I’m not going to say that my experiences of God and religion in my youth weren’t genuine. Quit the opposite actually. I was there. They were real to me. It’s just that I don’t know what to do about those experiences anymore.
On last year's Easter I didn’t bother attending church, so Easter consisted of eating ham and hiding eggs for my kids to hunt, but this year marked my first religious Easter celebration as someone with a conscious struggle with the belief of the divinity of Christ. I’ve told only three other people this about myself, and now here I am, posting it on my blog for all to see. I may get private email messages from people attempting to evangelize to me (I’ve gotten plenty already with my previous writings). I may also get comments from people who wish to give me proverbial pats on the back, congratulating me for emerging from my childish mythical thinking (I’ve gotten plenty of these responses too). And yet I wonder. I wonder if more people will resonate with what I have to say next than not.
About 10 years ago, I turned against the writings of the Old Testament, thinking that if I was to be a Christian, I wanted nothing to do with the kind of God who wiped entire nations of people off the face of the planet, the kind of God who would require his people to drink gold and die in agony. I didn’t want anything to do with the God who would pass over the homes of families who had lambs blood painted over the doorways of their homes, and for the families who didn’t, kill their firstborn sons. The God painted in the Old Testament, to me, sounded like a tyrannical monster, even though I had been taught for my entire life that “God so loved the world”.
About 5 years ago (I know, I’m a slow processer), I turned against many of the writings of the New Testament as well. I could no longer deal with the apocalyptic writings of John or with the teachings of Paul (most of the New Testament after the Gospels). I thought Paul was incredibly full of himself, especially in the celibacy department, chauvinistic, and completely closed-minded. So I decided to stick to the “red letters” of the Gospels, you know, the words that Jesus himself said, because the “red letters” are really what should comprise Christianity, right?
I guess so.
But then, Jesus himself said some pretty messed up things too: “Divorce is never merited. God only allowed you it because your hearts were hard,” “If your eye causes you to sin, poke it out and get rid of it,” and “No one gets to the Father except through me,” an idea that inherently (and quite literally in other scriptures) asserts that if you don’t accept Jesus, you’ll burn in hell in conscious torment forever. He was a pretty swell guy, that God. Oh, and my personal favorite, the one that has wreaked havoc on multiple members of my family, the teaching of Jesus about how believers should discipline a fellow believer who’s living in sin. I like all the other stuff about Jesus though, how he attacked the money changers, how he fed the poor, and healed the sick. Jesus was, for the most part, a humanitarian rock star, especially for his time in history.
But he still said some pretty messed up things.
So what do you do about your beliefs as a Christian when you start questioning the entire structure of what you believe?
“It actually pisses me off when someone assumes I’m a Christian,” I admitted to a friend a couple of months ago.
“Me too,” she too admitted in seeming complete understanding.
“So it’s pretty hypocritical what I do, you know, getting up there in front of a church congregation, singing about how much I love Jesus, so what if it is an ecumenical Christian church? I really like the idea of Jesus, but I don’t know if I view him as my savior like everyone else seems to.”
“It’s not hypocritical,” she said with a bit of a scoff.
“Why not?”
“Think about it, I don’t sing about things I believe hardly ever. When I’m in the car, I sing about how I want to cheat on my girlfriend or rub up against some hot guy in a bar. I sing because it’s fun, not because of the lyrics.”
Up until this point, I had been seriously considering quitting church music for good. Forget it, I might be good at it, I might truly enjoy it, but what’s the point if I can’t resolve the theology of each song within my being? Jesus born of a virgin? Jesus rising from the dead? Come on. I’m just a fraud.
I've heard almost every Christian say that the God of the Old Testament isn't necessarily the God of the New Testament; the coming of Jesus changed all that, so Jesus essentially came to save us from God's wrath. What if I don't want to be reconciled to a God who would kill my firstborn son if I don't perform some sort of blood ritual? What if I don't believe in hell in the traditional sense? Then what did Jesus die for? What if Jesus was simply a man who showed up with his revolutionary ideas and world view, and it was so fundamentally different than the God they knew and worshiped, that they killed him?
I've heard almost every Christian say that the God of the Old Testament isn't necessarily the God of the New Testament; the coming of Jesus changed all that, so Jesus essentially came to save us from God's wrath. What if I don't want to be reconciled to a God who would kill my firstborn son if I don't perform some sort of blood ritual? What if I don't believe in hell in the traditional sense? Then what did Jesus die for? What if Jesus was simply a man who showed up with his revolutionary ideas and world view, and it was so fundamentally different than the God they knew and worshiped, that they killed him?
On Easter this year, amidst all my doubts, I believe I connected with the beauty of an ancient story and a tradition, with the singing of a hymn, specifically. It’s about sacrifice, something we don’t see a lot of in our self-obsessed culture. It’s about love, something that has become conditional and distorted. And it’s about the resurrection of our hope -- some would say that’s Jesus.
