Category Archives: faith

Evidence of God

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As for evidence, you might be aware of Israel. That nation has been in the news much of late. So, without being flippant at all, I present Israel as evidence. Think about it. They are living the script written thousands of years ago. Not by chance.

Israel as evidence for the existence of God. I’m thinking about it as Don suggests.

Where did it all begin, this bizarre notion that one tribe in the Middle East was chosen by God to be his special people? According to the Genesis myth, it was when YHWH promised Abraham he’d be his best buddy forever and ever, so long as he mutilated his body and those of his sons in perpetuity. They would also have to keep every one of this bullying god’s 365 rules and regulations, including the petty and piffling ones. So far so good, apart from the fact it was all very one-sided, and the mutilation of course. You’d think this would’ve been a sign that things weren’t quite kosher, but no; Abraham and his descendants buy into it and almost straight away, YHWH begins to let them down.

God’s Chosen Ones soon find themselves slaves in Egypt. A second mythical character is needed – up pops Moses – to get them out of this scrape. Unfortunately, after Moses has finished chatting with YHWH, who identifies as a burning bush on the top of a mountain, the sulky deity feels slighted by something the Israelites are doing. As is his way, he has many of them slaughtered and the rest he forces to troop around the same small plot of land for 40 years. This is how best buddies treat each other!

Later, the Jews find themselves defeated by the Babylonians and are carted off into exile. This exile, which YHWH does nothing to prevent, lasts 70 years. Still, it leads to a pleasant song made famous by Boney M in 1978 so I suppose it was worth it.

For the next few hundred years, Israel falls under the rule of other nations more powerful than itself. Not to worry though, YHWH is still ‘looking after them’, particularly those who are slaughtered in the rebellions that ensue. As Robert Conner says in a recent comment on Debunking Christianity, ‘If Yahweh ever threatens to bless you and your children, just kill yourself and get it over with.’

Fast forward to the Roman occupation of Israel. YHWH, having undergone a makeover, reneges on his promise to take care of his Chosen Nation forever and ever and comes up with a different plan to save people from his own cussedness. Now, if they want to continue as his friend, they have to believe a supernatural being has returned from the dead.

Abandoned by God, as he now wants to be called, Jews who haven’t defected to the new faith see their sacred, eternal temple destroyed by the Romans in AD70. Thousands of them are massacred and the Jewish nation ceases to exist.

This sets the pattern for the next two millennia in which God’s new friends organise pogroms, massacres and vicious persecution of Jews. This culminates in the Final Solution of the Third Reich which seeks to eliminate the Jewish people entirely. While awaiting extermination in a concentration camp, Andrew Eames scrawls on the wall of his prison: ‘If there is a God, He will have to beg for my forgiveness.’ God allows six million of his Chosen People die at the hands at the Nazis.

Following the second world war, Israel takes possession of the area surrounding Jerusalem, then occupied by Palestinian Muslims who are themselves descended from earlier immigrants. Thousands on both sides are slaughtered in the conflict that follows. In 1948, after almost 2,000 years, Israel becomes a nation once again; not through any miracle of God but as a result of human endeavour and bloodshed.

Tension and further skirmishes followed, leading to the present day when Israel finds itself under attack by Hamas terrorists. Thousands of innocents – women, children and babies – have been slaughtered without mercy. Israel is, as I write, retaliating and intends to enact further vengeance. And where is God in all this? You guessed it: nowhere to be seen.

All of this, according to some – including the naive writer at the top of this post – serves as evidence of God’s existence. That Israel has persevered for so long, despite opposition, persecution and the holocaust is not, however, evidence of God, any more than the great cathedrals of the world are. It is instead testimony to the resilience, resolve and sheer bloody mindedness of the people themselves. Perhaps their belief in YHWH (they don’t of course recognise his Christian counterpart) has fuelled their persistence, as it has their territorial claims.

Jewish beliefs and history are not evidence that YHWH exists. If anything, his apparent abandonment* during their many trials and tribulations is evidence to the contrary.

*Of course a non-existent entity can’t actually abandon anything, any more than it can lend its support or favour one group of people over another.

