Back to the Drawing Board
Mar. 16th, 2004 03:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
my_window_seatI should make up my mind, one way or the other - do I believe in God or not?
The problem is this - if I find that I believe in God, how can I possibly ever find it in my heart to do anything other than loathe him?
They seem like particularly biased questions coming, not only from Left Field, but somewhere out past the bleachers entirely - but if you were raised in what can only be described, despite the obvious oxymoron, as a moderately extreme religious community (Seventh Day Adventist) - hey, they're pertinent questions.
Of course, to my way of thinking - that is to say, perverse at best - they are important questions to anyone, regardless of their upbringing.
Because anyone who spends even a few minutes of their time engaged in looking at the world as something other than a place to find the most convenient and shiny distraction in the least amount of time and for the lowest available cost - jesus people, look around you - if we aren't on the brink of the Apocolypse, whether a secular or a religious one, I'm fucking Mary Poppins.
I'm not going to go into a point-by-point analysis of all the 'signs' I see around me every day. There are better minds than mine who do a much better job of it all around me. But if this kind of thing is obvious even to someone like me, who practically lives under a fucking rock for all intensive purposes, how can it be less than obvious to any other sane human being?
As if that were a logical question. Ignorance is much easier. So much more comfortable, and easier to accept as 'safe'. Honestly, though I'm far from being a 'big brain' myself, there's hardly a day that goes by that I don't wish I were a great deal more stupid than I generally consider myself to be.
I long for ignorance sometimes. There are times when I would gladly trade anything anyone could possibly ask of me, if I could just stop thinking.
Which is a part of the whole theological issue I have with myself. Whether or not to believe in God.
It was only a work of fiction, and not even one of the better ones at that, but it had a fairly substantial emotional impact on me - the film "The Rapture". In it, the central characters lead lives of apparent debauchery and decadence until they are introduced to the word of God, at which point they do the standard lifestyle 180 and become born-agains - just before the End Times start into the final countdown.
The part that resonated the most to me - and I do recognize that I am very susceptible to emotional manipulation, particularly when presented in an even clumsily rendered artistic form - was when the main woman character is standing on one side of a rather silly depiction of the River Styxx, with her dead daughter standing on the other side, pleading with her to "say you love Jesus!" so that they can be joined again on The Other Side.
And the woman has to reflect on the concept of really and finally embracing a belief system that she used to justify murdering her own daughter in order to demonstrate her faith in God.
The daughter, seeing her mother's indecision, reminds her that, if she doesn't make this statement, if she 'turns her back on God,' she'll spend the rest of eternity in nothingness. The film doesn't, if I remember correctly, go so far as to say Hell and eternal torment - but enough already.
The woman makes her choice. And says that she would rather not exist than to claim to love a God that could ask such things of the beings he claims to 'love'.
Yes, this was just a poorly cobbled together piece of Hollywood hoodoo. But anyone who's had any kind of bibical training knows, it's not at all out of step with Standard Operating Procedure for God as portrayed in the Bible.
The God of the Old Testament asked Abraham to take his son up a mountain and offer him as a living sacrifice to show his loyalty. Abraham didn't even tell the poor kid he was taking him on a hike to carve his heart out for Jehovah - he just schlepped him up the side of the mountain, and it was only at the last fucking minute that God said, hey - psych! - here, have a magical sheep, never mind all that, I proved my point - you were willing to murder your own son to earn your celestial merit badge, I'm not going to make you, ha-ha, actually go through with it or anything.
I could go on and on with examples - but you get the picture.
How could anyone in their right mind BUY INTO this kind of insanity?
How could I have done it for as long as I did?
How could I possibly even entertain the idea even now?
For the same reasons it ever seemed like a plausible idea in the first place. Other than the fact that, at the time, I was a kid and didn't have a lot of say in the matter.
For a while, if you're scared enough, just about anything can seem like a good idea.
One of the things that the Seventh Day Adventist church did, and probably still does, is place a great deal of emphasis on 'The Last Days'. They like to go over and over the details about the Signs of the Apocolypse, and how 'the Faithful' will be persecuted in the time just preceeding the return of King, blah blah blah. How we would be, first reviled, then systemtically targeted and finally driven from our homes to live in the mountains - those of us that survived torture and murder, of course.
