Hello! It’s me again, Nathan.
I’m back again with another triggering blog post.
(You will find torches, pitchforks, and matches beneath your seats. Please ready them.)
This post will hopefully be shorter than the last. I wrote it on my phone late last night after a discussion with one of my friends….so my apologies if it’s a bit disjointed. It felt like a good continuation of my last post, and address a lot of the similar arguments I’ve been getting in my inbox. (Thank you, Timo, for the content inspiration. I’ve placed two torches under your seat as a gesture of goodwill!)
I’ve had a LOT of conversations with friends and family since my last post. The people most interested in long conversations are, predictably, people who are still Fundamentalist Christian in some way. Many of the reasons I disagree with Christianity have to do with that specific expression of the Christian faith, so it’s understandable that most of my critical thoughts on the subject would be something fundamentalists want to interact with. I also think my posts get a lot of interaction from fundamentalists, because of all the flavors of Christianity, fundamentalists (by definition) are THE MOST convinced that they have an entirely correct picture of God, and are therefore more convinced that they need to defend that picture. (This sort of dogmatism isn’t generally present in more “ChristianityLite”-styles of faith.)
So…..I’m addressing this one to the fundies. Let’s get to the meat of things:
TL;DR version: Evangelical Fundamentalists constantly claim that their version of God is the ULTIMATE representation of Perfection and Goodness…. and YET, the Evangelical Christian version of God is actually Quite Bad.
(Please light your torches and burn the blog post in a safe way, thank you.)
Initial Expected Reactions:
My non-Christian friends: “Obviously??! I thought everyone knew that??”
My non-Evangelical-but-still-Christian friends: “It’s a relationship, not a religion! Fundamentalists are needlessly dogmatic. God isn’t like that at all! Jesus just wants to love YOU.”
My evangelical friends: “““You. WILL. Burn. In. Hell. If. You. Don’t. Get. Your. Act. Together!!! Facts Don’t Care About Your Feelings”™️ -Ben Shapiro”-Michael Scott”” (Or something like that.)
There's a funny irony when it comes to defining things like "grace" and "good" via the Evangelical Christian God's (I’m going to shorten this to ECG for this post) attributes. Those words (and other nice-sounding words LIKE that) either: a) become so diluted they lose meaning entirely, because the ECG doesn't actually fit the dictionary definition of ANY of those words, when you begin to probe his character. Or....b) The words retain their meaning, but the actual characteristics of the ECG become so diluted that they no longer line up with the much of the actual text of the bible (and thus, the ECG just becomes a Generic Christian God™️, rather than a Hyper-Literal Fundamentalist Monster God™️).
In this post, I'm going to focus on the first part of the irony. Mostly because it's the exact flaw I grew up ignoring, but also because I feel that a God derived via that flaw is inherently more terrible than one derived from the other. If I’m being honest, I don’t really have an issue with the soft/fuzzy version of God many modern Christians accept. Do I think it’s silly? Sure. But I’d argue it’s also innocuous, and if religion ends up making people feel comfort and purpose, without causing too much harm, who am I do stop that?
Today, however, we’re going to focus on the ECG, a character I believe to be the opposite of innocuous.
Quick recap: the Bible describes God as good….a lot. (Click here for some examples). Think of any other “positive-sounding” word you can, and it’s probably been used in the Bible to describe God. Here’s a bunch of verses about how PERFECT God is.
Fundamentalist Christians (like me, pre-deconstruction) obviously take the Bible seriously, so they have to spend tons of time redefining (and thus diluting) words like "good" and “perfect” to just mean "whatever God does", which is...just...intellectually dishonest, because it takes away the entire meaning of the word. "Good" becomes useless as a word when it's used from the fundamentalist perspective. You'd be hard-pressed to find any sane human who would argue that 1 TRILLION MILLION BILLION YEARS OF ETERNAL AGONIZING PUNISHMENT IN HELL is "good" treatment for say: a dying 10-year old kid committed some minor “sins”. Maybe he lied a few times, got jealous a few times, maybe punched his brother once or twice, but never “Committed his life to Christ” (for whatever reason).
This is absolute insanity. There's no "justice", "grace", "love", "mercy", or "goodness" in that sort of a god. Using positive words to define that sort of behavior is laughable, if not a completely deranged abuse of the English language. And yet, fundamentalism preaches that "God is loving" and that everlasting punishment is a fair price to pay for, in what most human lifetimes, amounts to less than 80 years of minor misbehaving. Even human courts are more fair than that.