Jesus Is Cool With It

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I was handed a sticker the other day that read ‘Jesus is cool with it’. Just what the hip Jesus of the sticker was cool with was explained by an accompanying leaflet, and the fact I was at a Pride event at the time.

I worked out from the leaflet and his rainbow flag, that what Jesus is cool with is homosexuality and all that goes with it. He might also be cool with transgenderism and other variations in human sexuality, but who knows; the leaflet didn’t say so directly. It did, however, have a list of websites that support those who are religiously afflicted and gay, transgendered or of unorthodox sexuality. It suggested that through these sites it might be possible to find a gay affirming church in the local area.

I was at first pleased to see that Jesus had had a change of heart. That he had in fact made a complete u-turn from his previous position, which evangelicals have long assured me, is that homosexuality is a heinous sin and a ‘violation of God’s design for human sexual behaviour’.

Eagerly, I logged into my favourite – I use the word loosely – Christian sites to see how they were celebrating this new revelation from the Lord. Unfortunately, they had yet to be updated and so weren’t conveying the news that Jesus was now ‘cool’ with gayness and the like.

That was over a week ago. I’ve just checked again only to find that they’re still not proclaiming this particular piece of good news. In fact, some have published even more rants well considered pieces about the evils of homosexuality, drag acts, people who are changing sex and the rest. They are so uncool about it that they’re still quoting the Bible: the Old Testament verses where it says that for a man to lie with another man is an abomination, and Paul, who, channelling Jesus (or so he’d have us believe) insists that homosexuals won’t make it into God’s Magic Kingdom. Some sites also mention Jesus’ pronouncement in Matthew 19:14 (yawn) that God made only male and female and the only time they’re allowed to get jiggy with each other is when they’re married.

I’m left wondering who is right. The ‘Jesus is Cool’ brigade or the great preponderance of evangelical churches that say he isn’t cool, not one jot or tittle, with same-sex doings.

The thing I’ve learnt through this, is that Jesus can be whatever you want him to be: a really cool guy who gives the thumbs up to whatever consensual sex you enjoy or a grouch who didn’t die just so you could continue in your old sinful ways. Take your pick. He’s both, depending on which bits of the Bible you prefer.

I wouldn’t care one way or another if it weren’t for the damage done by those who think they speak for the grouch.

A Reply to a Slave

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I’ve discovered this new gizmo that lets me look stuff up on the Interweb. Goober or somesuch. I used it to find the meaning of ‘doulos’ that the absence of dictionary prevented you from doing. All of the results Goober brought up described doulos thusly:

Doulos (Ancient Greek: δοῦλος, Greek: δούλος, Linear B: do-e-ro) is a Greek masculine noun meaning “slave”. Wikipedia

Doulos (a masculine noun of uncertain derivation) – properly, someone who belongs to another; a bond-slave, without any ownership rights of their own. Biblehub (Christian site)

…anyone could become a slave, in a sense. However, once someone was sold into slavery, they remained a slave for life, and all of their offspring automatically became slaves as well. The only standard way of obtaining freedom was to earn enough money to pay your owner back as much as he had paid for you in the first place. This was a nearly impossible task to accomplish because slave owners did not often facilitate their slaves ability to earn money on the side. As such, most slaves, and their offspring remained slaves for the totality of their lives. Slavesandsons (Christian site)

Doulos is a Greek word in the Bible that has only one true historical option for accurate translation into English, which is slave. It literally means to be owned by someone for a lifetime. This word is found at least 127 times in 119 verses in the New Testament scriptures. It is used in the context of human slavery, which, sadly, was very common throughout the ancient Roman Empire for hundreds of years. Recorder.com (Christian site)

You’ll see none of them say what you say, Don. None think slavery was a nice amicable arrangement. Christian sites especially emphasise how slavery was a downright awful thing so’s they can sermonise about how Jesus saves us from slavery to sin.

If you’re going to reduce real world, God-approved slavery to something akin to a nice comfortable arrangement, you diminish the metaphor of Christ’s redemptive work to… not much at all. (Which of course it isn’t.) I noticed you didn’t comment on this point when I mentioned it in an earlier post and here you are digging yourself in deeper with your ‘slavery wasn’t really all that bad’. Good work, Don!

