, even if one doesn’t believe in God, if they are a person in the world who has a conscience and a moral baseline, they should not do things that harm their own family. Now that we believe in God and understand some truths, if anyone can still do things that harm their brothers and sisters, harm their friends, or cheat God’s offerings, then such a person is even worse than the nonbelievers. Additionally, sometimes people may reveal certain thoughts and ideas, but when they think about God’s disposition essence, and realize that even if no one around is watching, or if no one knows about these actions, God still examines everything, and they dare not do such things—they will have something of a God-fearing heart.) In one respect, acting like this shows people lack a God-fearing heart; in another, people who are capable of doing these things lack even the most basic humanity. This is because as a human being, even if you don’t believe in God, you shouldn’t commit such actions. This is a quality that a person with a conscience and humanity should have. Cheating, harming, and stealing are inherently things that a good and normal person should not do. Even people who don’t believe in God still have some boundaries in how they comport themselves, let alone you who believe in God and have heard so many sermons: If you are still capable of doing these things, then you are beyond redemption. This is someone who lacks humanity—a devil. You’ve listened to so many sermons, and yet, you can still commit all sorts of bad deeds related to cheating and swindling—this is what it means to be a disbeliever. What is a disbeliever? It is someone who does not believe in God’s observation or that He is righteous. If you don’t believe in God’s observation, doesn’t that mean you don’t believe in His existence? You say, “God is observing me, but where is God? Why haven’t I seen Him? Why don’t I feel Him? I’ve been cheating and swindling people for so many years; why haven’t I been punished? I’m still living a more comfortable life than others.” This is one aspect of the behavior of a disbeliever. Another aspect is that no matter how much truth has been fellowshipped, they reject every bit. They never accept the truth, so what do they accept? They accept thoughts and viewpoints that benefit them. Whatever benefits them and protects their interests, that’s what they do. They only believe in immediate self-interest, not in God’s observation, nor in the concept of retribution. This is what it means to be a disbeliever. What’s the point of believing in God for a disbeliever? Disbelievers in God’s house are characterized by one thing: Doing evil. But let’s not discuss the ultimate end of these people; let’s return to the topic we were fellowshipping about.

The various thoughts conditioned and instilled into people by their families are not meant to bring them before God, nor do they instill positive thoughts in them. Instead, they instill various negative thoughts, negative means, principles, and methods of comporting themselves, ultimately leading people down a path of no return. In short, the various thoughts that families instill in people do not even meet the basic standards of humanity, reason, and conscience that a person should possess. If a person possesses even the slightest bit of conscience and reason, it is only the tiny bit that remains and has yet to be corrupted or eroded by Satan. The rest of their various means and methods for comporting themselves come from their family, and even from society. Therefore, before a person is saved, any thought or viewpoint that their family conditions into them, no matter what it is, contradicts what God teaches people. It cannot make them understand the truth, nor can it lead them down the path of salvation; it can only lead them down the path of destruction. So, when a person comes into God’s house, no matter how old they are, what kind of education they’ve received, what their family background is, and how noble they think their status is, they must start from scratch to learn how to comport themselves, how to interact with others, how to handle various matters, and how to deal with various people and things. This learning process involves receiving and understanding various positive, truth-aligned thoughts and viewpoints from God, as well as principles for practicing and handling various matters. This is solely based on your acceptance of the truth. If you do not accept the truth, your original thoughts and viewpoints will remain unchanged. Because you do not accept the positive and correct thoughts and viewpoints that come from God, your principles, means, and methods of dealing with the world will remain old and unchanged. People begin to learn how to be a real person, a normal person, a person with reason and conscience when they start accepting positive thoughts and viewpoints, the truth, and God’s teachings. Some people say, “I have believed in God for ten, twenty, or thirty years, and I have yet to accept a single thought or viewpoint from God, nor have I accepted any truth from God’s words.” This is enough to show that your belief in God is not sincere, you still do not know what the truth is, and you have not learned how to comport yourself. If you say, “From the moment I started believing in God, I formally began accepting God’s teachings regarding various requirements for humans and the thoughts, viewpoints, principles, and sayings that humans should possess,” then you have been learning how to be a real person from the day you started believing in God, and from the time you began learning how to be a real person, you began walking down the path of salvation. From the moment you start accepting thoughts and viewpoints that come from God, that’s when you begin to walk down the path to salvation, isn’t that so? (Yes, it is.) So, have you started? Did you already start, have you not yet started, or did you start a long time ago? (Through God’s fellowship and dissection over the past two years of the incorrect thoughts and viewpoints that exist in people, including family conditioning, etc., I have begun reflecting on myself and slowly repudiating those satanic philosophies I held, and pondering over how