Heck, I'd even argue that an everlasting punishment for terrible things like murder isn't even "grace", much less even remotely *fair*. Assuming there IS an afterlife, why would it make sense to condemn a murderer to eternal torture for taking someone else’s life prematurely? Yeah, it's messed up to murder, but mayyyyybe just 100 years of burning alive would do the trick in setting them straight? Especially when you consider the murdered person also gets eternal life and thus isn't really effected that badly, in the scheme of things?
"Ahhh," (I hear the fundamentalists typing) ,"but you don't GET it, Nathan: Sin is not sin because it harms other humans. Sin is sin because it OFFENDS God! It is an AFFRONT to his Perfection. God has no choice but to eternally torment all things that offend him."
To which I say...
Weird take, and I feel like he has plenty of other choices.
But, I get it. I mean, I've used similar argument(s) myself plenty of times, so I do understand the allure. It's a very convenient way to sidestep the fact that fundamentalists have to pretend "God is Good" for sending people to hell. The fact is: if God was perfect and good, he would have perfect forgiveness. (No..."I-murdered-my-son-on-a-cross-and-if-you-say-the-magic-words-and- truly-believe-in-him-I'll-let-your-sins-slide" is conditional forgiveness. I'm talking UNCONDITIONAL forgiveness. Conditional forgiveness is NOT perfect. Perfect forgiveness would require no actions taken, no actions needed, no magic words said, and DEFINITELY no need to hear the special story from a missionary to even get the chance to say and believe all that in the first place.)
There's nothing "perfect" about condemning unreached African tribes to eternal fire just because nobody got to them yet with the "good news". It's actually just morally reprehensible that a god would behave that way. There's nothing "perfect" or "good" about an eternal punishment calendar that sends nice old ladies to hell because they were Buddhist and didn't think the Christian missionaries who knocked on their door in the 1980s were convincing. Defining ANY of that as "perfect" is to strip the word of all its meaning.
Let's do an exercise. For the sake of argument (channeling my inner Ben Shapiro again), let's say the ECG exists. Let's say his constitution is so sensitive to sin, it just reallyyyy makes his stomach churn when someone lies. Now, he CAN'T let them come to heaven... Can't do it! Way too many bad vibes if they show up! (It's already sounding quite silly, but let's keep rolling.)
"... Alright", we say. "Kinda makes sense, I guess? I mean, obviously you don't want bad vibes at your house/sky castle, or whatever. Maybe God could make a special place for liars that's away from him, but not like...burning forever?"
(The fundamentalists begin typing again.) "NO, NATHAN. THE POINT OF HELL IS THAT YOU'RE SEPARATED FROM GOD, THAT'S THE REALLY BAD PART ABOUT IT. IT’S NOT ABOUT THE FIRE! GOD HAS TO SEPARATE US FROM HIMSELF AND ALL HIS GOODNESS"
Me: "Hmm, okay, fair enough. Weird that everyone emphasizes the lake of fire so much, huh? Heck, you probably wouldn't even notice that eternal fire stuff if you were like...reallllllyyyy sadddd....about being separated from God? Annnnnyway."
Isn't it kinda weird that the all-powerful, all-knowing God who created the entire universe from scratch (including heaven and hell) wasn't able to come up with a better way than hell to separate his feelings about sin from his "perfect" personality?
Yeah, it's weird. So weird, I'd argue...it's not perfect at all. (Unless of course, you make up a new, weird definition for "perfect"...)
I'll leave you, the fundamentalist, with a few simple questions:
1) If your God can't do certain things, is he really "all-powerful"? And if he's not all powerful, how can you consider him perfect?
2) If your God is good, why do his plans for justice involve completely uneven cosmic scales that result in eternal torment?
3) If your God is so sensitive to sin that he torments nice old ladies in hell forever because they never converted, is he really that strong of a god? Or is he more like a vindictive serial killer who never got his way? Is a god like that worth worshipping?
4) Is it possible certain things you think about God are wrong? Is it possible you've been believing a partial lie?
5) Were you able to ask yourself those questions honestly, or did you immediately try to come up with counter arguments because my post made you upset? How far in this brainwashing are you?
(Please place your torches and pitchforks in the baskets to your left as you exit the theater.)
-Nathan