You’re certainly enslaved to all this Christian mumbo-jumbo. To Christ though, not really. There’s no such being and you certainly don’t give the impression of being a slave in any real world sense. Perhaps that’s because you have no understanding of what slavery was and is.

Jesus Shows How To Treat Slaves

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Jesus’ parable of the talents

Three slaves are given money by their owner, two invest it while the third buries his share. He is castigated by his master (yes, it’s Jesus as his favourite metaphor: slave master) who says to him on his return:

I tell you that to everyone who has, more will be given, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. But as for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slaughter them before me. (Luke 19:26-27)

I know, that last sentence doesn’t fit the rest of the story, but it tells us what a despicable s**t Jesus was, quite happy to see those who didn’t want a peasant with delusions of grandeur lording it over them exterminated. Thank God the Romans got to him first (if indeed he existed.) No-one likes a dictator, specially not another dictator.

How about the conclusion to the actual parable, the one about the slaves and the money? The talents are evidently a metaphor for something or other. According to Christianity.com, it’s that the third slave, ‘didn’t take joy in the promise of the master’s return but instead wasted his time, his opportunities, and the master’s money.’

In other words, it’s fanatic talk aimed at those with a lack of commitment to the cult and its beliefs, including the ‘master’s’ imminent return, when wastrels will be in big trouble. As Christianity.com puts it:

Those who are not (faithful) may face the harsh reality of being called a wicked and lazy servant. Worst of all, they may not share in the joy of their master’s presence when he returns.

And there we have it, the softening of Jesus’ dictatorial original: ‘will’, as in ‘will lose everything’ becomes the hedging-your-bets ‘may’ while ‘slave’ (doulos again) becomes the watered-down ‘servant’. After all, we wouldn’t want to draw attention to how much of a cruel bastard Jesus was originally conceived as being. (Because, yes, these stories were invented by the early Jesus cult.)

The cult took no prisoners; in terms of commitment. It was all or nothing. Waiver in that commitment and you risked expulsion when the slave-master returned. So much for being redeemed unto salvation, so much for salvation by grace alone. If you weren’t utterly committed you stood to lose it all. What the original cultists weren’t to know, of course, was that the master would never return. The whole sorry parable was as irrelevant then as it is now.

God’s Agents?

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Christians are agents of God or so we’re informed. I’ve tried to locate where in the Bible it says that the Lord appoints fallible humans to be his 007s, but alas, I can’t find it anywhere. The best I can do are the claims in the fourth gospel that Jesus was God’s agent on Earth, but that’s not the same thing.

What about the idea then, also touted by Christians, that they are somehow God’s ‘partner’? No, that’s not there either. God regards himself as so far above us, his creators, that it would be like you or I partnering one of the ants crawling around in our gardens.

So how does the Bible describe the Christian’s relationship with God? It refers to it as master and servant. The word usually translated as ‘servant’ however, is doulos, which actually means ‘slave’. God doesn’t want you as an agent, partner or servant. He expects you to be his slave. Christian blogger, Sam Storms, explains what this means:

I, in the totality of who I am, have been purchased by Jesus Christ. He literally owns me. I belong to him, body, soul, spirit, mind, affections, abilities, talents, heart, will, and emotions. There is nothing in me or about me that belongs to me.

As a slave of God you are stripped of the very agency other Christians claim they gain from aligning themselves with the divine despot. And when you’ve done all he requires of you he’ll barely acknowledge you. As Jesus puts it in Luke 17:5-10:

Suppose one of you has a slave (doulos) ploughing or looking after the sheep. Will he say to the slave when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? Won’t he rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’? Will he thank the slave because he did what he was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy slaves; we have only done our duty.’”

Whatever you do as God’s or Jesus’ slave won’t be enough, they’ll still regard you as a worthless slave.

I didn’t know about you, but this isn’t for me. I have more self-respect than to submit to a life as a slave. So have you. So in fact has everyone.

Most Christians agree. Almost all of them disregard the expectation that they become slaves. We know this because –

  • The majority don’t act as if they’re slaves, serving their fellow human beings till they’re fit to drop (Matthew 25 etc).

