Wherefore Art Thou O' Lord?

My friend of nearly 30 years is a conservative, middle-aged woman with a deep and abiding faith in God and church. We’ve been there for each other through the raising of our children, dramas with our husbands, and the deaths of our parents; we’ve been cheerleaders for one another, delivered kick in the butt conversations when needed, and cared for each other’s homes, children and belongings during times of joy and sadness. It is a blessing to have had a friend this long and considering that we are strongly divided on some core fundamental values, it is also something of a miracle. We have remained fiercely loyal and devoted to one another by respecting our differences and honoring an unspoken agreement not to talk about them.

My friend is a re-born Christian, I was raised a Jew, went through several religious carnations in my 20s and today consider myself a Pantheist. She believes it is both her Christian duty and her obligation as my friend to bring me into the light of Christ. And it saddens her that we will not be able to spend eternity in heaven together because of my refusal to accept Jesus as my personal savior.

Despite those things she considers me to be a loving friend and a loving person, and frequently calls my community service and activism a demonstration of my “being a better Christian than she is.” She and I share a belief in God but that’s where any similarities end. For some reason this remains enough for her; she accepts me for who I am and has offered only a few, watered down references to the paradise that could be mine before thinking better of it and letting it go.

I trust this woman implicitly. She treats me with the same love, respect, and friendship that I give her. It is an equal relationship.

Or is it?

Although we rarely talk about it I know that she makes judgments about my religious choices, relates her frustrations about me in her conversations with God, and prays for me late at night. Praying that I should be made whole. I know this because she has told me so.

She prays for me, prays for my soul, prays that I see the light, prays that I will let Jesus into my heart. We long ago decided to make charitable allowances for each other, choosing to believe that she prays for me because of her love for me, not her duty to the church, and that she wants me to know the same joy that she has found in Christ.

But deep down I know there’s more to it. I question the real motive behind the prayer for if I am truly her equal, why pray for me to be different? Why ask that I be made more like her? Isn’t such a prayer really just a protest against who I am and a belief that the path I’ve chosen is a misguided one, requiring God’s intervention if it is to be fixed? Lingering there in the unexpressed midst is the unspoken accusation of how wrong I am and how right she is. They sit side by side: rightness and righteousness. And in the fading embers is her own satisfaction over being so right with God.

In my wrongness with God she and other Christians have taken an official position of tolerance. But it is not authentic. Webster’s defines the word tolerance as, “a fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward those whose opinions, practices, race, religion, nationality, etc., differ from one's own; freedom from bigotry”. That suggests to me that true tolerance of my spirituality precludes the need to change it. Christian tolerance is troubling to me because of its inherent presumptive superiority, that something about me is not okay the way that it is and needs the enlightened intervention only they can provide. Those good and decent souls who tell themselves they're tolerating me are really just patronizing me; they put up with me, much in the same way that eyebrow lifting and winking might take place in situations where everyone’s in on the joke except for you, and they comfort themselves with the thought that there are still more opportunities for them to talk me into surrendering to Jesus before I die.

Jesus is not my God. In fact, I don’t believe that Jesus is God at all. I believe Jesus was a significant figure in history, that he was a teacher, a healer, and a prophet of sorts, but God, no. The God of my understanding would never - let me repeat that – would never select one mortal to be his child when we are ALL his children equally.

The reason Christianity doesn’t work for me is because of the double standards I see in its teachings and the behavior of the role models who practice it. Personally, I believe there is one God - which upon examination would suggest that my God is the same as your God and your God is the same as mine. But my spiritual architecture will not be shaken just because you tell me that you don’t believe my version is the correct one. In fact, I will acknowledge that I don’t really know what is true and what isn’t, and that you might very well be right. I’m comfortable not knowing and I’m secure in my faith in spite of it.

The Bible. “God’s Word” we are told. The Bible is the only TRUTH. Listen up. There is ample credible scientific evidence proving that human beings wrote the Bible, not God. And since one version wasn’t quite right for everyone, the Bible has undergone many transformations. There are many versions of it and three times as many interpretations of it. Travel through the belly of any country visiting fundamentalist church to fringe church and ask for guidance on a specific psalm or passage. My guess is that there are going to be many explanations of that same passage. So how can the Bible be “God’s Word” when the word changes from church to church, pastor to pastor?

Before you try to tell me that all those other factions are really just cults, consider this: there are 34,000 known and recognized branches of Christianity worldwide. More than 2,000 of them exist in the United States. Every one of them says that they are the chosen one. So here's my question to you - are they ALL cult members - or just liars?

Many Bible lovers espouse love and peace yet become enraged at the mere suggestion that something besides their understanding of God might really exist. The fact that nearly every formal religion considers THEIR holy book (s) to be the TRUTH is easily dismissed by calling all of them (except theirs) cults. Who is right? Is everybody wrong?

Genesis 1:27 tells us that God made man in His own image. Hogwash. Author Anne Lamott once said, “You know you have created God in your own image when He hates all the same people you do." I believe that Man makes God in the image of his own agenda. How else to explain the never-ending cycle of new found faiths, factions, branches, and cults? How else to justify the acts of hate, violence, and cruelty committed against others in the name of religion? How else to believe one is entitled to behave exactly the opposite of Jesus?

For the sake of God, humans have fed Christians to the lions, burned witches at the stake, sent families into extermination camps, bombed buildings, raised cities, enslaved women, sacrificed children, crashed airplanes, committed mass murder, mass suicide, mass genocide, blamed the demon voices inside their heads for making them pull the trigger, and attempted to create supreme races of only the pure and the devout – all because of an indestructible belief that such violence was divinely endorsed, even ordained.

