I'd like you to think about religion for a sec
Maybe religion deserves more of the blame than we're ready to admit
I’ve been trying to write this week’s essay for a long time. That’s only partly true. It has been fully formed in my head for months, but I’ve been trying to find a way to publish it without hurting anyone’s feelings. Actually, as I’ve said elsewhere, I really just don’t want to hurt my mom’s feelings. But I also don’t want to hurt your mom’s feelings. Or yours.
Still, as we’ve dropped the pretense of truth for the easier and more convenient “belief” I wanted to set down my starting point. And it is this: We can no longer say that it’s OK to believe whatever you want as long as it isn’t hurting anyone. The plain fact is, the premise of believing whatever you want hurts everyone. The falsehood that the Abrahamic religions all believe in the same god is the most dangerous lie in human history. Hell, Christians don’t all believe in the same god.
I’m not saying that people shouldn’t be religious, but in my essay, I argue that being religious is now, as ever, the primary excuse for hatred as well as for cultural and psychological destruction. Our domestic terrorists are religious. Our discriminatory political policies are religious. Our pedophiles are religious.
For decades I’ve been told that they gather under the banner of Christianity but that they’re not Christians. My only response is, that’s not what they say.
Back before the apocalypse, I enjoyed going to the gym and sitting in the sauna. Occasionally, a retired military guy would come in and chat. He was straight from central casting, 5’5” with an exceptionally chiseled body for a guy who could easily have been approaching 70 years old, sporting the same haircut he got when he was inducted, educating me in his clipped Texas accent.
He was a Baptist and he liked to talk about good people he knew who were going to hell. He made idle conversation about this friend or that who fed and clothed the poor but was damned to eternal torture because they hadn’t been saved. They were churchgoing people and he genuinely felt sad for them. But the rules are the rules: If you aren’t saved you have to burn.
It reminded me of the parable of the Foolish Rich Man, which I wrote about this week. Among the impenetrable “lessons” in the story is that if you get sent to hell, you can’t cross over into heaven. Jesus put those words in Abraham’s mouth in the parable, so you know it’s a point he wanted to drive home.
It outraged me because my grandmother had been excommunicated, sentenced to hell for marrying a Protestant person. Fortunately for her, they changed the rule before she died, but you have to wonder about all those victims of “mixed marriage” who got sent to hell before the revision.
Bible stories have a breathtaking lack of empathy which some preachers combat by interpretation and others seize upon to declare no quarter for the sinner. Both of them are reverse engineering their conclusions based on whatever premise suits their congregation and adjust it as needed to please their audience.
None of this should matter to me. It shouldn’t change one minute of my life.
What’s discouraging is that it must.
Religious people serve God. Whether that’s feeding the poor or beating gay teenagers to death depends solely on which Christian church they attend. The people in each church say the others aren’t “really” Christians.
This is just a long way of saying that I understand that painting Christians with a broad brush may seem hurtful, and I apologize in advance. I really do. I’d just like to offer an argument and an opportunity for people of faith and good will to recognize that saying bad actors aren’t “real Christians” is meaningless, and maybe we should think about another way to frame the conversation.
Happier Themes (Kinda)
We have more vaccines than we have people here willing to take them. The upside is most of my family is vaccinated, insofar as it matters. Most of my neighbors have decided they would rather incubate the next strain of this plague. Everyone’s entitled to their own beliefs no matter how many lives it ruins.
On this week’s Day Drinking on Delmarva we talk about the influx of people coming to Salisbury for vaccination. We also touch a little on Dragged Into the Light which will be available in review copy in the next two weeks. If you’re a reviewer type, please reach out to me and I’ll get one in your hands. If you’re a Christian reviewer, let me assure you the book is a little less screed-y than you may have been led to believe by what proceeded.