  • Most seem unaware even that Jesus insists they must be slaves when successive translators have deliberately altered the unsavoury ‘slave’ to the more palatable ‘servant’.

  • Those who are aware of his expectation seem to regard it as a metaphor; always a good get-out. And doesn’t Paul remark in his letters that believers are sons of God? That’s much more acceptable.

  • They omit the slavery element from their evangelising because no-one is going to be attracted by the offer of life-long servitude; far better to present Jesus as a would-be friend, big brother and all round good guy with whom people can be in ‘partnership’ or a fellow special ‘agent’.

  • They talk about free will when a slave, either of sin (John 8:34) or of Christ’s, has no freedom and no free will to exercise.

  • They convince themselves that sitting at a computer arguing with atheists online is the kind of slavery Jesus had in mind.

  • They turn a blind eye to the fact that the Bible teaches slavery is what they can expect not just now but for all eternity (Revelation 22:3-4).

It’s almost as if they don’t really believe such self-abasing, masochistic nonsense themselves.

 

 

The Golden Age of Christian Values

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If only we could get back to the golden age of Christian Values. The one that existed when I was young, before things changed so much and when life was so much better. People believed in God, went to church every Sunday and had good old fashioned, biblical values. The troubles of today could so easily have been averted if only we’d stayed true to those beliefs.

Yes, If only we could go back…

‘Let me take you there,’ says a disembodied voice.

‘That you Jesus?’ I ask.

‘If you like,’ it replies, ‘but I’d rather think of myself as the Spirit of Times Gone By. Let’s you and I return to some of them together and see if we can’t find the Golden Age of Christian Values.’

I feel him take my hand and suddenly we’re travelling through a vortex in time, away from the 2020s and into the past. As we do so, my smartphone disappears from my pocket, as if it had never existed. Disconcertingly, my Fitbit does the same. I’m sure going to miss them.

‘Take a look here,’ says the voice as a vista opens up on front of us. ‘Behold, 2003.’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Things were so much better even just 20 years ago. No wokeness, no talk of irreversible climate change… and no one had heard of gender identity or drag queen story hours!’

‘Really?’ my guide says. ‘That’s how you remember it? America was still reeling from 9/11, a Christian president was about to invade a country that had nothing to do with the attack and there were a record number of tornadoes across the US. Things weren’t that great for a whole load of people, especially the ordinary folk of Iraq.’

‘I guess not,’ I concede. ‘Maybe we need to go further back. Find that special time when we hadn’t abandoned God and he hadn’t left us to our own devices.’

‘Let’s do that,’ my host says, as once again we take to the swirling vortex, emerging seconds later in what he says are the early 1990s.

‘Much better,’ I say. ‘No destructive social media, no same-sex marriage anywhere. The Berlin wall has come down and the Second Gulf War is set to be a great success.’

I can feel my guide staring down at me, though oddly I can’t quite make out the details of his face. ‘Really?’ he says again. ‘I’m surprised you mention that. There’s also the Siege of Sarajevo on the horizon, racial unrest following the beating of Rodney King and in Bangladesh 138,000 people have just been killed by an earthquake. Plus, as you say no social media to speak of. You do remember, don’t you, how much you like arguing with atheists on it. I’m not sure this is the time we’ve been looking for either.’

I have to agree it isn’t, as once again he takes my hand and we return to the vortex, emerging mere seconds later… when?

‘The ’80s,’ he announces. ‘AIDs, the Iran-Contra scandal, acid rain, Chernobyl. I don’t see any Christian Golden Age here.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I reply. ‘At least there was the Moral Majority, a genuinely Christian president and in England, a Prime minister with Christian principles. She even quoted the Bible sometimes. We had politicians of real integrity in this time period.’

I feel him raise an eyebrow even though I can’t see him. ‘A Christian president who left thousands to die,’ he remarks.

‘They brought it on themselves. God’s judgement on a sinful generation,’ I tell him, pleased to score a point.

We move on. ‘The 1960s,’ he declares. ‘Could this be your Golden Age?’

