Religion… ugh. It has become a dreaded topic in my life. As a child, I was taught to love/serve “God”, not knowing what it meant. Half a century later, I am torn between a lifelong love of my “religion” while also having a healthy distrust of those who practice it. How did this come about?
Those taught to “fear” God seem to be the most harsh. Judgmental. Unforgiving. Resistant to anything contradicting their own beliefs.
The Bible, like any holy book, was written by man, not “God”. Anyone can say they are “guided by the word of God” and write whatever bullshit they want, feeling shielded by their own (sometimes warped) view of the deity they supposedly represent.
I was taught that “God” meant love, acceptance and the peace afforded us by being good to our “neighbors” Nowadays, it seems to mean everything BUT. Even the term “church” seems sad to me now, given its collective treatment of “others”.
If Jesus were to return today, he’d likely be shot while visiting an elementary school by a “Christian”. Or, he’d be persecuted, tried and put to death by those who so fervently believe in some perverse ideal of what He never intended it to be.
My “theology” is to love people for who they are, not as people, a most imperfect group, not to judge them. These “Christians” blather on about “love and forgiveness” while failing to show either in their own experience. Their hypocrisy is beyond blatant. Instead of providing warmth and shelter to the poor, they celebrate “idolotry” in the form of bowing to the richest of the rich, even in accepting the suffering brought about by such selfishness.
The “righteous” are so brainwashed by political ideology they would die of cancer rather than accept a cure by someone they deem “ungodly”.
Jesus simply preached that we should “love one another as you would me”, yet many today place restrictions as to who they deem worthy, ignoring the deity they so blithely pay homage to. They make such a scene of their prayer to their mistaken God it’s pathetic, yet they consider it their lifelong “mission” to be something their actions never realize.
I pray often and liberally. However, I do so quietly. By myself, on a level only between me and my personal deity. Who or what He or She may be, we have a solely personal and private relationship. My beliefs are often considered “agnostic” describing anyone who disagrees with today’s vision of “God”. However, the most decent, truly “godly” people are doing Holy work by respecting their fellows and caring for the less fortunate. Just as God asked us to.
If you’re not “white”, you’re not “right”, according to the most fearful, misled and mistakenly angry of America’s populace. Jesus however, was dark-skinned and spoke Aramaic, referring to God as “Al-lah”; crucified by those who eerily-resemble today’s most fearsome zealots.
“White-skinned” people have some strange Hitlerian concepts of superiority. Nowhere in the Bible does it state that one race or group is superior to another. When the Bible was written, “Caucasians” didn’t exist.
The “Garden of Eden” existed on the African continent, where the skin color has always been dark. White skin is an anomaly. How then, are “we” superior? Certainly not by our actions toward other races. We have no established birthright to superiority, yet it somehow grew to be “accepted” by itself as all that was holy and right. I’m embarrassed by this illusion. Total bullshit, to the intelligent mind.
As a white male, of the “Boomer Generation”, it’s embarrassing to be so… pale. The only “color” in my skin was placed there by a tattoo artist. I grew up through the 1960s and ’70s. Race riots, assassinations, a desperate battle to assert one race’s superiority over ANY others. The product of a father born in 1926 to hard-toiling Illinois farmers who accepted people for their work ethic instead of what others thought of them.
I was taught to honor people for the strength of their character, even though my parents did not adhere to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s teachings of the same notes. It was confusing as a child, hearing/reading King’s amazing speeches and agonizing his pleas for equal rights. My own childhood was blessed by society’s twisted and centuries-old accepted of a caste society. “America” was a lie to those who had been owned by those of my race, considered 2/3 human, brutally murdered without any semblance of “justice” known as truth.
When MLK was assassinated, I cried. Only seven years old, I already understood his message. To me, he was the epitome of what it meant to be “American”. From that point on, I sought to find what was “right” in my soul. Our neighbors in small-town Arizona were black. We played together, listened to the same music, grooved together, grew together.. How could we be “different”?
One day, my next door ladybud found some reason to be angry with my buddy and me, chased us up a tree. Later, she told my father one of us called her the “N” word. I was aghast she would accuse me of such a horrible crime. I pleaded my innocence to Dad. He had taught me, through his example and words, to do so was beyond forgiveness. It was a crime I could not imagine, but he spanked me anyway for this alleged offense. Hard, and long. Bare-butt, even.
My tears were not expressed merely for the pain, but mostly because he believed me capable of such a horrid thing. I could not lie to my parents; it was something they taught early and often, that dishonesty was more horrible than any sin I could ever commit. Sharon, I hope today you realize I suffered for that false accusation. However, I forgive you when I realize it pales in comparison to what you suffered in much horribly-drastic consequence than my spanking. Dad’s punishment taught me a valuable lesson, one which remains still 50 years later. It taught me R-E-S-P-E-C-T, in more ways than I can describe here.
This carried on as I saw even more persecuted for loving those not accepted as normal. Gay folks, especially. Who are WE, as “God loving” folks to judge who others love? Don Henley wrote “find somebody you love in this world you better hold on tooth and nail… the wolf is always at your door”. That wolf today is hungry for blood it should never thirst for, yet it does.
Although I have carried Dad’s ill-conceived punishment for five decades, I realize his intent was to teach me that “word” was too horrible to repeat in any context. To this day, whenever I hear it uttered, even by those who “earned” the right to claim it by the horrid treatment their family members suffered via its use, it makes me shudder. And that’s how, folks, this white kid learned to respect people for their character, no matter who they are, love or believe.