All in the Service of the Lord. Can I hear a quiet and reverential Amen.
You get enough of this stuff crammed into your head at an early enough age, and looking around at the world today is enough to give you the crawling heebie jeebies.
Because, when seen through the spectacles of early indoctrination, we're getting really fucking close to The Last Days.
Nikki would say, people have been saying that since the world began - that there's always been someone claiming that the world's about to end in the next fifteen minutes. And she'd be absolutely right. There's never been any shortage of sheet-wearing religious wackos claiming that JAYSUS is already on the elevator down, and he's going to kick some Righteous ass when he hits the lobby.
And even when I leave out the religious angle, and point out that the world, with or without a God, is being dropped head first into an enormous toilet, and that because the majority of humans evince absolutely no desire to accept this simple fact and strive to make the necessary, the logical, the humane gestures to try to change this direction -
She says, things always change, and people always adapt. One way or another.
I know she's right.
In a way.
To a degree.
And I still wonder.
If there is a God, and I face the possibility, as a result of my life choices, and the choices I didn't make, of an eternity of either complete nothingness or everlasting torture -
How could I still, even facing that, choose to say, hey, God, it's cool - I don't really get it, but you must have some Master Plan that I'm just too clueless to fully understand right now.
Simple answer.
No. Fucking. Way.
And even though the idea of hell and spending the rest of time being slow-roasted over an open pit doesn't exactly fill my heart with joy, hallelujah -
I still can't do it. I can't sign a contract with someone or something that seems to have the worst sent of Situational Ethics I've ever encountered.
The other question I can't get out of my head is this, though -
What if I'm wrong?
What if there is a God. What if he's just been given really bad press, and the entire Bible is just the end result of centuries of people playing campfire story 'telephone' games.
You know, the one you played at camp, where the story starts at one end of the circle, get's whispered into one ear after the other, until the end result at is so far removed from the beginning that everyone gets a good guffaw and goes on to roast a few marshmellows before plotting which poor bastard gets their hand dunked in warm water while they're sleeping to get them to wet their sleeping bag.
What if God is just - misunderstood?
And what if I face an eternity of misery because I didn't listen to the 'still small voice' that's been tap, tap, tapping at the door to my heart?
Hey, if God's so all-fucking-powerful -
Why didn't he hire a better Image Consultant?
Sorry, God. If I have to choose between you or eternity with a fog machine and a poorly rendered river - even between you and a thousand barb-tailed, pitchfork-wielding pixies -
You're on your own, Big Guy. If you can call the big hoe-down yuo're going to have with entire membership of the 700 Hundred Club 'alone'.
Anyway, you can count me out.
I guess I need to just accept my non-acceptance, and figure out what my real questions are.
The problem is this - if I find that I believe in God, how can I possibly ever find it in my heart to do anything other than loathe him?
They seem like particularly biased questions coming, not only from Left Field, but somewhere out past the bleachers entirely - but if you were raised in what can only be described, despite the obvious oxymoron, as a moderately extreme religious community (Seventh Day Adventist) - hey, they're pertinent questions.
Of course, to my way of thinking - that is to say, perverse at best - they are important questions to anyone, regardless of their upbringing.
Because anyone who spends even a few minutes of their time engaged in looking at the world as something other than a place to find the most convenient and shiny distraction in the least amount of time and for the lowest available cost - jesus people, look around you - if we aren't on the brink of the Apocolypse, whether a secular or a religious one, I'm fucking Mary Poppins.
I'm not going to go into a point-by-point analysis of all the 'signs' I see around me every day. There are better minds than mine who do a much better job of it all around me. But if this kind of thing is obvious even to someone like me, who practically lives under a fucking rock for all intensive purposes, how can it be less than obvious to any other sane human being?
As if that were a logical question. Ignorance is much easier. So much more comfortable, and easier to accept as 'safe'. Honestly, though I'm far from being a 'big brain' myself, there's hardly a day that goes by that I don't wish I were a great deal more stupid than I generally consider myself to be.
