An Atheist looks at the Bible

It is Easter weekend.

What better time to examine the source of the stories that define Christianity, the Bible? Read on:

Consider the possibility that you were born somewhere without any religion, but were given the opportunity to read about them as a cultural education. You were also taught language, science, math, philosophy, and critical thinking skills.

Then one day, you were introduced to a Christian who, following the evangelizing call, said to you that he had a story about God and humanity that was wonderful and would change your life. The story was in his Bible, and he proceeded to lead you through it:

The first thing you heard was that you were condemned by God because of some actions taken by a pair of naive progenitors. Nothing you did caused it; you could not have prevented it. But God condemns you and everyone you know.

Then God decides to choose a particular group of people to rule over called the Jews; the story continues with the history of their bloody, unmerciful battles and their leaders of highly questionable ethics. The Jewish people are carted off to various slaveries from their homeland, which, by the way, they have violently stripped away from earlier residents.

Various messages from this God are transmitted through prophets, whose words are mystical, incomprehensible and frequently full of condemnation (unless the people are suffering, and then they promise some later relief to be brought about by God at some distant time). There are also songs that describe how great this Jewish God is, there are suggestions of how to live, there is a sexually charged poem, and eventually the first part of the book ends, not with a bang but a whimper.

Then, in the second part, suddenly there’s a story that says that God has somehow changed his mind. He’s going to give a loophole in his condemnation. He’s going to send himself/his son to teach things to this nation he has chosen. But from the beginning, The Bible notes that this God-man will be killed and raised from the dead, and he promised to raise others, too. (Not a bad outcome. Death is pretty frightening.)

However, the stories of this man, Jesus, do not make him sound overly attractive. He’s a little pissy sometimes (killing a fig tree because it happened to be barren, chastising his disciples when they don’t understand his strange way of speaking, manipulatively refusing to answer questions directly). He continues passing out judgment and condemning people to hell, and although he teaches some elements of love, you know people in your own life who act more loving than he does. He supposedly performs miracles, but you know from your studies that miracles were ascribed to almost any hero in the ancient world.

Anyway, as you were told, the story of his death and resurrection are told 4 times. There are some contradictions before the death, but the story holds together pretty well. But after the reputed resurrection, the story flies apart. Suddenly there are loads of contradictory accounts. The man appears in locked rooms, which doesn’t sound like life on this planet. The man is not recognized by close friends who walk with him on a road. He’s no longer flesh and blood, but you can touch his wounds. Suddenly things take on a fairy tale quality. And then, rather than hang around, this once-dead-now-raised person skips town, leaving a few people who believe he’s alive.

The rest of the book is a bit of history, but mostly letters between early believers, trying to keep the flock in line, and always promising an end to death. One prominent member of the group named Paul decides that God no longer just means to claim the Jews for his special friends, but opens the deal up to the entire human race. The last book then once again goes back to describe horrors perpetrated by God and others. It sounds like things are as they were, with God back to his condemning ways. (Except for those who believe in the resurrection of his son.)

So now you know the story. The deal, in summary, is this. You’re still condemned. You can get away from being condemned if you believe in this miracle of resurrection. If you don’t, no dice.

Your mouth is agape. The story sounds grizzly and intensely pessimistic, except for that never ending life part. But you’ve studied history, religions, language, science, math, etc. You know that we are flesh and blood, just like the animals that we kill and eat. You love justice and cannot see the sense in condemning someone because some distant forefather happened to nibble on fruit or learned to think for themselves. You do not believe that you, your family, and your world are condemned. (You know we all suffer on occasion, but pain and suffering effect everyone, regardless of whether or not they believe in any one religion.)

Studies have taught you that there are lots of religions, each offering their special access to the benefits of belief if you turn off your rational mind and replace it with faith. Most of these religions have faded, but enough remain. And in truth, there is nothing special in the story you have heard about God, the Jews, Jesus, Paul, and the rest. They are just stories, a way that a primitive people tried to make sense of the ambiguous and the incomprehensible.

