Growing up in a Catholic family (and by that I mean all uncles, aunts and grandparents), we went to church every Sunday, clad in our Sunday best. However, my Sunday best usually consisted of jeans and jerseys. My father used to make the argument of, 'if you were to meet the president, would you wear what you're wearing to church?' and I thought, 'yeah if the president was a PSG fan.' Anyway, I digress. I went to a very strict Christian school, we had 20-minute devotions and an hour's worth of weekly Chapel and don't get me started on Biblical Studies. I had a love-hate relationship with that class. On one hand, I do want to know more about this mystical being in the sky, but on the other, there are so many things I don't understand and the teacher doesn't either. So I just end up getting the same answers, 'we cannot understand God'. But it wasn't until I graduated from high school that I started to really question God and my faith, because apparently, even teachings about God are relative.
Let's get to it:
My friend and I have theological conversations a few times a week. It usually lasts for hours and I rarely ever find an answer to my questions. Of course, this devout Christian friend would link me to readings and videos by philosophers and theologians and I would gobble them down like vodka shots. But all the answers seem to welcome more questions. It's endless. The more I want to know, the less I do. God became a subject worth studying rather than someone in my life.
When my friend and I were talking about the Fall of Man, we came across a conundrum. Think about it, when Adam and Eve were created (assume you are a Creationist for just 5 seconds), they were created as amoral beings. Then they ate the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and it is only after they ate the fruit that God said, 'Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil,' (Genesis 3:22a). So even if God forbade them to eat the fruit because they will 'die', they didn't understand consequences yet, did they? So why would God punish Adam and Eve eternally when they didn't even understand what they were doing? God said not to eat the fruit, but He didn't say, "by the way, don't listen to the serpent, he's a little shit." I mean, if God banished them from Eden for a week, like detention, then maybe they'd be like, "oh so that's what 'wrong' means.' A loving God wouldn't punish His beloved creation for making their first mistake. Everybody makes mistakes, everybody has those days (Hannah Montana 1:1). If He wants perfect beings then don't make flawed humans that are capable of committing sin, and then punish them for doing exactly what He made them to do.
And why did God put one tree in the middle of Eden and tell them not to eat that specific one? Isn't that reverse psychology?
I asked these questions to my favorite priest, and lo, he was not able to answer it properly. All he could say was, "they disobeyed God!" and I mentally slapped my forehead. Did you not comprehend everything I just said? Adam and Eve didn't know what they were getting themselves into oh my goodness what. It's called THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL. THEY DIDN'T KNOW WHAT GOOD OR EVIL WAS—oh never mind.
I told my dad about this and he replied with, "well the people of Israel didn't know what hell was but they followed the 10 commandments anyway." But the 10 commandments is complete bull! I mean, it's good and we all should abide by them, but they are rules that humans can never follow. We can't even look at someone and think, "hot damn!" without committing adultery (Matthew 5:28). And I'm pretty sure that all boys who go through puberty are so testosterone-y that they get boners looking at a doorknob. So God literally made rules that we cannot ever follow. Of course we're supposed to 'need the help of God to comply by the rules' but damn, why you gotta make lying and sinful humans and then tell us not to lie and sin. Even little toddlers lie. Even fucking gorillas lie. It's no longer human nature when animals do it too. Why ya gotta make everything so complicated? (Avril Lavigne 4:1).
Also, anyone who says, 'God doesn't make mistakes!' are quite wrong because God regretted creating humankind so much that he wiped all of them with a flood, except Noah and his crew. "And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I had created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them." (Genesis 6:5-7). Take that Lady Gaga and Bon Jovi. Your lyrics are heresy.