I long for ignorance sometimes. There are times when I would gladly trade anything anyone could possibly ask of me, if I could just stop thinking.
Which is a part of the whole theological issue I have with myself. Whether or not to believe in God.
It was only a work of fiction, and not even one of the better ones at that, but it had a fairly substantial emotional impact on me - the film "The Rapture". In it, the central characters lead lives of apparent debauchery and decadence until they are introduced to the word of God, at which point they do the standard lifestyle 180 and become born-agains - just before the End Times start into the final countdown.
The part that resonated the most to me - and I do recognize that I am very susceptible to emotional manipulation, particularly when presented in an even clumsily rendered artistic form - was when the main woman character is standing on one side of a rather silly depiction of the River Styxx, with her dead daughter standing on the other side, pleading with her to "say you love Jesus!" so that they can be joined again on The Other Side.
And the woman has to reflect on the concept of really and finally embracing a belief system that she used to justify murdering her own daughter in order to demonstrate her faith in God.
The daughter, seeing her mother's indecision, reminds her that, if she doesn't make this statement, if she 'turns her back on God,' she'll spend the rest of eternity in nothingness. The film doesn't, if I remember correctly, go so far as to say Hell and eternal torment - but enough already.
The woman makes her choice. And says that she would rather not exist than to claim to love a God that could ask such things of the beings he claims to 'love'.
Yes, this was just a poorly cobbled together piece of Hollywood hoodoo. But anyone who's had any kind of bibical training knows, it's not at all out of step with Standard Operating Procedure for God as portrayed in the Bible.
The God of the Old Testament asked Abraham to take his son up a mountain and offer him as a living sacrifice to show his loyalty. Abraham didn't even tell the poor kid he was taking him on a hike to carve his heart out for Jehovah - he just schlepped him up the side of the mountain, and it was only at the last fucking minute that God said, hey - psych! - here, have a magical sheep, never mind all that, I proved my point - you were willing to murder your own son to earn your celestial merit badge, I'm not going to make you, ha-ha, actually go through with it or anything.
I could go on and on with examples - but you get the picture.
How could anyone in their right mind BUY INTO this kind of insanity?
How could I have done it for as long as I did?
How could I possibly even entertain the idea even now?
For the same reasons it ever seemed like a plausible idea in the first place. Other than the fact that, at the time, I was a kid and didn't have a lot of say in the matter.
For a while, if you're scared enough, just about anything can seem like a good idea.
One of the things that the Seventh Day Adventist church did, and probably still does, is place a great deal of emphasis on 'The Last Days'. They like to go over and over the details about the Signs of the Apocolypse, and how 'the Faithful' will be persecuted in the time just preceeding the return of King, blah blah blah. How we would be, first reviled, then systemtically targeted and finally driven from our homes to live in the mountains - those of us that survived torture and murder, of course.
All in the Service of the Lord. Can I hear a quiet and reverential Amen.
You get enough of this stuff crammed into your head at an early enough age, and looking around at the world today is enough to give you the crawling heebie jeebies.
Because, when seen through the spectacles of early indoctrination, we're getting really fucking close to The Last Days.
Nikki would say, people have been saying that since the world began - that there's always been someone claiming that the world's about to end in the next fifteen minutes. And she'd be absolutely right. There's never been any shortage of sheet-wearing religious wackos claiming that JAYSUS is already on the elevator down, and he's going to kick some Righteous ass when he hits the lobby.
And even when I leave out the religious angle, and point out that the world, with or without a God, is being dropped head first into an enormous toilet, and that because the majority of humans evince absolutely no desire to accept this simple fact and strive to make the necessary, the logical, the humane gestures to try to change this direction -
She says, things always change, and people always adapt. One way or another.
I know she's right.
In a way.
To a degree.
And I still wonder.
If there is a God, and I face the possibility, as a result of my life choices, and the choices I didn't make, of an eternity of either complete nothingness or everlasting torture -
How could I still, even facing that, choose to say, hey, God, it's cool - I don't really get it, but you must have some Master Plan that I'm just too clueless to fully understand right now.
