(10-minute read)
Losing my religion.
I am in the process of deconstructing my Christian faith. What does that mean? The best explanation that I could find is here. Understanding one’s religion can be as impenetrable as the lyrics to the song linked in the title.
Life’s a journey.
Walking what path?
Where am I in my walk with Jesus? I want to warn readers up front that this is going to meander a bit. Not that that is unusual in my writings. I decided to open with my thoughts concerning the fundamental absolute core belief of Christianity. The virgin birth. To not accept that is to not accept Christianity. Others disagree.
~
As often happens in the world young women get pregnant out of wedlock. That was as true in the time of Jesus as it is today. There can be a lot of stigma with that. There shouldn’t be but there is even today and it’s mostly because of religion and the tendency of any society to have groups that they look down on. In that regard society hasn’t changed all that much through millennia.
I come from a time when young women that got pregnant left school and went away. Sometimes we didn’t even notice their absence until after they had been gone awhile. We were too consumed and governed by our own hormones and reality to be aware of a lot of things. I’ve always regretted that.
What always stood out to me about the virgin birth story is that Mary didn’t have a say. Honestly, I never gave much credence to the virgin birth. If that story is true then God is a child rapist. I don’t believe that God is a rapist. God being defined as a supreme being. Not believing in the virgin birth of Jesus immediately drops him out of the deity category along with the trinity. That’s kind of the non-believer trifecta.
Where does that leave my beliefs since those are fundamentals of the Christian faith and the fact that I never won the lottery. That leaves me being not Christian in my spiritual beliefs. Well, I do have spiritual beliefs. My focus is just broader now. By losing god I’m trying to gain a broader understanding of God. Cryptic enough?
As for Jesus the man I’m more inclined to think that I’m walking now with a good friend that I never got the chance to know. A friend who had a great mom and dad. A friend who had some excellent ideals and thoughts about how to go about living life and society in general. He’s like friends and family of mine that have passed away. I still think of them. I still talk with them. I’m just not around them.
Same with Jesus.
Doing the church hokey pokey.
For whatever reason a few of Jesus’ thoughts made it to modern times along with the thoughts of people that never knew him and were put into books centuries later. There are lots of interpretations about what Christianity means. The last that I read there are 100 different versions of the bible in English, 50 if revisions aren’t counted.[1]
Theologians have answers for a lot of hard questions about Jesus and the bible. Not all. Sometimes the answer is that it’s just beyond our human understanding and we have to accept what we’re told on faith and that after we die everything will become clear. And just to be clear that isn’t a good answer even when it’s believed. I’m in my late 70s now and find that I am looking for a little clarity sooner than that.
I have read and studied lots of books about Christianity as well as other faiths. I had a minor in religion in college. A good source is the book Zealot by Reza Aslan. I have been rereading that recently.
Over the years I had a lot more questions including during the decades that I was unchurched. Then I stepped back into church. Then I stepped back out again. Then I stepped back in. Then back out. You get the drift. No matter how much things changed, they stayed the same.
I have made quite a few religious posts in the past and even have a page for Religion related stories at my blog of me dealing with my religion. I’m not going to fold all those up into this post. I am going to provide just a couple of examples of scriptures that I found questionable.
Take for example the plans God had for Jeremiah. God told Jeremiah that he had a plan for him. So now people are taught that God has a plan for each of us. That literally means all of humanity including people of other faiths. I gotta tell ya if all that’s going on in the world is God’s wonderful plan the plan sucks and sucks bad. I’m talking black hole kind of sucking.
One of the first things that really jumped out to me in bible study is that his followers really thought that Jesus was coming back during their lifetimes, including Jesus. Obviously, they got that wrong. Subsequent generations of Christian believers came up with excuses for that and adopted a watchful waiting attitude and after a few hundred years a guy got the bright idea to write everything down. Then another guy came along and said that everything that we have needs to go in one book and we’ll say that our work is divinely inspired and will fuck up real bad anybody that says different.
