Religions and Cults

Need God to Be Good?

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halo

An old friend I used to know when I was a Christian sent me a few questions. Here’s one of them:

“Now that you are no longer a Christian, what moral code do you now hold?”

I think most of us hold the same moral code, regardless of our belief or non-belief.

I certainly hold the same moral code I did when I was a Christian – the rule most know as the “Golden Rule” and is found in nearly every culture and religion. It is a rule that is rooted in our most basic instinct of self-preservation.

For example, if I am slighted by “Joe” in some way, I may want to punch Joe in the face, but I don’t do it, because I don’t want Joe to punch me in the face. I don’t want you to steal from me, so I’d better not steal from you. Notice that there is no need for god in these moral exchanges.

I believe it is a myth that one cannot be moral without god. Numerous examples of purely secular societies exist today. And many of them are having less trouble in this area than we are in moral-majority-Christian America.

It is extremely problematic to think one cannot be moral without the Abrahamic god (Christianity, Judaism, Islam). The Bible supports slavery – both Old and New Testaments – the owning of one human being by another (along with Biblical instruction on how to beat your slaves the “right” way, how to will them to your children after you die). That is all anyone needs to know about the Abrahamic god’s so-called morality.

I believe that my rejection of Christianity has more finely honed my sense of right and wrong. When I was a believer, I felt continually forced to perform mental gymnastics in order to reconcile “Biblical right and wrong” from my own moral sensibilities. For example, when I was a Christian, stories like God calling wild bears down to violently maul children who did nothing more than mock an old prophet’s baldness didn’t make sense to me, but because god reportedly did it, it most certainly had to be right in some way that was beyond my limited mind, and that was a source of enormous frustration. Because god was always “right,” I was forced to call clearly immoral behavior “right” as well.

Now, I clearly see that it – and I – were just wrong.

What do you think? Do you require god in order to be good?

Christians and Divorce – They Don’t Pair Well

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Divorcees-Not-Welcome

When I went through my divorce after 33 years of a very unhappy marriage, all family members, friends and acquaintances immediately split into two camps: The Christians all coalesced into one camp, and everybody else was, by default, left in the remaining camp.

The Christians- even though they didn’t all know each other (I had two different groups of Christian friends: those from High School and those from my 3 decades of being heavily involved in the Christian church ministry) the Christians all seemed to have read from the exact same playbook at the exact same time, and my divorce was the event that kicked their playbook into action.

The Christian playbook was filled with the grand majority of Christians immediately cutting off all tangible forms of love, they spread rumors, they made judgmental pronouncements, they defriended me both literally and on social media, they avoided eye contact, and they were horrible to my daughter (long story there). I instantly became – or represented – an enemy to them, the “bad guy”, a dangerous son of Satan who fell out of the fold and was to be avoided at all costs, lest my sinful ways would rub off of them.

The non-Christian friends, family members and acquaintances all seemed to be following a very different playbook. Their reaction to the news of my divorce was one of an immediate outpouring of love, support, and offers of help. They didn’t care who may or may not have been at fault in the breakup – they didn’t care about assigning blame. Very different from the default Christian response, they didn’t spend any time at all examining my life to see whether or not it matched up to their doctrinal expectations, and therefore worthy of their very conditional love.

During the divorce and the years following, I became acutely aware of the fact that IF Christianity had a shred of truth to it, applying that “truth” to ones life – or “accepting Christ” seems to have no positive impact.

Contrary to Christian claims, becoming a Christian does not improve one’s life, it often messes it up in the deepest ways – often unrepairable – and turns many, otherwise great people into judgemental, holier-than-thou assholes who say and do the most idiotic things in the name of their god.

I know because when I was a Christian, I too often made judgements upon others I barely knew. I took part in the secret shaming, the defriending, the withdrawal of love from anyone who didn’t agree with my church’s interpretation of the Bible, from anyone who “fell away” from the faith (which includes divorcées).

