Way to go God, really excellent work!
It occurred to me, recently, that all religion is at least mildly insulting to the divine. For think about it: religions, of all flavors, always assume that humans are somehow wanting, are incomplete or imperfect or unhappy, are somehow in need of help from a pastor or guru, or faith or doctrine or special diet, or something. And so religions put themselves in the position of perfecting God’s creation… and that, I assert, is a little insulting: for why would the God or Goddess, or however you style the divine, need human help to get things right? Shouldn’t we assume that He or She knew what they were doing? Wouldn’t the genuinely faithful have a little, well, faith that everything is just precisely as it should be, including our own miserable, sniveling selves?
So Christianity is pretty bad, but the other religions are hardly better
Christianity is the worst in this regard assuming, as it does, that all men, and even women, are not only born fatally flawed, but will be tortured and/or destroyed by the divine unless they submit to a bizarre and highly variable set of rules and contort their reasoning powers to accept evidence free propositions, for example that the all-that-is was created a few thousand years ago by their preferred theocrat in a literal six days, or that said theocrat, once upon a time, flooded the entire Earth in a fit of pique. And in most versions of this cheerful belief system, even rigorous adherence to such inanities is not enough to guarantee salvation; worshipers are still subject to divine whim. So the Creator, in their view, is an inscrutable, capricious, murderous jerk, and I know I don’t like it when people say that about me.
So Christianity is pretty bad, but the other religions are hardly better. Hinduism seems to describe a snakes and ladders game of reincarnation, with the Divine as a martinet taskmaster, demoting those who slip up in some manner. Per Islam, God is a bit of a narcissistic authoritarian requiring an almost fetishistic obedience. And even Buddhism, which usually gets a free ride from us godless liberals, asserts that we are born to suffering and must discipline ourselves stringently if we are ever to escape this wheel of misery. But really, religion has to posit that humans are somehow lacking, for otherwise there would be no need for religion; and from a religion’s point of view, where’s the fun in that?
My own belief, and a core tenet of my faith, the Church of Universal Love and Truth, is that we humans, in all our profane excess, are perfect just as we are, by divine grace, and that the Divine One is a kind and jovial being, chiefly concerned with fulfilling all our desires and being amused by our picaresque antics. In fact God, as I conceive Him, lets only one thing occasionally get under His skin, and that happens… when humans insist on being rude.
Did you like this essay? You’ll love my books!
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Okay, Angus, you knew I couldn’t let this one go by without at least some comment.
Once again, you have categorized the whole of Christianity with a certain brand of fundamentalism that I would argue most Christians do not buy into – certainly not this one. The Genesis accounts do not provide science or history. They were not written for that, but rather they were written to illustrate spiritual truths. Unfortunately, some big-mouthed fundamentalists – constituting a small minority of us Christians – proclaim their ignorance and make the general public think that that ignorance is Christianity.
As for hell and torment, you are absolutely correct in your criticism, and you would have many Christians – this one included – that would say that a God of grace and love is incompatible with a belief in hell.
Your “confession of belief” – interestingly enough – is not so far off of Lutheran belief, although your critique of religion would point out that we are a bit off of that “perfect just as we are” claim.
By the way, happy birthday!
David
Angus, your last paragraph in this article totally resonates with me. Being a recovering Catholic I find it so much more empowering and joyous to view myself as a spiritual extension of God, who is in fact quite kind and jovial…and infinitely loving. Removing the belief in hell/eternal torment from my perception of the afterlife has completely enriched my current existence.
Thanks David, thanks Joe.
David, I’m sympathetic to your claims that Christendom as a whole is poorly represented by the fundies, but a lot of less obnoxious Christian religions still have creeds that include the doctrines of, for example, hellfire, original sin, salvation only thru Christ, etc. which alone would be justification for my article. I guess I feel that by the time you clear out the bathwater of christianity, there’s not much baby left, and you might as well have a personal philosophy based on great teachers, including Jesus. And unfortunately, the bible can certainly be used to justify obnoxious doctrines, so a sane spirituality simply has to deny unique inspiration, and pick and choose instead, so again, what’s the value of identifying as ‘Christian’.
Joe, I couldn’t agree more.
cheers,
Angus
My skin crawls a little just hearing the word CHRISTENDOM again. It’s been a long time.
“My own belief, and a core tenet of my faith, the Church of Universal Love and Truth, is that we humans, in all our profane excess, are perfect just as we are, by divine grace, and that the Divine One is a kind and jovial being, chiefly concerned with fulfilling all our desires and being amused by our picaresque antics.”
A bit naive … man is sinful, depraved, or whatever you want to call it. All one would have to do is look at how much mankind slaughters one another to prove the point.
“everything is just precisely as it should be”
If man didn’t sin, it would be. But man did. Hence salvation by Christ. And Christ commissioned men to evangelize. He does not need men. Examples could be given in Scripture of Christ directly evangelizing.
David, I actually agree with Angus response to you, which I find quite amusing.
Totally agree Angus. I don’t have anything to add really, you said it all.
The acronym for that is CULT… did you do that on purpose?
I really enjoyed reading this, I’ve been wanting to write something similar for a while but just haven’t gotten around to it. All organized religions fail in some way, mainly because they discourage critical thinking.
SoulRiser—congrats, not too many people catch than acronym!
cheers,
Angus
It seems to me that speaking for God or saying what God’s like is a difficult thing. In the end, God always seems to agree with our views – and yet people’s views can be very different. George Bush and Bin Laden, are a couple of, uh… stellar examples, so to speak. Each thinks he pretty much know God’s thoughts and has acted in history according to the will of God.