4 comments:
When I first started to question the existence of the God of the Bible, it was a manic roller coaster of love and fear. I’d think something like, “Wow what a jerk, he turned her to salt just for looking back?” And then I’d repent in a fear driven frenzy. I’d plead with God to forgive me for my thoughts. It usually ended up with me consoling myself with thoughts like, “He’s only hard on us because he loves us.” and “If I go to hell, then I guess that’s what I deserve.” To put it in other words, my thought processes were not so very different from those of an abuse victim. In retrospect, I view it as nothing less than that: abuse by proxy. People get you to behave the way they want by having a third party terrorize you.
I had an epiphany in my early 20s when someone asked me a question. Is this the kind of God in whose favor I want to be? When I really thought about it, the answer was no. I didn’t even need to compare new testament God to old testament God. I don’t want to be in the favor of a God who gives me special privileges just for being born during the common era. That is an arbitrary and villainous God who doesn’t sound too different from how we perceive the devil.
I hope to someday be able to put the turmoil behind me enough to be able to tolerate a sermon or two for the sake of my family. As it sits right now, even going to a religious wedding ceremony or funeral feels like a punishment.
Hello, Ruined.
In reading your comment, I think you might like my post, Did God Fail? [pt 2] http://michaeliaelizabeth.blogspot.com/2011/07/did-god-fail-part-2.html
You're absolutely right. The God that we've been taught as children exists is abusive. More than that, really. A sociopath. It really causes one to wonder whether or not people of the human race SHOULD want anything to do with God at all, because all those images of God that we're handed to as children stick with us for a lifetime. By believing in the images of God you spoke of, it should give us an immense amount of pause. A social worker would turn any human father who acted like the Father God into the authorities, but we Christians, with all of our infinite wisdom, coin this relationship as "faith." Be well, my friend.
Hi,
I was just browsing the BHWG website because I'm fairly new to the area and came upon your blog. I enjoyed your post because you've voiced many of the same things I've felt. I'm 50 and for the past 10 years as I've studied the Bible and history of Christianity, have come more and more to this sort of thought, too. The more you study the actual history of the Israelites and the Egyptians and the Greeks, the more you see where all the threads of different types of perceptions of God comes from in both the old and new testaments. You'll also see what red-letter words Jesus spoke came directly out of the mouths of Greek philosophers and what cultural things influenced Paul (who, I agree, is an unlikeable person.)
I think you should have heart, because I do think you're close to finding your answer. Maybe Jesus was a human with radical ideas and that's why he was sacrificed. But I think there was something more-than-human in him which accepted the sacrifice because he could see it coming and still proceeded with his message because of his love for people. I have taught my children that the root of Christianity is the radical concept of "love your neighbor" including your enemies and that all the rest is human supposition.
I believe the universe is being created by a Power impossible for humans to fully fathom, but I don't believe that Power is so petty that it takes attendance on Sunday mornings. That's the sort of thing flawed humans do. If going to church causes you too much frustration because of blatant hypocrisies and/or theology misunderstandings, then do your neighbor a favor by letting them sort it out on their own while you go and do something to love your enemy. I've turned my life into actively loving people who aren't usually loved six days a week so that I can rest with my family on the Sabbath.
Someday you will come to peace with the whole enough to calmly sit through a sermon, but you may need to accept that you're always going to desire to see through the veil.
Karen Willmus
Wow. Thank you, Karen. I often write these blogs, not because I am angry, but because I know there are a lot of people who have the same thoughts as me, yet do not feel like their thoughts have a voice within the community of faith.
I like what you said about there being something within Jesus that was more-than-human and that's what made him willing to sacrifice everything.
I've heard it said once that maybe we should look at the Bible like it's a collection of thoughts and concepts of God. Taking into account the cultures throughout history, people view God differently than they do today. For instance, the culture that the Old Testament was born out of was harsh. People of that time were often nomadic and life itself was fragile. When a baby died just moments after its birth, the culture of that time viewed it as God's wrath being carried out for the wickedness of its predecessors.
By the time the New Testament came around, society was progressing, and with it, ideas of God were evolving into something a bit different. Paul, for that time in history, would have been a radical, maybe even an active women's lib voice. But now, a couple of thousand years later, we (at least I do) see him as a misogynistic minister of the gospel.
I've heard it said that, maybe, we've got it all wrong, that we shouldn't look at the Bible as the final word in who God is, but rather a progression of views on God throughout history. Maybe it was because of culture. Who knows? The point is, that society is coming to view God differently than then. We'd better have a more radical view on God than Paul did, and dare I say, even Jesus did. I think Jesus is someone who we should aspire to, not just because of the things he said, but because he was always pushing the proverbial envelope. Because God is bigger than the Bible, and we'll never arrive at who God might be. I hope my grandkids have a better concept of God than I do. I hope my grandkids' grandkids have a better concept of God than they do. I think it's the search that is important, and perhaps the most fulfilling thing about faith.
This is how I've resolved it for myself. I will forever be attracted to things like church and other people who claim to have the most accurate view of God. I think people's thoughts are fascinating. I only wish that people who claim accuracy would allow the doubters like myself to have a voice within the community of faith. And I think that it's happening. Culture is different now than even 50 years ago, but in reality, I don't think there're any less believers out there; it's that they hold the concept of God differently than those preceding them, and that's exactly what (I think) God might have in mind.
Thank you for your comment. I always wonder where the traffic for my blog comes from. Hope to see you at a BHWG meeting one of these days!
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