I should strive toward God’s words. I hadn’t paid much attention to such deep introspection before.) This statement is quite realistic. You only started within the past two years; it’s hard to pinpoint the exact year or day, but regardless, it was in the last year or two. This is relatively objective. What about others? (I hadn’t really thought about how to put effort into changing the thoughts and viewpoints conditioned by my family. Recently, after listening to God’s fellowship in this regard, my thoughts have gradually started to change somewhat, but I haven’t specifically focused on pursuing change in this area.) Your consciousness has grown more perceptive. In your daily life, if you continue to seek and enter more deeply, if you can be more meticulous and exacting in specific matters, if you enter into it with more accuracy, then you’ll have hope for a change. Isn’t that the case? (Yes, it is.) If you have hope to shed old thoughts and viewpoints, then be able to view people and things, comport yourself, and act from the correct stance and with the correct viewpoint, in this way, you’ll be able to attain salvation. In the long run, you can attain salvation, but speaking more practically from the here and now, you can be fit to fulfill your duty, and especially fit to be a leader and worker; but this depends on whether you yourself are willing to put in effort for each part of the truth, and whether you are willing to put in effort and pay the price for positive things and various matters related to principles. If you only want to change yourself in your consciousness but don’t put effort into and are not serious about truths in your daily life, if you don’t have a heart which thirsts for positive things, then this consciousness will quickly fade and disappear. Every thought and viewpoint involved in each topic I fellowship about is inseparable from people’s real lives. It’s not a kind of theory or slogan; it’s about what your thoughts and viewpoints are in dealing with things in your daily life. Your thoughts and viewpoints determine the direction you lean toward when taking action. If your thoughts and viewpoints are positive, your methods and principles in handling things will tend to be positive, and the result of handling such matters will be relatively good and in accordance with God’s intentions. But if your thoughts and viewpoints are opposed to the truth and positive things or run counter to these things, then the impetus for how you handle something will be negative, and the ultimate result of handling that matter will definitely not prove good. Regardless of how much of a price you pay or how much thought you put into handling this matter, regardless of your intentions, how will God view the result? How will God characterize this matter? If God characterizes this matter as disruptive, causing a disturbance, destructive, or leading to loss within God’s house, then your actions are evil. If your evil deeds are minor they might lead to chastisement, judgment, rebuke, and pruning, while heavier evil deeds could result in punishment. If you fail to act based on the truth principles and instead lean toward the incorrect thoughts and viewpoints of nonbelievers, basing your actions on these things, then your efforts will be in vain. Even if you paid a high price and invested a lot of effort, your final result will still be in vain. How does God view this matter? How does He characterize it? How does He deal with it? At the very least, your deeds are not good, they do not bear testimony to God or bring glory to Him, and the price you paid and the mental effort you put in will not be remembered; it is all in vain. Do you understand? (Yes.) Before you do anything, take the time to think carefully, fellowship with others more, seek clarity on principles before acting, and don’t act hotheadedly or impulsively, driven by your own selfishness and desires. Regardless of the outcome, in the end you’ll have to bear it by yourself, and no matter the result, there will be a verdict from God. If you hope that your actions will not be in vain, that they will be remembered by God, or even better, that they will become good deeds that God is pleased with, then you should seek the principles more often. If you don’t care about these things, if it doesn’t matter to you whether your deeds are good or whether God is pleased with them, and you don’t even care about whether you’ll be punished, but you think, “It doesn’t matter, I won’t be able to see or feel it now anyway,” if you have these thoughts and viewpoints, then when you act you will not have a God-fearing heart. You’ll be bold, unrestrained, and reckless, with no concern or restraint with anything. Without a God-fearing heart, the direction you take when you act is very likely to deviate. According to human nature and instincts, the final result is likely to be that your actions not only fail to gain God’s pleasure or remembrance, but they also become disruptions, disturbances, and evil deeds. So, it is quite evident what your ultimate outcome will be, and how it will be treated and handled by God. Therefore, before you do anything, before you handle any matter, you should first reflect on what you want, consider thoroughly what the ultimate result of this matter will be, and only then proceed. So, what does this issue involve? It involves your attitude and the principles you follow when you do anything. The best attitude is to seek the principles more often and not base your judgment on your own senses, preferences, intentions, desires, or immediate interests; instead, you must seek the principles, pray and seek before God more often, bringing matters before the brothers and sisters more often, and fellowshipping with and seeking those brothers and sisters who are working together with you to do duties. Get the principles right before you act; don’t act impulsively, don’t be muddled. Why do you believe in God? You do not do it to score a meal, pass the time, keep up with the fashion, or satisfy your spiritual needs. You do it in order to be saved. So, how can you be saved? When you do anything, it should be connected to salvation, to God’s requirements, and to the truth, shouldn’t it?

