and why I think Christianity sucks

My last submission, A few words in defense of Jesus, got a whopping two or three reads. That’s what I expected. Atheists and new agers don’t want to read about Jesus and Christians don’t want to read what a non-Christian has to say about their Lord.

Let’s take an imaginary journey back in time. We’re hanging around with Jesus. He’s saying some pretty weird things, so whether we’re Jews or those pagan Romans, we’re not overly impressed. We walk away and forget about him, but one day see him hanging from a cross next to thieves and other criminals. It’s a reminder not to rock the boat, but we get those reminders every day, so it’s not very noteworthy.

Jesus is all but forgotten by all but a handful of his followers. Eventually, some of them start writing stories about him. They write down the things he said, but embellish a little, as storytellers did back then (and do now). They throw in the virgin birth, some miracle stories and the story about him rising bodily up to heaven. Since they couldn’t grasp much of what he was saying, some of them decide he was literally the Son of God and came to save the world. He would come back when the time was right. Each generation thought it would be in their lifetimes, just as they do today.

Fast forward to 325 AD. Christianity has caught hold, but Christians are arguing about who is right and who is wrong. The emperor, Constantine, decides to become a Christian. Why, no one is quite sure. Some say it was legit, while others say it was a ploy to save his empire. Be that as it may, he decides to end the controversy. He calls a bunch of church bigwigs together for a conference. About 300 attend, far fewer than the 1800 invited guests. They discuss a bunch of topics. Was Jesus a prophet or the Son of God? Which gospels were legit? What was the right date for Easter?

It’s kind of hard to figure out what they discussed because we only have snippets to go on, but it’s easy to imagine how heated the debate got when you had 300 men (no women) arguing. One thing that has been all-but-forgotten is that some Christians believed in reincarnation. Others believed that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene. Those ideas were tossed out at the meeting, as were some gospels they deemed unworthy, like Barnabas, Mary and Thomas. I think Paul became the 12th disciple then, but I could be wrong. That may have been one thing they all agreed on.

Why I think Christianity sucks

Basically, Christianity became standardized and politicized at the conclusion of the Council of Nicaea. In 380 AD, the new religion became the official religion of the Roman Empire. It’s been downhill ever since. First the Roman empire started forcing their new Catholicism down everyone’s throats. The religion spread throughout Europe. Then, when Spain, Portugal, England and other countries started colonizing distant cultures, they started converting the “natives” - usually at the point of a gun.

Things got rough for the Catholic Church when someone decided to translate the Bible. Then the printing press was invented and more people were able to read it. The Protestant Reformation started in around 1517 and a bunch of splinter religions popped up. One was the Church of England, but we also got versions based on the teachings of guys like John Calvin and Martin Luther (no relation to Martin Luther King).

Of course, neither the Catholic Church nor the new churches that were springing up took all this lying down. Wars were fought and people died, all in the name of the guy who said, “Love your enemies.” As far as I can tell, they got their excuses for all this killing from the Old Testament, which is as bloody a book as you’ll ever read, and a couple of snippets from Jesus, like, “I bring not peace but a sword.” Never mind the fact that the statement contradicts most of what Jesus said, even in the four gospels they decided to keep.

For some reason, killing in the name of Jesus became okay. Jesus didn’t have a lot to say about sex. He didn’t seem to care for adultery, but I don’t remember any mention of premarital sex or homosexuality. Nonetheless, over the centuries, the issue of sex became a big one. Priests were supposed to be celibate and sex before marriage became a sin. And of course if you’re homosexual, you’re going straight to hell and never coming back. Our Christian weirdness about sex has led to a host of problems, pedophile priests not the least of them.

Let’s take a brief trip further back in time, to before the age of empires. Back then, people lived in villages. They looked after one another. Different groups had different spiritual practices, but they didn’t feel the need to convert non-believers. For that matter, they didn’t feel the need to conquer and colonize their neighbors, either. They just went about their daily business, taking care of one another to the best of their ability. If they wanted to have a spiritual experience or find the meaning of life, they didn’t read a stupid book. They went walkabout or on a vision quest or perhaps took a substance like peyote, mushrooms or ayahuasca. And they didn’t just toss it down. They knew the value of ritual and preparedness for such an experience.

We like to think humanity has evolved, but has it? It seems to me we’ve devolved. We’re under the thumb of governments, religions and corporations. We have our little groups and each group thinks its right and everyone should go along with its agenda. We’re raping and pillaging the earth. Our corporations and military are primarily responsible for that, but many people blame overpopulation. Never mind the fact that people in so-called Third World countries use a minuscule fraction of the resources we more “advanced” cultures use and they still often grow their own veggies until one of our corporations comes around and poisons their land.

So why does Christianity suck? It’s a make-believe religion that’s out of touch with reality or real spirituality. Of course, the same thing can be said of other religions, but Christianity is the religion they tried to ram down my throat when I was a kid, so I still feel defensive about it. I’m just glad a Hindu guru told me to read the New Testament one official Easter weekend in 1972. I discovered then that it’s probably not Jesus’s fault that his religion sucks.