‘If there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that the 1960s were not the Golden Age. Definitely not. That’s when everything started to go wrong. Moral relativism, Women’s Lib, Civil Rights riots, Stonewall, psychedelic drugs…’ I stop to catch my breath. ‘Long hair, promiscuity, nudity, abortion, decadent music. Oh Lord, it was awful and it paved the way for the depravity and dissolution that was to come. If ever there was a decade in need of God it was this one.’

‘Let’s not forget Assassinations and Vietnam,’ he adds.

‘For sure. That’s what comes of abandoning God.’

‘It looks like the 1960s were nearly as bad as you say 2023 is. Maybe things don’t really change as much as you think.’

‘Maybe,’ I concede. I haven’t really thought about it before.

‘You know, says my companion, I’m beginning to think we’re further than ever from the Golden Age you seek. But I’m prepared to give it one more shot if you are.’

I agree and we’re off again, emerging this time in the 1950s. ‘This is it!’ I exclaim, ‘This is Christianity’s Golden Age! People going to church, looking after their neighbors; there’s prayer in school and real Christian standards. This is where it all happened and it’s here where we should all return.’

‘I see what you’re saying,’ the figure beside me replies, ‘but it wasn’t good for everyone, was it.’

‘What do you mean?’ I ask incredulously.

‘Well,’ he says, ‘it wasn’t a great time if you were black. There was segregation and I assume you know there were still lynchings in this era.’

‘I didn’t say it was perfect,’ I object.

‘No?’ he says. ‘In this Golden Age, women were expected to keep house, raise children and serve their husbands, just like it says in the Bible. Too bad if they wanted a life beyond that.’

I can’t see a problem with this but something stops me from saying so.

‘And of course it was illegal to be gay back here. Fines, imprisonment and ruin were the price to be paid. Staying hidden was the only option for many.’

‘Not a bad thing,’ I murmur.

‘Then there was the Korean War in which 2.5 million people died, including 36,000 American servicemen; the Cold War with its ever present threat of nuclear annihilation; McCarthyism, the paranoia of The Red Scare and the persecution of those presumed to have left wing views… Need I go on?’

‘No, no. I take your point. Perhaps this isn’t the Christian Golden Age I’m looking for after all.’

‘You still don’t get it, do you?’ my companion says. There is no Christian Golden Age. If we were to go back another ten years we’d find the Second World War and the Holocaust when 6 million of God’s Chosen People and 5 million others were brutally, senselessly murdered.’

‘I guess,’

‘You guess? And even if we were to go back to the start of your Faith you would find the infighting, corruption and immorality prevent even that from being a Golden Age.’

‘Oh, I think you’re wrong there. It says in Acts…’

But he cuts me off: ‘My friend, your Golden Age has never existed.’

‘I’m sure we could find it somewhere,’ I mumble.

‘No,’ he says. ‘This is it. This, here in the ‘50s is as good as it gets. But only for some. This is where we stop. This is where you stay.’

‘Stay? I don’t want to stay here. I need to get back to my own time, to my family and my technology. I’ve atheists to argue with online.’

I see his eyes glow high above me. ‘The only way you’ll get back is to live your life from this point on, through the decades you’ve dismissed, and see how far you get. But it’s unlikely you’ll get back to 2023. Life expectancy in the 1950s is much shorter than where you’ve come from. And you’re no spring chicken to begin with.’

‘No, please,’ I stammer. ‘You can’t. I don’t belong here. This isn’t a Christian Golden Age after all.’

But I was on my own. My companion, like my shaky beliefs, had simply vanished.

 

 

 

 

 

End Of Term Test

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Which of the terms mythological, symbolic, theological is most appropriate when discussing biblical tropes?

Apparently, it’s ‘theological’ because it has an air of respectability, whereas the other terms suggest something with only theoretical underpinning. In fact, this also applies to ‘theological’, which by definition is the study of deities, for which there is no evidential verification. The use of ‘theological’ therefore is as unsubstantive as arguing that a concept is metaphorical or symbolic. None of these terms represents a sound, reliable way to determine the accuracy, historicity or truth of religious claims.

With this in mind see how you do with these questions:

1. Did the original hearers of the Genesis creation story regard it as –

a) true.

b) a theological statement.

c) an entertaining myth.