Why do Christians get the concept of love so wrong and behave so badly en masse when it comes to divorce? Because Christian theology is based on an “us vs. them” mentality. There are “the saved” and “the unsaved.” The saints and the damned. Those who harbor the truth in their hearts and those who have allowed themselves to be deceived by the Devil. The majority of people who are dead and wallowing in their sins, and the holy minority who feel it is their god-given obligation to fix the majority.

It’s all exhausting, of course… to the point where Christians often turn on each other. They point at other Christians and say, “he’s a luke-warm Christian,” or “that one struggles with her faith”. If you want to find out what’s wrong with the First Baptist Church, just ask the Second Baptist Church. Want to know what’s wrong with the Christians in the first pew? Ask those sitting in the second.

Obviously I am no longer a Christian. I believe that Christianity is a man-made religion that can have a horrific net impact on one’s life. Sometimes I’m asked what I replaced Christianity with. My typical answer is… when you get cancer cut out of your body, what do you replace it with?

Oh Hell No

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Hell

Do you agree with the following Biblical thoughts?

> God is good. There is no greater good than God.

> God loves us and wants only the best for us.

> God is omniscient. He knows everything and always has.

> God created every human being complete with an eternal soul.

> Our short time on Earth is nothing compared to where we will spend eternity.

> Hell is an eternal place of great torment, suffering, separation and agonizing pain.

> The road to Heaven is narrow and few will find it.

Finally, consider that throughout history, approximately 101 billion people have been born and have since died, leaving approximately 7 billion people alive today. The Bible teaches that at the very second each of those 101 billion people died, the destination of their souls was locked in for all eternity.

NOW…

If I accept each of the above assumptions, there is only one conclusion I can draw, and it’s not a good one:

God has knowingly created billions upon billions of souls that he knew in advance (omniscience) would spend eternity suffering in Hell. Yes, each of these people had choices to make, but nevertheless, God knew before even creating them that they would each end up in eternal torture. Thousands of trillions of years from now, they’ll still be suffering in Hell due to what they did or didn’t do during their brief few years on Earth, and their intense punishment and suffering will never end. And, Hell is so horrible that if given a choice, each one of these rational people would choose to have never been born at all rather than to suffer for all eternity in Hell.

SO… this doesn’t make any sense to me (a huge understatement). How could God be good in the above scenario? It would be an evil thing to knowingly do to even one person, let alone doing it to over a hundred billion people… and counting.

In order for this to make logical sense to me, at least one of the above assumptions must be incorrect. Consider:

If God was evil, this would make sense.

Or,

If God wasn’t omniscient, this would make sense.

Or,

If God didn’t have our best interests at heart, this would make sense.

Or,

If God did not create humans complete with eternal souls, this would make sense.

Or,

If God gives us at least one more chance to change our ways after death, this would make sense (but the Bible is clear – there will be no second chances).

Or,

Hell is not an eternal place of great suffering.

Or,

Nobody will go to Hell.

When someone dies, what do you think happens to them?

A Crime of Christianity

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Christianity teaches gullible children that they are miserable, evil wretches, unworthy of anything good, and deserving of nothing better than death.

For 17 years I worked with High School and Jr. High students at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa, California. I am still friends with hundreds of them on social media. They are all young adults, trying to figure life out, raising families.

Too often, I see sad posts from these students making statements like “I am nothing but a wretch,” “I don’t deserve God’s love and forgiveness,” and “There is no value in and of myself.”

Of course this Christian human-devaluation is nothing more than a load of horse shit, but the lie works and accomplishes exactly what it is intended to do… to keep people in, to keep them broken and to keep them dependent.

Cults use this tactic.

Stop the cycle. Do not teach these lies to your children. Instead, teach them the truth: Their lives, minds, bodies, and their very existence are all precious beyond measure. If god is as all-knowing as Christians say he is, he would agree.