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March 21, 2002 - 10:33 am

Gabbin' 'Bout God

Well, if you enjoyed yesterday's entry, you're in luck, because I'm going to attempt to finish up my thoughts about the Big Man. I don't know why God has been on my mind lately. It might be because my dad's birthday is coming up, and, as my dad is no longer living, I tend to ponder his eternal fate around this time of year.

And, as long as I have a forum like this, I might as well do it. I've got no executives on my back, I'm beholden to no sponsors, and I don't have to argue with anyone about creative vision. So, read it if you like or just go ahead and TiVo your way past this one. No hard feelings. I'm going to write about the Mixmaster MC Gee Oh Dee just because I feel like it.

(Tip: Before you discuss theology, it's always cool to dismiss any shred of credibility you might have by referring to the deity in question in hip-hop fashion.)

Anyway.

I was raised Lutheran. Basically, it's Catholicism without the guilt and Judiasm without the worrying. Because religion isn't fractured enough, there have to be divisions within divisions, and I was raised as a proper ELCA Lutheran, as opposed to the freaky Missouri-Synod Lutherans. Those people might as well be practicing the voodoo.

Actually, if there's a difference between the two factions, it's something very arcane and small, because I don't know what it is. What I do know is that, for the ELCA Lutherans, our big thing was that as long as you believed in God, you were going to go to heaven. Everything was nice and relaxed, and God was all love and forgiveness. Simple and pure. Our church even liked to get together and do some good drinking, which may go a long way toward explaining why Lutheranism is favored by Germans and Swedes. But I digress.

So, in my youth, my family was church-going, and, as a youth, I had no choice but to go along with my parents every Sunday and endure it. Later, as a teen, we still went, although less, and, as a teen, I resented it. Around 17 or 18 I started Youthful Rebellion Stage #37 and basically said, as people who go through this stage often do, "To hell with the Church!"

"Gasp. What happened to little Billy? He used to be such a good boy."

Yeah, I sure showed those old ladies what a bad ass I was.

As part of the whole 'growing up' deal, I had to throw away what my parents gave me, and what they believed in along with it. As far as religion was concerned, it was all hokum. But, you know, because I was such a genius, and because all of my thoughts were so well developed, it was only the Western religions that were lame. Now, Eastern religions, like Taoism and Buddhism, those were cool. My parents didn't believe in that stuff.

So, again, typically, I began to think of Christianity and Christians as out and out freaks. Believe in Jesus? Weirdos. Go to church? Fools. God is dead or he doesn't care about us! Why was I the only one who could see this? Oh, the angst! Morrissey, come talk to me!

It was around this time that I also had my brief flirtation with communism, even though I really wasn't sure what it was. All I knew was that they wanted to stick it to the man, and make things somehow better for everyone. It made for lots of tolerant eye rolling on the part of my parents at family gatherings.

So. I was a moron.

For the next few years, I wandered happily through my Godless commie world. This period in my life happens to have coincided with my early college years, a time in my life in which, as you may recall, I was fairly depressed and doing poorly in school. My academic and intellectual curiosity was at a major low.

I finally jettisoned my communist thinking when I had a roommate who was (literally) a card carrying socialist. My discussions (and eventual debates) with him forced me to take a harder look at what I really thought about government. I was climbing out of my funk at this time, and beginning to take more of an interest in my studies, and the more I learned, the more I realized that my own beliefs did not really fall in line with his.

He was a funny guy. He was working overtime to be way more anti than me. Items in his wallet included a "Unabomber for President" card, and a laminated dollar bill with a word balloon coming out of Washington's mouth which read "I grew hemp." Neato. He once invited a homeless person into his girlfriend's apartment as part of some humanitarian mission. She didn't appreciate that at all.

The ideological chasm between us irreversibly widened when he went on a weeklong fast because of an article in Details magazine.

We don't talk much anymore.

It's important to note that my thinking didn't change because I was trying to be anti-Socilaist Roommate. I think my beliefs changed because, for the first time in my life, I was actually doing some real thinking. I was learning to trust what I thought and be analytical and critical. It was about damn time.

And so I appreciated free market trade once again. Well, really, for the first time. As for religion:

It was also around this time that I met an ex-girlfriend of mine, the girl I refer to as Betty waaaaay back in the first entry. Betty happened to be from a devout Lutheran family. So, in much the same way that Socialist Roommate brought thoughts about government into the forefront of my thinking, Betty did the same for me with religion. This happened through a countless series of debates and discussions.

Countless. Over and over and over again.

It was cool, though, actually, because I had finally learned to discuss these things rationally, and with support of evidence and analysis. It was interesting, and I started to delve into theology with a new curiousity. I always stuck to my guns, and so did she, and we took turns refuting one another's points, to varying degrees of success on each of our parts.