Of course we’ve no way of knowing what the story’s original hearers thought but there is nothing in the text that suggests they would have regarded the creation story as anything but true. The creators of Jesus’ script certainly seemed to think so, a few centuries later and its original hearers would not have felt the need to preserve it otherwise. In this belief they were wrong.

2. Which of these gospel stories is true, as in ‘really happened more or less as described’ –

a) The virgin birth with its surrounding detail.

b) Jesus meeting with Moses and Elijah (the transfiguration).

c) Resurrected corpses roaming around Jerusalem.

d) The resurrection.

The answer is that either all of them are true or none of them are. If only one of them is mythic, symbolic or ‘theological’ (and more than one of them most certainly is) then it is highly likely the others are too. If we are scrupulous, we cannot assert that one story is symbolic because it’s making a theological point while another equally implausible story is historically accurate because we want it to be.

The criteria for determining the historicity of any story from antiquity are corroborative evidence and, failing that, plausibility. We have already established that there is no independent corroboration for many of the gospel stories. There is no corroboration for some of them even in the Bible itself. We are left then with plausibility: how plausible is it that a virgin gave birth or that resurrected corpses presented themselves to Jewish authorities? Vanishingly small. Jesus’ encounter with Moses and Elijah is equally improbable.

Is his resurrection the exception? No, because dead people do not spring back to life 36 hours after being buried. If the virgin birth, the transfiguration and the resurrection of dead saints are all highly implausible (and they are) then so is the resurrection. It is at best, a story making a theological point but it is not history. The implausibility it shares with many of the other implausible stories in the gospels discounts it as history. There are no grounds for saying it is the exception.

There is also the cumulative effect of implausibility. It is highly unlikely that one of the implausible events above is historical, but it is impossible that all four of them are. Add all the other implausible stories in the gospels – the other miracles; the healings; exorcisms; Jesus sparring with the devil, walking through locked doors and beaming up to heaven: piling implausibility on top of implausibility doesn’t make any of the component implausibilities more plausible. It makes all of them less plausible and collectively impossible.

The things the gospels tell us happened to Gospel Jesus, and those they say he did himself, are equalled only by heroes of myth. Did Osiris or Romulus rise from the dead, as their stories claim? Did Augustus really become a god once he died? Of course not. These are the implausible, improbable events we find in myth. Jesus’ story is no different.

3. While many or all of the gospel stories are highly improbable as history because they are intended to convey a theological point, the words attributed to Jesus in the gospels –

a) are completely accurate.

b) are more or less what he said.

c) passed through an inestimable number of people, being invented, edited and altered in the process, before being written down 40+ years after Jesus supposedly uttered them.

d) are inventions of the gospel writers and/or their particular sect and frequently copied between gospels.

If you’re opting for a or b, you’re now making the logia the exception; the one oasis of historical truth in a desert of implausibility. That’s a big ask. To get this one off the ground, you have to call upon contrivances like –

completely reliable (but different and conflicting) oral traditions;

     hypothetical lists of sayings;

         Peter’s dictation to Mark;

             eyewitness authors;

                  secret teachings;

                     super-translators and

                         the odd spot of collaboration.

So, c and/or d is far more likely to be the answer to this one, representing the explanation that requires the least conjecture and fewest hypothetical components.

How did you do? I expect most of you aced this end of term quiz. If not, better get down to some extra study and repeat the semester next year.

Everything, Everywhere, All At Once

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Sadly, we’ve failed to locate Jesus, the celestial super-being who is everything, everywhere, all at once yet nowhere at all. We’ve been presented with some possibilities, specifically that he exists in another dimension, which may or may not exist, from where he whispers directly into the brains of those who, over in this reality, call upon him. He even appears occasionally in visions, when the two dimensions ‘intersect’, which, as everyone knows, they’re capable of doing.

Unfortunately, all of this is undetectable by science but there’s no reason for concern because there is more to reality than that which science can observe. Equally regrettably, there’s no way of verifying this claim either; this is because science is deficient, limited as it is to investigating only ‘dirt and rocks’.