Anyone on the outside of such atrocities would shake their head in wonderment at what would drive people to do such terrible things. But the shocking truth is that much of it comes from scripture. Both the Bible and the Quran are filled with a deadly combination of monotheistic tenets and divine sanctioning of violence, and the desire for an afterlife attained through world actions is a potent motivator, as witnessed by the hundreds of religious warriors proudly becoming violent martyrs in the fight against non-believers.

In my limited experience on this planet, I have come to believe that most devout Christians have need for the teachings of Christ the most. I have found few [devout] Christians who practice what Christ did - love, acceptance, tolerance. They are unwilling to live and let live, instead demonizing anyone who doesn’t believe as they do. They deliver messages of peace with sledgehammers and feel better about themselves for having done so, for having made the choices they’ve made, and for the rush of pride they get from being martyrs for God.

When I ask Christians about the inequities and double standards I see in their faith, I usually get some kind of God-doesn’t-hate-sinners-He-just-hates-the-sin reply in response. “God doesn’t hate people,” they say. If God is all loving, why are we doomed to be sinners from the moment of birth? I didn’t eat the damn apple. If God was truly fair and all loving, shouldn’t I be judged on what I do in this lifetime – not on what supposed relatives of mine did before Jesus was even born? Why would a loving and compassionate God commit each and every one of us to a lifetime of sin that can only be mitigated by begging for His forgiveness? Beg forgiveness from the one who made you a sinner? And if you don’t beg His forgiveness you don’t get that eternal paradise He has promised? That’s some kind of a set up! Sort of like making the victim beg the perpetrator for more abuse.

I don’t think it’s okay to spend a lifetime committing bad deeds but be saved at any point by accepting Jesus as your personal savior. I think what I do in this life is way more important than what I pray for on my deathbed. I don’t think it’s okay that the Buddhist and the Flower Child and the Atheist who dedicate his/her lives to service and compassion for others is doomed to fry in hell. I don’t think God hates fags. I don’t believe God considers mothers who work to be uncommitted to their children. If we are all truly created in God’s perfect image, there would be no violence, no murder, no homosexuality, no pedophiles, no adultery, in short, no violation of any of the 10 commandments. If we were truly, truly created in God’s image, then free will wouldn’t exist, except to sabotage efforts to get closer to God.

Things I object to:

1. We are commanded not to covet they neighbor’s wife. Yet God chose to make Mary pregnant with His child after she was already formally betrothed to another man. I’ve had Christians come back at me and say God didn’t break his commandment because Mary and Joseph weren’t married at the time of the immaculate conception. But in biblical times, betrothal was a formal contract, blessed or officiated by a religious authority. Betrothal was binding as marriage and a divorce was necessary to terminate a betrothal. Betrothed couples were regarded legally as husband and wife - even before their wedding and physical union. Therefore, she was his wife in the sense that they were fully and totally committed to each other - and had given a pledge to one another. That they had not consecrated their union with sex is a moot point.
   
2. I object to persecution that takes place in the name of God, and I object to the idea that God loves any one of us more or less because of which side of the pew we sit on come Sunday mornings.
3. I object to the concept that good and decent non-Christians are doomed to hell and Christian evildoers get to go to heaven. Same is true for homosexuals.
4. I find it suspect that so many people “find” God during times of strife. Why doesn’t anyone ever find Him when life is going well? Why must one be in the dark to see the light but unable to see into the darkness when standing in the light?
5. I object to Christians’ attempts to convert the rest of us. It’s like some freak 12-step group in which those in recovery promise to bring their newfound principles to other addicts.
   
6. I object to a punishing God who would ask us to sacrifice our children, our marriages, our homes, and our livelihoods to prove our loyalty to Him. My God already knows who is and who isn’t.
   
7. I object to the notion that “everything” is in Divine hands. If that were true, none of us would ever need to do anything because life would go according to the way God planned it for us anyway.
8. I object to anyone who preaches one thing and practices another. No one can weep over their victim and forgo the guilt of having been responsible for their victimization at the same time.
   
9. I reject outright any story that attempts to convince me that the God who is all-loving, all knowing and kind is the same God who then created and sent His one and only son to a brutal death just to teach the other human brats a lesson.
10. I reject any concept of an eternal paradise. I think it is a form of bribery, a tool to keep people afraid and behaving the way others think they ought to.
11. I reject any concept of heaven or hell. I believe that we get one shot at life and when it’s over, it’s over. That is the incentive for living a life of purpose.
12. I reject the notion that to win God’s favor we must prostrate ourselves and beg His forgiveness. I believe that the best way we can honor God is to treat others as we would wish to be treated, and to make full use of the talents we have been given. What makes me uniquely me, and what makes you uniquely you is the gifts each of us has been given.
    

I believe that the purpose of life is to explore and create relationships with others. Every one of us wants exactly the same thing: to love and be loved in return. If God really is everywhere and everything, then God is a part of me – and me a part of God. God is my partner in this journey called life, not my taskmaster, not my dictator, and not my oppressor.

God gave me a mind that is both intuitive and analytical. I accept things that intuitively feel right and question the things that don't make sense to me. And I take full responsibility for my beliefs: I don’t blame them or credit them on a book that I read. I have no idea of knowing whether or not my beliefs are the “right ones.” I only know that they feel right to me - just as your beliefs feel right to you. It is entirely possible that my understanding of God is not real and it’s also possible that all of us are right. But if none of us are right, or if every one of us is right, just who is God and where is She?