Regarding the topic of letting go of one’s family conditioning, our previous fellowship involved rules and various thoughts and viewpoints related to self-comportment, which are thoughts conditioned into people by their families. However, apart from families having various kinds of teaching and influence toward people, there is even more conditioning apart from this. That is, family conditioning includes far more than just the conditioning of thoughts. In addition to what we just discussed, it also includes traditional, superstitious, and religious conditioning, which is what we are about to fellowship on. These matters involve lifestyles, customs, habits, and the everyday details of life. Regarding family conditioning in people’s daily lives, we will now turn our discussion to tradition. What are some examples of tradition? For instance, a family may cling to certain particulars, sayings, or taboos related to the details of daily life. Does this involve tradition? (Yes.) Tradition is somewhat connected and related to superstition, so we’ll discuss both of them together. Some aspects within tradition may be considered superstition, and there are things within superstition that are not very traditional and are only habits or ways of life belonging to individual families or ethnic groups. Let’s start by exploring what traditions and superstitions entail. You are already familiar with a lot of traditions and superstitions because there are many aspects of your daily life involving them. Go ahead, list a few. (Fortune-telling, palm-reading, and drawing lots.) Drawing lots, fortune-telling, telling the future, palm-reading, face-reading, telling fortunes through birth times, and holding séances—these things aren’t called superstitions; they all constitute superstitious activities. Superstition refers to specific explanations that exist within these activities. For example, checking a calendar before leaving home to determine what activities are auspicious or inauspicious for today, if all activities are inauspicious, if moving, getting married, and arranging a funeral are all inauspicious, or if all activities are auspicious today—that’s superstition. Do you understand? (Yes, I understand.) List a few more examples. (The belief that twitching on the left eye forecasts fortune but twitching on the right eye forecasts disaster.) “Twitching on the left eye forecasts fortune but twitching on the right eye forecasts disaster”—what is this? (A superstition.) It is a superstition. Everything I just mentioned, like telling the future, drawing lots, palm-reading, etc., falls under superstitious activities. “Twitching on the left eye forecasts fortune but twitching on the right eye forecasts disaster” is a specific saying related to a superstitious activity. It is a superstition. Where do these sayings come from? They basically all come from the older generations. Some are passed down by parents, others come from grandparents, great-grandparents, and so on. Anything else? (God, do holiday customs count?) Yes, holiday customs count as well: Some belong to tradition, while others are both traditions and superstitious sayings. From the south to the north of China, and from the East to the West, there are numerous holiday customs. Consider a specific holiday custom, for instance, in southern China: People often eat rice cakes during the Chinese New Year. What does this symbolize? What’s the purpose behind people eating rice cakes? (They believe that eating rice cakes will bring them promotion year after year.) The purpose of eating rice cakes is to ensure promotion year after year. The word “promotion” here is a homophone of the Chinese word for “cake.” So, the purpose of eating rice cakes is to ensure that you get promoted every year. Now, has there ever been a year when you didn’t eat rice cakes and didn’t get promoted? Is there anyone who gets promoted every year because they eat rice cakes every year? Can you really “get promoted”? People are aware that this doesn’t necessarily lead to getting promoted, but even if it doesn’t, at least it will keep them from failing. So, they must eat them. Eating them makes them feel at ease, while not eating them makes them feel uneasy. This is superstition and tradition. In short, these habits and traditions from your family have formed an influence over you, and you’ve unconsciously approved of and accepted these traditions and habits to a certain degree; thus, you’ve also approved of and accepted the superstitions or thoughts and viewpoints that these traditions promote. When you come to live on your own, you may continue these traditions and habits. This cannot be denied. Now, let’s discuss some sayings related to traditions. Some people frequently engage in such matters: If someone is going on a long journey, they make dumplings for them to eat, and when the traveler returns, they prepare noodles. Isn’t this a tradition? (Yes.) This is a tradition, and it’s an unwritten custom. Let’s not discuss the purpose of doing this just yet. First, let’s examine the accurate statement for this action. (“Dumplings out the door, noodles in the door.” Or you can also say, “Dumplings for departing, noodles for returning.”) What does “Dumplings for departing, noodles for returning” mean? That is, if someone is leaving today, you must give them dumplings to eat; what is the significance of this? Dumplings are enveloped in a wrapper, and the word “wrap” sounds similar to the Chinese word for “protect.” So, it means to