I suppose that I had to admit though, that always, in the back of my mind, I didn't really think God was dead or non-existant. I'd been in the church long enough as a kid to have absorbed the idea of a higher power into my very guts, and it wasn't going anywhere. These debates didn't succeed in ever making me into a believer, nor did they make me an adherent of the church again, but they did force me to confront what I felt, and what I felt was that God was there. I couldn't deny it, but I could deny organized religion. And so I did. I still do, but not for the same reasons as before.

Some of those reasons were:

1) How can you have faith in something so unprovable?

Well, we put a lot of faith in things we can't really prove directly, ourselves. When we road trip to another city, we expect it to be there, even though we have no firsthand knowledge of it yet. "Yeah," you say, "but there's a map and other people say it's there." One might respond that the Bible is a map, in a sense, and other people say God is there. Leaving the Bible alone, you take it on faith that medicine is going to help you, even though you haven't conducted clinical trials yourself. You take it on faith that what you ordered for lunch is OK for you to eat. We take lots of stuff on faith every day.

2) OK, fine. Shelf that for now. The Bible was written by people. How can it be God's word?

Fair question. But, assuming God is there, and that he does have the power we think he does, don't you think that God would make pretty damn sure that his book accurately represents what he wants to get across? If we can accept that, then we can accept that the Bible is what God wants it to be. The interpetation of the Bible, by imperfect man, is another matter altogether.

3) How can God allow so many terrible things to happen to so many people?

Extremely good question. The technical answer is that he doesn't, that, because we have free will, and the ability to make our own choices, we humans do all of these terrible things. OK, but how can God allow us to do this to one another? That's even better than the other question. I'm not sure. I do know that good things wouldn't mean very much without bad things. What good is food without hunger? Sleep without fatigue? Good without evil? If nothing bad ever happened to anyone, would we ever know an appreciation for the good that does happen to us? One might say that, supposedly, there is nothing but good in heaven. One might reply that there is a whole lot of bad on Earth. What value would heaven hold without earth?

So. Those were the cornerstones of my anti-organized religion thinking. They've since crumbled, but that doesn't mean I've accepted organized religion fully.

I don't go to church. There are probably tons of good reasons a good thinker could throw at me to show me this is wrong. In fact, I know there are some good justifications for being part of a congregation, as that was the subject of some of the debates Betty and I had. Reasons such as 'servicing the community, and "witnessing" to others.

But, that's not what it's about for me. God knows I believe. I don't think he needs me to go sit in a pew and tell him that once a week. OK, now, I realize that this is fucking corny as all hell, but I feel like I've worshipped God when I smell Spring weather, or see an athlete or artist do something really skillful, or even just wake up from a really good night of sleep.

Ready for something else extremely uncool? I've even pray occasionally. Well, very rarely. Usually when something terrible has happened, or I feel very, very guilty about something, and even (corny and extremely rare) I just feel good and thankful.

Got a problem with that, you bastards?

All that being said, here's my one big problem with Christianity. It's a very tightly organized religion, and it's extremely difficult to find something that can't be justified, but I think I found the big loophole:

If we accept that God is all powerful (can do anything he likes) and omniscient (that is, knows EVERYTHING that has happened, is happening, and will happen, ever) how can he possibly justify sending people to hell? In my religion, God sends only non-believers to hell. Like I said before, if you believe, you will be forgiven and you'll be fine. But, if you do not believe in God, off to hell you go. So. If God is omniscient, and he therefore knows which of us will be born into the world to believe and not believe, how can he allow people to come into existence that he knows he's going to have to damn to hell? That, to me, would be like making little robots that you know are going to be defective, and then punishing them for it. You might say it's free will, and not God who makes that choice for us. Well, it doesn't seem like the act of a good and loving God to know ahead of time that someone would make that mistake, and then sentence them to suffer for eternity because of it.

Neither pastors nor priests have ever given me a good explanation for this. Once, when I expressed that to a person they said "Wow. That's a corker."

And you all breathe a collective sigh of relief as you see realize I'm getting ready wrap this up. The light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak.

So, I used to begrudge people their faith. I used to look down on people for being Christian. I used to think of them as 'Jesus freaks,' and I now realize that it's just as bad a slur as 'nigger' or 'faggot.' Everyone has a belief system, whether they've cultivated it consciously or not, and whether it's spiritual or philosophical in nature.

Once, in my science class last semester, we were discussing cloning. A girl raised her hand, and introduced the point that she was going to make by identifying herself as someone who believes in God. The guy in front of me said, under his breath "Oh, great...here we go."

I'd bet solid money he wouldn't have done that if she were Muslim, Jewish, or said she was going to make a point based on Mills' Utilitarianism. The poor girl was simply trying to address an ethical dilemma based on her belief system. She was doing what every single one of us do every moment of every day, nothing more than making a decision by filtering it through her own system of beliefs.

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