I’m so
angry and so so so confused.
I
completely stopped reading the bible several months ago. I was so sickened by
the suffering and horrors of the Hebrew Bible and my complete inability to
reconcile the truth of what is plainly written with what I had been taught to
believe that I just stopped.
Every
time I happen across a sermon on the radio or read an “inspiring uplifting”
devotional my stomach turns. It infuriates me. I’m disgusted. Isaiah comes home
with stories of the “heroes” of the bible. Sampson for example. Sampson who was
a murderous, disrespectful, vile, lying, selfish man who squandered an enormous
gift, whose only semi-redeeming act was murder-suicide. Seriously?
How is
it that we just conveniently ignore the hundreds of thousands of deaths
perpetrated directly by the God of the Hebrew Bible. I was in a class that
touched on this subject much to the extreme discomfort of the room full of
ministers. One of them said “Well, they must have deserved it.” I’m so flushed
with rage just at the memory I can barely type. Seriously?
How did
I make it through the vast majority of my life as a Christian without ever
having the courage to confront the black and white truth of the horror of the Old
Testament? Because I just didn’t want to. Because it didn’t jive with my
health, wealth, and prosperity gospel.
How is
it that we scream about homosexuality but have no problem with divorce? How is
it that we are so willing to judge the teenage mother but justify our enormous houses
and piles of stuff while people starve to
death? I’m just plain pissed.
I’m
disgusted with myself and I’m so confused about what is true. I don’t know what
I believe anymore. I just don’t.
I know
that I’m disgusted with the prosperous west. I’m disgusted that I never
realized how much North American Christianity completely fails until I was one
of the disenfranchised. Until it was my life that was devastated, destroyed,
broken. Until I stopped fitting.
So
much of what people spout simply isn’t
biblical. That I know for sure. Most Christians know more about celebrities
or sports than they do about the bible. How dare we? How dare we claim to have
the answer, sit on our high horse when we don’t even know what damn color the
horse is? Seriously?
But
that which is biblical often is far from pretty. It can’t be packaged and put
on a wall hanging or a shirt. A while back I heard “Life is complicated, God is
not.” On a local Christian radio station. I choked on my Dr. Pepper. Is your
life really that easy? Have you really confronted that much of the history of
your religion that you think your God is simple?!
Seriously!?
Have I
mentioned that I’m pissed? Cuz I’m pissed. And I just don’t fit. I wish I could
go back. I wish I could go back to when I believed life was shiny and happy and
good, when I believed I was the apple of this God’s eye, when I believed He was
good or gave a crap about me but I can’t. There is nowhere to go but forward.
Forward through all of the questions. The anger. The doubt. The nasty nasty
ugliness.
I don’t
fit in your world anymore…
Until
next time…
I've just walked home from a visit to my vicar. A visit where I told him I am angry at god. Furious. Fr my sons death, and for my failure, two years later, to conceive again. All he could tell me is all I can tell you, it is allowed. It is ok to be angry at god, to rail against it, to not understand. He is big. And he can take it.
ReplyDeleteNo offense AngelBertie, but that answer is so typical.
ReplyDeleteNo one needs permission to be angry at genocide. No one needs permission to question a God who would allow a mans children to be murdered as terms of a bet with Satan.
"it is allowed", how about "why aren't more people asking these same questions?"
Some people can sweep that stuff under the rug of faith, but it is intellectually and emotionally dishonest. "We can't know God's ways" is used as a cosmic conversation stopper. Faith that hasn't been questioned to it's full meaning is really just gullibility.
I spent a long time asking myself if I was allowed to question a God who tells me not to envy and then describes himself as jealous. A God who says "thou shalt not murder" and then kills the first born of thousands of parents. A God who tells me that a rich man will struggle to make it to a heaven paved in gold.
I have never been good with the "do as I say, not as I do" model of leadership.
Children are born every day who simply exist to die of starvation. What kind of plan is this?
Jodie:
I have so much love and respect for you. My heart breaks for you and Will. I have no words of comfort, because they don't exist. Just imagining your grief nearly cripples me with fear on behalf of my own children.
All I can say is that If there is a God, then he truly does extend beyond my ability to fathom. He exists outside of space and time and the consequences of that alone are simply mind numbing. What I believe about such a being is far less important that concerning myself with the type of impact I choose to have on the world around me.
I have come to some peace simply clinging to the things that I know matter to me. My family and my friends. Everything else only exists to help me maintain those relationships in some way. I have not given up on the idea of God, but the kind of conversations I want to have are not going to see the light of day in a church. Being a doubter and a skeptic is a lonely road.