When you shared these thoughts with your evangelizing visitor he accused you of being arrogant and closed minded. But having looked at the world through a wider lens, you cannot see this story as any less mythological than any other told to justify religion. The tale is designed to keep people in line ethically and to relieve their anxiety about dying. You are willing to listen to suggestions, but you already do well in making thoughtful, ethical decisions. And because you have already considered death, you readily acknowledge that it will come. Its stark reality makes life’s moments all the more precious.

That is why I don’t “believe the Bible.” I respect parts of it: It contains some good literature that has effected Western culture (for good and ill) for millennia, but in quality it is really no better than has been produced by authors before or since. It has some great advice, but it has no monopoly on valuable wisdom, and indeed some suggestions are truly immoral. By and large, it is a cultural history and religion rule book, similar to other ancient texts. If Christians find it useful in other ways, I will not protest when they grasp it tightly, except when they seek to hold me to its standards. For to me, taking it more seriously than I described neither fits my experience nor benefits my life.

– {♂♂} – {♂♀} – {♀♀} -

(© 2006. All rights reserved. Originally published on my Yahoo 360 blog on July 31, 2006.)

Avoiding — The Point

Here is a counter-intuitive truth I’ve discovered during my years working in mental health: Long-term couples, when in the tumult of relationship distress, often discuss the wrong problem.

This is a natural defense. If the problem were easy, one or both partners would address it headlong, search for a solution, and adapt in ways that strengthen both themselves and the relationship. Such is the nuanced dance that all couples engage in on a daily basis.

But not all dances are so easily choreographed. On occasion, there can arise a problem so enormously challenging that all the tried-and-true solutions cease to make sense. If the couple senses that focusing on the problem will NOT help to resolve it, they will most likely fail to even discuss it. All the while, the pressure and anxiety created by the problem continues to build … until something has to give. So rather than discussing the actual problem, to relieve the pressure they will instead find an unrelated, sometimes bogus problem on which to direct their energy.

The point of these efforts is not to solve the decoy problem, but rather to avoid talking about the real problem. And when troubles reach this stage, avoidance can appear to be the only thing that the couple can silently agree upon. Avoidance becomes the point of the empty gestures, the salvation of couple’s life as a functioning unit…at least for a while.

Now my point in this brief discourse on marital therapy is to draw attention to the parallel themes between a troubled marriage and the fevered discussions of religion in this (or perhaps any) age.

Throughout the history of Christendom, relationships both within and across its boundaries have been filled with the same kinds of tumult over trivialities that effect our troubled couple. These include frequent explosions of anger (even murderous religious rage), defensive acrimony among otherwise civil people, and schisms between religious siblings over matters so seemingly meaningless as the adoption of a single creedal word (e.g., “filioque“).

The same is periodically true of every religion in history. People’s faiths define them via the inane interpretations of the entirely irrelevant. Viewed from outside the religion, the pointless nature of these conflicts is as obvious as the pointlessness of building a sand castle below the tide line. Therefore every religion is open to ridicule for the exact same reason that it ridicules all others.

I suggest that such discussions are the flares of phony problems, signals that the entire enterprise is put together as a way to avoid the real, unassailable problem, which is as follows:

You, I, and one-by-one everyone that we know and love is going to die, to cease to exist, and relatively quickly fade so completely from memory that it will be as if we never existed at all.

It is an undeniable (but avoided) truth that such fate has already befallen almost the entire assembly of humankind before us, and each day, the seeming contributions of more and more of our predecessors (pre-deceasers) pass into oblivion. There is nothing we can do about this shared dilemma, and so through religion, humanity has engaged in a full-court press to skip out on facing it. Thus, we obsess on the number of deities vested with the immortality we lack; we latch onto explanations of existence that include an everlasting memory bank; or we vainly search for keys that will let us pass into the fantasized afterlife that only the deserving few can supposedly attain.

