Religion creates evil
The self-immolation of the American church
“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil — that takes religion.” - Steven Weinberg, the Nobel Prize–winning physicist.
Mike Maeshiro has been on a roll lately. One of his latest post Five Things That Finally Break Evangelical Faith
had a lot of compelling thoughts that succinctly captured my ascent into paganism (lol).
For a lot of people, becoming a parent breaks the theology.
When my son was two or three I was giving him a bath. We were out of his soap so I reached for our shampoo. His mom overheard and screamed from the kitchen, “No! Don’t use our soap!”
“I’m being very careful not to get it near his eyes!” I responded (it wasn’t tear free).
“That’s not what I’m worried about - it’s the ingredients! It’s filled with all sorts of chemicals that are linked to all kinds of horrible diseases.” She yanked the bottle from my hand.
I looked at her for a second then replied, “Then why the hell do we use it?”
That conversation is what set us down the path towards cleaning as many chemicals out of our life as possible.
The same thing happened with the bible.
In 2021 I asked my grandparents for a big kids bible for my son who was turning four because I figured he was ready to graduate to a big kids bible. They sent one and I quickly found myself struggling to find a few verses that weren’t totally screwed up to read to a four year old.
Daughters raping their dads.
Killing wives if they don’t bleed enough on their wedding nights.
Smashing babies heads against rocks.
Talking about penises as big as a horse’s.
Lots of imagery of semen.
An astounding amount of genocides ordered by god.
Sex slaves.
Murder.
Lust.
Greed.
Torture.
Mutilation.
The list goes on and on… Which made me ask, what age group is this book actually appropriate for?
People watched churches abandon compassion for power in real time.
I remember finding out my church had a “secret” men’s group who had been meeting through the early pandemic day lockdowns. I hadn’t been invited - maybe it was my non-meat eating ways that made me too liberal to be trusted with the in-crowd?
My heart breaks for the MAGA “xtians” trapped in the cesspool of xtian nationalism, alt-right conservative republicanism. I hope that one day, they will find the courage to question their complicity in a system wreaking profound harm on their neighbours.
Looking back I should have known a church with cars in the parking lot with AR-15 stickers in various sizes representing dad, mom, and all the kids would never be welcoming to a vegan, father of a non-white child, and feminazi partner. A church where we had armed guards (disguised in suits) and elders concealed carrying it was never about love for your neighbor. It was about power and might fighting for a right to kill, hate, and to justify greed.
… children beaten “biblically”
Shortly after my son was born, my parents came to meet their newest grandson. One afternoon he woke from a nap — hungry and sitting in a dirty diaper — he began to cry.
My father looked at me and said,
“That is his sin nature, demanding to get his way. As his father it is your duty to teach him how to mortify his flesh.”
He was two months old.
I remember the dread that welled up in me. Not annoyance. Not irritation. Dread.
His eternal soul was my responsibility. If I failed, he would burn in hell forever. If I was weak, Satan would win. If I did not break his will, the world would devour him.
I had been spanked growing up — a lot. I had absorbed the design of this morbid parenting strategy. Pain equals love. Obedience equals righteousness. Fear equals safety. I guess I had been a bad kid. Why else would it have happened so much?
Spanking was the only tool I had been handed.
My wife had different ideas about raising our son though. Less authoritarian. Less focus on unquestioning obedience. Less reliance on punishment. We clashed in those early years. The church told me she was drifting. A wayward feminist. Susceptible to deception by the world and its master Satan. I was told a rebellious wife spreads like cancer through a household. I was expected, as the man god’s chosen head of the house-hold, to discipline my son and to correct my wife and bring her back into the fold.
I believed them.
I believed that resistance to spanking was rebellion against God.
I believed that the secular world opposed corporal punishment because it wanted weak fathers and disobedient children. Why? Because they were easier prey for sin.
I believed love always requires force above compassion or empathy - I mean god hated me so much he brutally murdered his own son to save me but then called it love…
Which brings me to the final point…
… if hell is real, God is a monster.
I was a card carrying Calvinist. Therefore I believed (because there are a surprising amount of bible verses to back up the theology) that before god said “Let there be light.” he knew the name, birthdate, death date and every detail in between about every person EVER. He also knew which ones were going to heaven and which ones he had preordained to go to hell. Both places are eternal. Never ending. You’re stuck. You cannot leave. That is it. He decided. Then created you.
Furthermore, we all really deserve hell, forever. God cannot stand us, he hates us because of our sin. So, he killed his son. Only his son’s death could not atone for everyone’s sin. In fact god didn’t really want it to. Somehow someone being tortured forever was supposed to bring him more glory than that person (who he created) could bring hanging out with him forever in heaven. Does that make ANY sense? If you say yes, you really should stop drinking the kool-aid.
All that changed though for me on October 26, 2020 when my mom died by suicide. I remember a few months after her funeral dad telling me mom was in hell. My mom and I didn’t get along for the last twenty years of her life or so. She had struggled with severe undiagnosed and untreated mental health issues for most of my adolescence and all of my adulthood. Still she was my mom and the thought of her suffering eternal conscious torment (ECT) was too horrible to process.
How was I supposed to enjoy heaven? If I was one of the lucky few who made it in (according to my old church’s metric I won’t though - a queer, anti-gun, liberal, Buddhist is going straight to hell) knowing my mom was suffering? Every good thing I was going to enjoy in heaven she was going to be in the midst of suffering. How many other people did I know who would be suffering alongside her? This mystery was one of things the church had no answer for, other than to say god will sort it out and you’ll know when you’re dead and you’ll be okay with it. I remember hearing once that those suffering in hell would actually worship god because they would realize it was his justice which compelled their never ending misery. What the FUCK!?
People realize they aren’t staying because of what resonates, they’re staying because they were scared.
I don’t remember the exact date I came to realize it was fear which held me in the church. It was not love. I did not know peace. I had very little joy, happiness, or contentment. So, I walking away. Walking quickly turned to running. When running wasn’t getting me away fast enough I jumped. I expected misery, fear and suffering to greet me at the bottom; instead what I found in agnosticism was profound peace. A sense that I had finally found the truth. I was no longer afraid of death. I was no longer angry. I was happy. I was at peace. I slept better. I drank less (a lot less). I found a joy the church had never given me. True. Real. Lasting. Deeply rooted. Filled with love.