Tuesday, August 18, 2015

The Bible Tells Me So

the voices of the religious right continue to lament the course the usa has taken, what with the rulings of the supreme court in favor of marriage equality and the continuing, though increasingly limited, access of women to abortion services.  some of them have said that we should rejoice because these rulings, along with the proposed agreement with iran, are signs that the "end times" are upon us.  several have warned that "god's favor and protection" have been or soon will be withdrawn from the country to punish us for obeying "man's law" rather than god's.  the god in which they place their faith is very different from the god in which i believe.

this god of vengeance that picks winners and losers among the nations of the earth causes grave evil to befall those who fail to "follow the rules."  the rules of this god are determined by a narrow interpretation of the bible, and the rules change from time to time, depending on the human interpreters' views.  it appears that this god is controlled by those who believe in Him (because this god is definitely male); it is the believers, not their god, who pick which biblical rules are to be followed and which are to be ignored, and the believers interpret what the rules mean.  those who disagree are doomed and sooner or later will be punished.  these "christians" support israel unquestioningly, not from any sense of redressing wrongs visited upon the jewish people, but because of their interpretation of israel's role in the coming apocalypse based on their view of biblical prophetic writing.

is such a god worthy of veneration?: a god that can be manipulated for one's own political ends, a god that punishes some and rewards others based on standards devised by that god's followers, a god that creates only to destroy, a god that insists that men should control women, a god that allows terrible suffering to occur so that "good" can come from the experience.  i want no part of such a god.  God is not a great santa claus in the sky who gives us what we want when we ask for it, God is not an ogre that causes suffering for all because the first humans ate a forbidden fruit.

may we turn from such a vision of God, either to rejection of belief altogether or to another vision of God.  may we see those who worship this false god of the religious right for what they are: narrow bigots who have created a god of their own imagining to suit their own purposes.  may we proclaim that their god is not dead, but rather that such a god never existed, no matter how many films are made that say otherwise.  shalom.

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