protect their life, to ensure that they do not meet with any accidents after they depart, that they don’t die while they’re away, and that they definitely will come back. It signifies a safe departure. “Dumplings for departing, noodles for returning” means that they return safely and everything goes smoothly for them—that’s more or less the significance. In general, certain families follow this tradition. If a member of the family is departing, they make dumplings for them, and upon their return, they serve them noodles. Regardless of whether you’re the one eating or preparing these dishes, it’s done to bring good luck, both for the present and the future, for the well-being of everyone. Do you agree that this tradition is a positive thing and something people should do and continue in their lives? (I don’t agree.) Some brothers and sisters have to depart, and the person in charge of food makes them dumplings, to which I say, “What does their leaving have to do with making dumplings?” And they say, “Well, when someone departs, we have to make dumplings.” I reply, “You make dumplings when they depart; then, what if they’re coming back?” They say, “They have to eat noodles when they return.” I say, “This is the first time I’ve heard of this. Where does this tradition come from?” They say, “It’s like this where I come from. If someone is departing, we make dumplings for them, and when they return, we serve noodles.” After this, what impression did it leave in my heart? I thought: These people have put their belief in God, but they don’t base their actions on God’s words. Instead, they rely on tradition and what was passed down by their ancestors. They believe that a person’s life can be protected by a dumpling wrapper, that if something happens to a person, it is not in God’s hands; it’s in human hands. They believe that by wrapping a dumpling, the departing person will be made safe, and if they don’t wrap that dumpling, that person won’t be safe and they might die somewhere on the journey and never return. In their thoughts and viewpoints, a person’s life is like the filling inside a dumpling, with the same value as dumpling filling. Their life is not in God’s hands, and God is not able to control that person’s destiny. Only by using a dumpling wrapper can they control a person’s fate. What kind of people are they? (Disbelievers.) They are disbelievers. There are many such people in the church. They don’t consider this a superstition. They regard it as a part of their habits, something they should naturally uphold as a positive thing. They do it openly and act like they are reasonable and have a basis for doing so. You can’t stop them: If you prevent them from doing it, they feel uneasy and say, “I’m the one cooking. Someone is departing today: If I don’t make dumplings for them, who will be responsible if they happen to die? Won’t it be my fault?” They believe that their ancestors’ traditions are the most reliable: “If you don’t follow tradition and violate this taboo, your life is at risk, and you might die because of it.” Is this not the viewpoint of a disbeliever? (Yes, it is.) With thoughts and viewpoints like these deeply rooted in people’s hearts, can they still accept the truth? (No, they can’t.) You say you follow God, you say you believe in God as the truth, but where’s the evidence? You say with your mouth, “I believe God is sovereign, and a person’s destiny is in God’s hands.” However, when someone is leaving, you rush to make dumplings for them, and even if you don’t have time to buy any meat, you still have to make dumplings with vegetable filling—not making them is out of the question. Do these actions and this behavior bear witness to God? Are they glorifying God? (No.) Clearly, they are not. They are humiliating to God and His name. Whether you accept the truth or not is a minor issue. The key point is that you claim to believe in God and follow Him, but you still adhere to the traditions instilled in you by Satan. In these small matters in your daily life, you strictly follow the thoughts and habits instilled in you by your ancestors, and no one can change them. Is this the attitude of someone who accepts the truth? This is humiliating to God; this is betraying God. Who are your ancestors? Where did their traditions come from? Whom do these traditions represent? Do they represent the truth? Do they represent positive things? Who invented these traditions? Was it God? God provides people with the truth not to restore traditions but to abolish all traditions. But not only do you refuse to abandon them, you treat them as the truth and as something positive to uphold. Isn’t this a death wish? Is this not openly opposing the truth and God? (Yes, it is.) This is openly clamoring against and opposing God. Some people might say, “What if I don’t make dumplings or noodles for my brothers and sisters but do it for my own family members? When my family members leave, I’ll make dumplings for them, and when they return, I’ll cook noodles for them. Is that okay?” Do you think that’s okay? What if you say this: “If I deceive someone, it won’t be my brothers and sisters, but my own family members. Is that okay?” Would that be okay? (It wouldn’t be.) It doesn’t matter who is on the receiving end of your actions; it matters what you are living out and revealing about yourself, and it matters what viewpoints you uphold. It doesn’t matter whom you deceive; it matters what your actions and principles are, isn’t that so? (Yes, it is.)