Now we have many factions fighting for the soul of America. One, which our Founding Fathers fought a Revolution to avoid, and others who seek to unite all in a loving union of strength in which the world looks up to as a “shining beacon upon the hill”. Neither is always right or wrong, but the power of working together is far beyond what either could ever hope to achieve singularly.
We should never back away from our history. Our nation is guilty of many crimes against humanity. From murdering the Great Native Americans throughout their ancestral lands, to importing slaves from Africa and considering them fractionally less than human, to persecuting those who love beyond expectations, the grand USA has much to accept and apologize for, let alone to make exemplary attempts to repair.
Whilst we lampoon other countries for their own misgivings, we have yet to address the high crimes America has committed. We are, and have been for centuries, a nation of utter hypocrisy. In our religiously-erroneous crimes upon many, for the crimes against humanity we have preached against whilst simultaneously refusing to admit our own guilt thereof, the time is NOW to atone for our horrific sins.
In my experience, I have found some “religious” people the most nasty, least-Christian of all. Our crimes against humanity equal Hitler’s. Yeah, that’s a heavy statement, but when you consider what we have done as a nation, it rings horribly true. We have assassinated our own; those who preached peace over hate, those who envisioned a better tomorrow while hate exploded all around them, have routinely been murdered for their love.
I’m so sick of hearing about this mythical “American Dream”. It’s utter bullshit. Those with fair skin, often already-adorned with previous generations’ wealth, are lucky enough to rise above the horrid doctrines of yesteryear’s atrocities against others to “pull up our bootstraps” through “hard work and perseverance”. The rest of us are here to serve, period.
Once we all realize we’ve been had will we ever find the magic which our Founding Fathers imagined. America has always been a caste society. There are those who “have” versus US servants. YOU know in your sould how true this rings. Anyone in between had to kiss the golden ass to rise above the bottom feeders. There are a few who rise regardless of the odds stacked against them to achieve “financial freedom”. I respect their chutzpah but reserve the right to mistrust them, for they almost always learn to prey upon the working class in their rise “to the top”.
I pray to a deity, but I’m no longer sure who or what that is. Mostly, my prayers are to ask comfort for those forever living hell on Earth. “God” doesn’t seem to care when we suffer. If He/She did, little kids wouldn’t die of cancer or get shot in their school. Families would not die in car accidents. How can anywhere other than living a wonderful childhood with parents who adore them be “a better place”?
The Bible/Quaran/Torah. Written by man prior to major scientific discoveries. If “God” created us in His image, then the dude is one helluva scientist. The Creator of the Atom, the Cell, the building blocks of “life” of all forms, is truly badass. Kudos there. However, this deity can also incredibly cruel. To be so “loving and merciful”, this deity would also be powerful enough to help us avoid the myriad of illnesses/plagues/inhumane indecencies we suffer. To tell me a loved one’s cancer, which may have been easily cured by a treatment shelved because it wasn’t “cost effective”, is “incurable” is the exact opposite of mercy. To create a “master species” of greedy beings shows an obvious lack of spiritual foresight. Especially if that deity expects its dominion to be blindly obedient while convincing others to follow such cruel dogma.
I cringe hearing phrases such as “it was God’s will” or “God has a plan for each of us”. I cannot believe in a deity which allows such a horrifying range of terror to befall its most loyal subjects.
My religion can be found in the Bible. It’s a simple statement: “Love one another as I have loved you, that you also love one another.” How is this working today? It’s not. Lately it’s “love one another, unless…”
If this God commands that we follow some ancient text to its tiniest detail, then it’s not up to us to encourage the sheep to make exceptions. Sheep are incapable of logical, independent thought. They follow their shepherd. If they’re told to turn right, go straight or left, they simply do. However dull and unintelligent, they don’t possess the ability to disobey a dog nipping at their heels. They do not possess independent minds. Many humans are so brainwashed by words written thousands of years ago, they refuse to take into account a human’s ability to reason or question that which was put forth prior to anything past some biblical passage.
If God gave us an incredible mind, able to glean millions of terabytes of information and make individual decisions based on logic and proven facts, why would anyone choose to remain stuck in quicksand with a ladder within reach? Because of an unproven hypothesis they insist upon: faith.
I have faith in my ability to think, to work, to love and find joy. I’m “faithful” to my wife, to whom I promised “God” I would always be true. It seems impossible to be faithful to, or “love”, something so invisible as an assumed reality we are taught to “fear”. If I fear someone, it’s incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to “love” them. It’s not logical to expect a being to be faithful to anyone who would allow us to suffer in hopes of some mythical “kingdom” beyond. It just doesn’t make sense. I’m sorry, but logic isn’t imagined, it’s learned, it’s proven. Proven fact is easier to believe than any religious doctrine. Faith, to me, is simply fallible; beyond belief.
No, I’m not “atheist”, nor “agnostic”. Having been indoctrinated into religion from birth as a baptized “child of God”, I’ve found reality too humanistic to fit within the reality as it has been proven to me.
God didn’t teach me to walk at 2.5 years of age. My mother did. She researched my brain injury and found logic where little treatment was available. She had “faith” in her ability to overcome the prevailing “wisdom” of the era our problem existed within, and she was victorious through her perseverance and dedication to me. Here I am today, the living example of “bullshit” Mom pronounced when they told her my case was “hopeless”. She may have prayed for support, but it was her fierce determination to find answers that helped her will me to walk. Since then, it has been my own strong will, gleaned from Mom and Dad, which constantly propels me to reach beyond what others expect.
When you ask me to pray for you, I promise to. My love for you is as “God” asked of me from my first breath. Please do not question the motives from where my devotion to you springs. It likely does not jive with your own belief. Isn’t it just enough? I hope so, because I love you all just as I was taught.
Peace and love be with you.
SnickerDude 