Rock It Science
I am a “rock it” scientist. This rock we are on (and all the other rocks and gases in the universe) is it. This belief does not preclude the existence of a Creator, but it is impossible to prove or disprove a Creator as fact. So in the absence of scientific proof, I am going with Sagan: “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” And there isn’t any.
I did not grow up in a church, there was no faith tradition in our house other than secular Easter and Christmas. It was only as a young adult that I was introduced to Christianity through some classmates, eventually marrying a Christian I met in college. Before getting married my girlfriend, now ex-wife, asked me to agree to raise our future children as Christians. So I did my best to be an active participant in whatever church communities we were involved in. But everyone in these churches knew that I was not a Christian. This made for some interesting interactions during the first few decades of Sunday school and church small groups. A weak link in the chain. No doubt they were praying for my salvation.
Almost 15 years ago, in my early forties, a few significant business and personal challenges led me to decide to get baptized and become a Christ follower. “Save me Jesus!” Victory!
I can say with certainty that as a new Christian, I never prayed, tithed, talked, or acted the way other Christians expected me to, and my guess is many people doubted my conversion, a phony. A stranger in a strange land. But as far as I was concerned, my faith was between myself and God and not anyone’s business. I was all in. For the first few years, I studied my bible, prayed (silently), listened to Christian radio, and participated in small groups, and bible studies. I stopped attending church several years ago after divorce. Mentally I had checked out of the marriage and the faith (for the most part) long before that.
At the core of my new awareness is simply this: I do not believe a Creator who loves his creation would give us the default setting of eternal damnation. Per scripture, the only way out of the wailing and gnashing of teeth is to be chosen, or through some other combination of faith and works, depending on who you ask. In his 2011 book Love Wins, Rob Bell raised the question of the existence of hell and the concept of universal reconciliation. Bell was criticized by other Christian leaders and essentially deemed a heretic and ostracized.
But for every Rob Bell, there are thousands more who believe that eternal damnation is exactly what a loving father would do. A loving father smites, punishes, crucifies, and condemns. It is right there in the Bible. Punishment. It is for your own good because you are not praying, tithing, talking, attending, or behaving the way you are supposed to. More Christ, less you. We are the damned, and He is just waiting to smite all of us, so shape up. He put all the bad things in the world for a reason, so pray like your life depends on it, or it is to hell in a hand-basket with you.
For many Christians, God is fear. Fear is control. And religion is as much about controlling others as anything else. To quote Bertrand Russell, “fear is the parent of cruelty”. Being “free from the penalty of sin” is a nice perk of salvation, as it opens the door to all kinds of abuse to punish “unacceptable” behavior. After all, if we are not filled with the spirit, then we are just worthless bags of dirt, animal hosts for the enemy, unwitting agents of the devil.
The unaware might be surprised at how many devout “religious” folks and their minions are running around pretending to be devils with pitchforks (fight fire with fire) engaged in “spiritual warfare”, willing to do whatever they can get away with in the name of their faith. Creating for others the suffering they believe is due to them from this fallen world. Gods of self-produced and directed figurative passion plays. These people may be the only thing we really need to be saved from.
This is, of course, antithetical to Christ’s substitutionary atonement. Christ either paid for the sins of everyone, past, present, and future, or he did not. You can not have it both ways. Per doctrine, God laid the punishment on Christ so He would not have to punish the rest of us, and it is not our job to manipulate, abuse, demean, gaslight, mock, slander, punish, or “crucify” anyone for any reason. I am surprised by how many Christians and Catholics do not fully understand the crux of Christ’s crucifixion, the New Covenant.
I realize now, after several years have passed, that some of my earlier experiences that precipitated the challenges that “led me” to salvation were completely contrived. Like the beasts stalking the residents in the movie The Village, it turns out I knew the humans behind the haunt all along.
So while we are all here together in the in-between, let’s try our best to just be good to each other the way we would like others to be good to us and our loved ones. Let’s try to not judge others, do our best to forgive, help those who are suffering, and treat others with respect and dignity. None of us are perfect.
Let’s lift people up without putting them on crosses.
Here’s to more laps around the sun for everyone.
Rock on.
