On Religion, Introduction

I want to start a series of writings about Christianity. Some background is necessary first.

I grew up a Christian, a Luthern, a Missouri Synod Lutheran to be precise. After I left my mother’s house I tried to keep going to church, but something didn’t seem right about leaving my church community and just going into another one. It really sort of sucked, so I left the Church.

In the military, especially in bootcamp, I was back in church. I really liked our chaplains, who weren’t Lutherans, and attended some services in the military. It sort of helped me through the rough spots.

Over my years I have thought about organized religion, and I sort of came to a realization about the whole thing: In religion, organization equals oppression. They are exactly congruent. And organized religion is the worst kind, because it is oppression based on dogma that the followers willingly and uncriticly accept. So I left the church for good after I left the military.

Over the time between then and like 3 months ago, I developed an understanding about God. I maintain my identity as a Christian, but I believe that the only books that Christians should look at are the Gospels of Jesus Christ (the first four books of the New Testament). Those books were truely inspired by the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The epistles written afterward, especially those written by Paul are essentially what the modern church bases its teaching off of, though it essentially pays lip service to the Gospels.

Paul, however, was a wicked person. He might have realized a conversion, but that hardly makes him qualified to be the primary exponent of Christianity. Paul created organized Christianity. His philsophy was that of a man who was absolutely possessed by the faith of the convert, much the same as many fundamentalists today are. But because it was a philosophy from a converted man, not Jesus, it is flawed in a number of ways, and should not be held up as being equal with the teachings and examples of Jesus.

Additionally, all the sacraments that the Church claims are necessary to get into Heaven are nonsense. The only one Jesus demands of us is baptism; not communion (Jesus said to remember him as often as we eat and drink, not just in the eucharist), and all the other sacraments that are necessary to get into heaven in the organized church. To rely on a sacrament to get into Heaven is like being able to Command God to let you into heaven and there is nothing, in my understanding that we can force God to do, let alone let us into heaven. If what I was taught is correct, that we are saved by God’s grace alone, then there is absolutely nothing we can do to save ourselves, let alone practice some cursory practice like communion, which really doesn’t mean a damned thing to an omnipotent God.

Skip to the present. That thought process has been refined and such over the years to include a rejection of the concept of Hell (on the basis of the inconsistancy that a loving God would ever send someone to such a place as hell) to be replaced by sending bad people to Heaven which is their own personal hell. I recently rejected the idea of original sin as being absolutely ludicrous (because people are born good, and if we weren’t, why would a good God care about saving us at all; and if we were born bad, but in the image of God, then God must be bad, and this does not jive with the concept of God.)

Then I got this job where my job is to take a guy to church. In that job I started thinking even more about the question because all of a sudden, rather unexpectedly, I was forced into church again. But this time, I was coming at it from a person that rejects essentially all of the dogma of the church. And SO MANY contradictions between what they are supposed to believe and what they are actually saying became clear to me.

With this understanding, the rejection of original sin, which is a recent development for me, stood out in stark constrast to church dogma. If people are born good, then we don’t need to worry about original sin. And if Jesus really did come to earth, to die for our sins, and actually took them away, then original sin no longer applies to us. So why does the church still call us evil, in need of salvation? If we are already redeemed, as I was raised to understand it, why do we still need to beg forgiveness? Is it that everyday we sin and fall short of the glory of God? Well, if it is our nature, there is nothing we can do about this. So why should the church suggest we are going to be punished for it? We would be no more responsible for our actions than a dog is when he tears up homework. And if we can choose between good and evil, then it is not in our nature to be evil, and since our sins have already been forgiven by Jesus’ death, we don’t need to work for constant forgiveness.

Which then brought me to the question of why Jesus had to die in the first place. If he was indeed God’s son, what good did his death here on earth do? God could have just as easily forgiven every sin ever anyway. It’s not like God did not have a choice in the matter. After all, humans have a choice about everything. Does this mean that humans have been granted something that God did not even grant himself? And if so, 1) how can we truely be in the image of God if we are not like him, and 2) are we as humans better off than God is?

It all seems to me to be a big confusion. My answer of course was that 1) Jesus was a philsopher who synthesized various philosophies of his time with religious fervor and came up with a new way to live one’s life, taking the best of all (much like eclectic spiritualists do today) and offering a way around the pitfalls, 2) If there indeed is a God, which I still believe there is, despite all logic to the contrary, it is certainly not in the mould that the Church teaches us about, and 3) the conception of God and the religion that pursued that conception exists specifically to oppress people and deny them access to the true God by making them content with their lousy position at the bottom of several social and political heirarchies. Church officials, from the Pope down to the smalles parish pastor, utilize this conception to maintain their power. They don’t have any more enlightenment than any of us can have independent of the religious institutions. But they maintain any authority they have from an unchallegable source (that is, “we have this power because God says so” but there is no way to ask God if indeed it did say so…)

Additionally, God does not hate anyone. Period. Even evildoers and terrorists. Why should God hate them? If God is omnipotent, what possible reason can there be for hating, or even disfavoring a minority here on earth? Does that add to his power or greatness or magnificence? How can it? That is equivalent to us, though we are far from omnipotent, hating an aemobea. It just doesn’t make any sense.

So… there’s the background of these articles on religion. I plan on exploring these topics as well as a number of others in depth as I work out these ideas here on this blog. Hopefully, it will allow me to come to some better understanding of this life i inhabit, and spark some discussion among those who read this blog.

Stay tuned.
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