Simple answer.
No. Fucking. Way.
And even though the idea of hell and spending the rest of time being slow-roasted over an open pit doesn't exactly fill my heart with joy, hallelujah -
I still can't do it. I can't sign a contract with someone or something that seems to have the worst sent of Situational Ethics I've ever encountered.
The other question I can't get out of my head is this, though -
What if I'm wrong?
What if there is a God. What if he's just been given really bad press, and the entire Bible is just the end result of centuries of people playing campfire story 'telephone' games.
You know, the one you played at camp, where the story starts at one end of the circle, get's whispered into one ear after the other, until the end result at is so far removed from the beginning that everyone gets a good guffaw and goes on to roast a few marshmellows before plotting which poor bastard gets their hand dunked in warm water while they're sleeping to get them to wet their sleeping bag.
What if God is just - misunderstood?
And what if I face an eternity of misery because I didn't listen to the 'still small voice' that's been tap, tap, tapping at the door to my heart?
Hey, if God's so all-fucking-powerful -
Why didn't he hire a better Image Consultant?
Sorry, God. If I have to choose between you or eternity with a fog machine and a poorly rendered river - even between you and a thousand barb-tailed, pitchfork-wielding pixies -
You're on your own, Big Guy. If you can call the big hoe-down yuo're going to have with entire membership of the 700 Hundred Club 'alone'.
Anyway, you can count me out.
I guess I need to just accept my non-acceptance, and figure out what my real questions are.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Well, *this* is familiar territory...
Date: 2004-03-17 04:15 pm (UTC)Then, when I was about 13 and started listening to music, my brother did me possibly one of the biggest favours of my life - he started me listening to music like Bad Religion and Pennywise. Musical merits notwithstanding, the effect was that I stopped ignoring the questions I occasionally wondered about, because I realised I was far from the only person thinking that way.
I teetered on the edge of agnosticism for a good while, before eventually plumping for atheism in the end (although my family seem to find it convenient to ignore this - not through fundamentalism, more through lazy acceptance of pointless social routines). To my mind, there are three possibilities:
a)God is as per the book. Which, if you've read it in detail, means he is a bully in sore need of the universe's biggest ass-kicking. I certainly don't think that deserves respect, adoration or anything else, and will opt for eternal torture rather than subservience.
b)God exists, but is not as per the book. In which case, all he has to do is manifest himself to us in a direct and open manner, and I'll happily change my beliefs. Until then, second-hand tales of what someone saw two millenia ago whilst wandering a desert and high through a combination of dehydration and magic mushrooms will not convince me.
c)God does not exist. In which case, we get on with it.
Where this question gets interesting for me is when you look at the Old Testament and you see things that talk about "the only true law is God's law" and so forth. And then you look at history, and you see that as long as we have had christianity it appears to have been used by those in power. Specifically, you see the uproar surrounding the invention of the printing press. Suddenly, all the words of God and his prophets can be kept in hard copy, and people see two different versions.
Now fast forward to late nineteenth and early twentieth century Russia. The Russian Orthodox Church, headed by the Tsar, habitually manipulates its choice of sermon material in order to manipulate the national mood. In times of peace or internal problems, teachings from the New Testament are preached, espousing piety, compassion, and love of our fellow man. Come the time of war, and Old Testament teachings become the staple of the day. Eyes for eyes, and teeth for teeth.
This is not an isolated case.
Viewed like that, one can start to build a case for the entire idea being one big mechanism through which to control the populace. Now, I'm no anarchist - I'm firmly in favour of large-scale government, because of the benefits that can be offered under such government. But I contest the notion that such systems should be founded on lies, however useful they may be.
Now that I've wittered on at length - hello, and all that jazz. Consider thyself added to my friends list. :)
Re: Well, *this* is familiar territory...
Date: 2004-03-18 01:25 pm (UTC)Witter at will - no complaints here.
(pause)
Sorry. Didn't mean to stare. I just love the shape of your (blushes) brain.
;p