But just as with the conflicted couple, there is a certain relief associated with avoiding the truth: At difficult moments, the fantasy helps people to cope. Religion provides comfort in grief and peace of mind when facing death, and it simulates a sense of purpose while living. And arguing over the trivial details of even a humongous humbug can create an illusion of holding special knowledge, the possession of which can lead to the transcendence of this mortal coil.

At its core, the paradox is that avoidance works.

If I am correct in both naming the truth and naming the reason we avoid it, then it falls on us who claim mortality as a victory to call it such. We need to declare, and declare loudly, that it is neither wisdom to live life as if it never ended, nor a blessing to offer such self-deception as a gift to others.

Rather, the reminder that each sunrise could be our final one (or the last time we hear the voice of a loved one) heightens the senses and confirms connections that are truly meaningful in the here and now. In this context, each of my relatives, friends, and community members mean something to me regardless of their creedal thinking, simply because we have shared kindnesses and tragedies and because the same fate awaits us all. That is enough. In a life unencumbered by religion, it will always be enough.

But even as I write these words, I am aware that they and I will depart as quickly and silently as most others. For now, however, I find these thoughts, those that level our playing field, both comforting and inspiring. If the couple ultimately addresses the avoided problem, new growth potentials arise in the relationship that they could not have predicted. If humanity would acknowledge our great temporariness, the same evolution could occur. But until then religion will be present to help us avoid it.

- {♂♂} – {♂♀} – {♀♀} -

(© 2007. Originally published on my Yahoo! 360 blog on May 20, 2007.)

Gaytheistic beginnings

Gaytheistic: The peculiar state of being cast as a double minority, to wit:

• Gay in a world strongly biased in favor of all things heterosexual;
• Atheistic in a nation where pandemic-yet-discordant theism (God-belief) meddles in every aspect of life.

Being “gaytheistic” requires building up callouses. On an almost daily basis, you encounter presumptions that remind you how poorly you fit in:

• “Where do you go to church?” (Nowhere. I’m afraid that rolling my eyes too often would give me a headache.)
• “Why don’t you bring your wife with you?” (I never found a wife necessary. I have a real beard.)
• “How many children do you have?” (None. Zero. On that front, I don’t even have a past to worry about.)
• “What are you going to do for Easter?” (Eating the ears off of rabbits and other rites of fecundity.)
• “Which one of you guys will get the large bedroom?” (We’re going to wrestle for it … for the duration of the lease.)
• “You know what the Good Book says …” (Do you mean the part that says, “Happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us—he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks”[Psalm 137:8-9]? Or the part that suggests dashing the rocks against the homosexuals? )
• “I heard that your uncle passed away? Well, he’s gone to a better place.” (Hmm … I always considered existence far superior to nonexistence.)

Because I fail at flamboyance and excel at biblical studies, I can pass easily as a straight, middle-aged Christian. (Well, the part about being middle-aged is hardly passing. If I could pass for a straight, 30-something Christian, my complaints would fall in conjunction with a corresponding rise in my social life.) Therefore, until I relieve them of the delusion that I’m just like them, the straight Christian majority includes me in their pranks, prayers, and prejudices.

When Eddie Murphy was on Saturday Night – Live!, he produced a skit in which he became white, and so was included in the white privileges, all of which he exaggerated to great comic effect. But because I don’t stand out as a queer infidel, Murphy’s skit comes close to depicting my life. I get to look and listen in on how the straight theists live & believe. In so many ways, their shoes do not fit me, but I can still walk in them.

But all this leaves me with one question: Why do practically none of the the straight theists volunteer to walk, even briefly, in the shoes that fit me? Why would they not for a single day wear a T-shirt that left their sexual orientation ambiguous? Why won’t they pretend to take a stand against theism in a religion argument, just to for an instant feel the scorn? Do they imagine they could not tolerate the vindictiveness that I’ve grown accustomed to? Then again, perhaps my callouses are not so thick as I like to pretend.

Well, in fact, I wouldn’t wish such ridicule on even those perpetrating the prejudice. But frankly my life would be more pleasant if they replaced their prayers with more smiles of understanding.

– {♂♂} – {♂♀} – {♀♀} -