The Bible is pretty great though, it just tells you to not be a douchebag. If you take the key teachings in the New Testament, they're all pretty awesome. Disregard the old ones because that includes not being allowed to wear garments of different fabrics (how is that detrimental to my spiritual life, though), and not being allowed to touch women on their periods because we are 'unclean'. Fuck that why would God make women bleed every month and then deem us unworthy of touch for 7 days? I could go on and on about all the loopholes in the Bible (like how no matter how kindhearted and philanthropic you are, if you're not a believer in Christ you are destined for Hell, or how if God knows everything aren't we all predestined for Heaven/Hell and doesn't that mean that whatever we do won't matter because we're already set for either one? Or why women were treated like complete shit back in the day?) but I won't. Because it'll get all too theological and my blog is really not a place for that kind of discussion. But you can go ahead and talk to your friends or pastors or priests about it. I doubt they'll actually give one universal answer we all can agree on. After all, we're reading from a loosely translated book that's around 4000 years old, no wonder we all have it wrong.
Right now I still call myself a Catholic because I like Jesus' teachings, but I refuse to base my entire life on something I cannot comprehend. And if someone tells me to 'take a leap of faith' or use a dumb ass metaphor about faith I will slap the bejesus out of them.
It astounds me how so many people don't even understand half of their own religion.
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ReplyDeleteHey Jasmine,
ReplyDeleteI respect your views on religion and appreciate that you acknowledge some of its truths. However as a Christian I feel the need to set a few things straight.
First of all, let me ask you a question: have you actually read the Bible from the very beginning of Genesis to the end of Revelation? And by that I mean read the actual words within the book, and not just "know" the stories that you've probably heard a thousand times before in sunday school and biblical studies class. To be fair, I myself have not finished reading the whole book (i'm getting there), but from what I have read, I can tell you that some of your so called "loopholes" maybe aren't really "loopholes". Take the part where you talked about God making the 10 commandments completely impossible for humans to abide by. Is it impossible? Yeap, I believe it is. So why did God make them?
"The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Romans 5:20-21)
The law was created to remind us that we're sinful people, and to point us to God's saving grace that came through Jesus. So we can't complain about it, cause it was never about us in the first place! It's about Jesus. And it's not like God just leaves us and expects us to follow the law. His grace not only justifies but also helps us live a godly life. (2 Peter 1:3)
Now let's talk about the part you talked about God making mistakes. (Btw, it was Noah who was saved from the flood not Abraham lol). I believe that God does not make mistakes "for he is not a human being, that he should change his mind.” (1 Samuel 15:29). Then why did He wipe out the whole world? Let me ask you this: have you ever done something in front of people just to prove a point? I believe that God planned to wipe out the world and He did it to prove a point. What is that point? Maybe He did it to show that God is capable of showing wrath to sinners in the past, but shows mercy by giving humankind a second chance, and today He holds firm to the promise that He will never destroy the world again. In other words, God is trying to show His two seemingly contradicting characteristics: His wrath and His mercy. And where do these two characteristics appear in their most developed form? Jesus on the cross.
These examples brings us to two conclusions:
First of all, if you haven't read every single book in the Bible, maybe you shouldn't start criticising one part of it. It would be like reading the Harry Potter series, stopping at the 6th book, and saying "Snape is evil!" before reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. If you have read the whole Bible, maybe your critics would marginally sound more respectable.
Second of all, maybe we don't have the right to complain about what God does, because it was never about us in the first place! Like these two examples, every single thing in the Bible points to Jesus. Maybe if we stop treating the Bible as some kind of self-help book that's supposed to benefit us, we would stop complaining. We should start seeing the Bible as one really long story about Jesus.
I could go on and on about these so called "loopholes" and how they're just excuses to complain about how the Bible isn't benefitting us. But that's not what I'm here to talk about. I'm here to talk about what my religion, Christianity, is actually about. Christianity is not about understanding God. Never once in the Bible did God command us to understand him. God even said that “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." (Isaiah 55:9), which I think is God's way of saying "Don't sweat it! My thoughts are way too complicated for your puny brains to handle!". Christianity is about Jesus. And what God does want us to do, among other things, is to seek him (Matthew 6:33), love him, love other people (Luke 10:27), and be like him (Ephesians 5:1), using the things we know of him from the Bible, which are enough.
ReplyDeleteIf you think religion is about understanding God, then boy are you missing out. I hope one day you'll see past the things you don't understand and focus on the things that really matter: love, grace, hope, to name a few of God's amazing attributes.
God bless :)