* * * *

It is far more likely that science can’t detect heaven and the eternal Jesus in precisely for the same reason it can’t detect Narnia, Valhalla and all the other fantasy worlds created over the millennia by human minds. Applying Occam’s razor, the imagination accounts for all these other ‘realities’ and the immortals that inhabit them.

No further explanation necessary.

 

 

The Guilt Legacy

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A couple of nights ago I watched a programme called Jehovah’s Witnesses and Me fronted by Rebekah Vardy. I know nothing about Rebekah apart from the fact she’s a footballer’s wife who was recently involved in a social media scandal, but her reflections on being brought up in a Jehovah’s Witness household were honest and sincere. She said one of the legacies of her mother being ‘disfellowshipped’ when she, Rebekah, was 8 was that she felt, and still feels, guilty about much in life. The teaching of the organisation was, as it is in many evangelical churches, that the individual is a hopeless sinner who cannot please Jehovah, though must nevertheless endeavour to work out their own salvation. For JWs this involved (and still does, as you may know from personal encounters with them) going door to door and standing for hours on end in public spaces with a trolley-full of Watchtower publications.

I could relate to Rebekah’s feelings of guilt. While not a Jehovah’s Witness (I was never that gullible) my years as a Christian left me with a legacy of guilt. For many years it was the dominant emotion of my life. While a Christian I constantly felt I was letting God down: not as good a Christian as those around me, not witnessing enough, listening to pop music instead of worship songs – practically anything could trigger my not-good-enough feelings. I also felt responsible for anything that went wrong, even when I couldn’t possibly be, and guilt about my secret sexual feelings and, most especially that I wasn’t been a good enough father. To this day, I feel awful if I’m unable to help with my grown-up children’s problems. I am moving away from such fruitless thinking, and recognise that possibly I am naturally inclined to blame myself for events both within and outside my control. Christianity nonetheless exacerbated the problem, with its emphasis on the sinful worthlessness of the individual who is nothing without Jesus. I have, I’m pleased to say, got a lot better since abandoning its negative anti-human philosophy.

What scars has religion left those of you who are escapees from religion with? I’d be more then pleased to hear it’s none, but most of the ex-Christians I know have not come away unscathed. Feel free to share in the comments.

Real Christianity v Catholicism

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I visited a Catholic cathedral in Santa Cruz, Tenerife, while on my latest adventure. Not, I hasten to add, as a worshipper but as a tourist. One of the Canary Islands, Tenerife is a Spanish territory with a long association with Catholicism. Its name means Holy Cross, reflecting its history and the pervasiveness of the church. The cathedral’s altar can be seen in the picture above, highly ornate and completely over the top, with a statue of Mary, the Holy Mother, as its centrepiece. .Her son, you’ll note, plays only a bit part in the picture above her.

Real Christians™ of course don’t regard Catholics as true Christians. They point to their reliance on the Pope, when Jesus himself says his followers should call no-one Father apart from God; the army of dead saints that intercedes in heaven when all people really need is Jesus; the need to confess sins to a priest and the worship of Mary as the immaculately conceived ‘Mother of God’, who works miracles on their behalf.

People – Catholics – who believe these things can never be part of the club. ‘Their ideas are as ridiculous as they are unbiblical. No-one in their right mind,’ Real Christians™ say, ‘should believe such fanciful stuff. Stick resolutely to what we know to be true: the resurrection of a dead man; the Virgin birth and the promise of eternal life. These things are biblical and as such we can know and trust them. Not rubbish about saints in… erm, heaven living forever, having to ask for our sins to be forgiven and thinking Mary was conceived free from the scourge of sin.’

It seems to me that it’s only a short hop from believing one lot of far-fetched rubbish to believing still more. Maybe the Catholic stuff isn’t strictly biblical (though at a stretch it could be said to have been drawn from the make-believe found there) but then there’s nothing particularly special, plausible or reasonable about that which has found its way into God’s Word. Just because something is in there doesn’t make it true. Those who invented Jesus’ Virgin birth, his resurrection and the promise of everlasting life were making it all up, just as those who, further down the line, created the phantasmagoria that is Catholicism.

Santa Cruz is nice though.