the christian religion teaches some strange ideas about God. i often think that we invent a god that conforms to our own design rather than honoring a God who is beyond human understanding. i suppose that is natural. after all, if we can't fully understand God, we give God characteristics that make the mystery more comprehensible to our limited imaginations.
one of the things that bothers me about what we christians are taught about God is that God "has a plan" for our lives, that we are born with a purpose that is predestined so that our obligation is to discover "God's purpose for our lives" and then seek to fulfill that purpose. if we subscribe to that belief, then abortion for any reason becomes immoral, since no one is conceived without God having developed a plan for that prospective being. there is always a purpose for the fetus that has been conceived. according to this line of thinking, even rape is purposeful, otherwise a child that is the result of a rape would not have been conceived. i can't accept worshiping a god that foists such a situation on a humanity that God loves. our only purpose, i believe, is to live the best lives we can, doing the most good and the least harm that we can, filling our hearts with as much compassion as we are capable of. i can worship a God who smiles on me when i do the best i can and understands my struggle to avoid doing harm.
another belief that most christians subscribe to is the idea that God chose the jewish people as the "chosen people." why would God do such a thing? the standard answer is that God spoke to abraham in ancient times, and abraham listened as God promised that abraham's descendants would be singled out so long as he and his descendants obeyed God's commandments. most of the old testament is the history of the jewish people's on-and-off-again relationship with God. a great deal of evil has flowed from this idea. being God's chosen made it the duty of the ancient israelites to conquer what is now israel/palestine and massacre its non-jewish inhabitants, according to the bible. it made the religions that arose from this chosen-ness the exclusive means of saving humankind resulting in wars that continue to this day, so that christians had the responsibility of persecuting those jews who refused to convert to christianity, muslims, jews, and christians had the responsibility to fight each other for supremacy, and the followers of the abrahamic religions were responsible for converting every person on earth to each religion's particular interpretation of God's revelation to that religion. surely, one shouldn't worship a god who would do such a thing, unleashing so much suffering on those God created in the name of religions that are supposed to reveal God to us.
in the next few posts, i hope to write about some of the other beliefs about God that are accepted by many (perhaps most) christians without much thought about their consequences. my intention is not to offend anyone who is sincere about their faith, but i continue to be disturbed about what seem to me to be absurd ideas about God that i can't endorse in good conscience, no matter how widespread those ideas are.
may we stop accepting concepts that make little sense, simply because they are commonplace. may we use the reasonable minds that we are given to examine our beliefs and the practices that flow from them. may we be guided by what makes sense, not by blind faith. shalom.
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