The second thing is that God was going to get even with a vengeance when he comes back after softening things up for a few thousand years. Men, women and children past the age of accountability will all be judged. Give unbelievers no quarter. No prisoners taken. Seems kinda’ harsh doesn’t it?
They also believed the world was flat and that a firmament held back the waters in Jesus’ time.
So, there’s that.
In the beginning
Probably seems a little late in the post to have that heading but it’s how I roll in my journey.
When did I start questioning my faith. Faith. Not spirituality. Looking back, I suppose it was from the very beginning.
When I was a teenager and new to Christianity, I can remember one of the first questions that I asked the pastor of the Southern Baptist church that our family had joined. I asked him that if a man in, say Africa, was a good man all his life, never heard about Jesus, and died would he get to go to heaven? The pastor said no because he had not accepted Jesus as his personal savior and that’s why missionary work was so important to get the message out. I can remember thinking to myself at the time, “Well that’s bullshit.”
What I should have done is hold onto that thought and dug deeper. Instead, I just nodded and went along with what I was told whether I believed it or not. I accepted teachings in order to get along with the crowd. Yes, I went along to get along. The people that I hung with seemed to be okay with what they believed. Who was I to question people older, more experienced, and smarter than me?
I deferred my beliefs to others.
That was then.
My questioning of the tenets Christianity increased over the years and especially during the pandemic.
During the pandemic Christians that I know and love encouraged death through faith. They didn’t need a vaccine or to mask because they were washed in the blood of the lamb and had immune systems. Lots of Christians died in Jesus’ name. Was that god’s plan?
Science and progress went out the window, replaced by scripture from a time when thirty was old age. To make matters worse Christians encouraged the death of others. If they died it was because their faith was weak. Christians endangered others as well as they insisted on being around other people.
Consequently a few hundred thousand people died that didn’t have to. Any future response to the next pandemic that will surely come along has already been compromised by incredible pervasive ignorance. Christianity has become the poster child for ignorance.
Christian messaging killed.
Evil is.
There has been so much evil hate, intolerance, suppression, murdering and torturing done under the authority of toxic Christian dogma over the epochs that alone should give rise to questioning the authenticity of the faith. BTW that questioning should hold true with any religion. We are seeing that evil being supported by Christian leaders today.
How about a nice inquisition?[2]
Currently there is an incredible amount of damage and just outright evil being done in the name of Christianity and Jesus. The real Jesus, not the MAGA Orange Jesus. That’s hard to reconcile with a faith that is supposed to be all about the love.
But here we are.
Church leaders openly and zealously support a fascist while the majority of churches remain silent or risk losing their tax-exempt status and congregations. Pastors that speak out against Trump also risk losing their livelihoods and being able to support their families if their congregation decides to fire them and that happens.[3] No easy choices here.
Christian leaders in Germany with a few notable exceptions supported Hitler’s rise to power while others remained silent. How did that work out for Germany? History has shown time and time again how one person, usually a man, can lead an entire nation to its demise. We were arrogant to think that it couldn’t happen here.
Putin and his invasion of Ukraine is supported by the Russian church. Once again hundreds of thousands of people are dying and the church supports the actions. MAGA Christians in this country support Putin.
Undoubtedly there are those reading this thinking that all Christians aren’t like this. That’s true. But where is their voice? It’s muted or suppressed and much of the silence is by choice.
The rise of MAGA Christo fascism that started during the 2016 election and has only increased along with the worship of their Orange Jesus. MAGA Christian Evangelicals portray Trump as being the “Chosen One.” The new MAGA Christian leader of their faith is a convicted rapist. Donald Trump is without a doubt the most immoral President that we’ve ever had with Clinton being in a not even close second place.
Trump is more accurately the biblical anti-Christ.
Wrapping up
In closing there isn’t much left to say other than the Old Testament Christian faith God went from being a wrathful vengeful God that would kill every man, woman and child to a New Testament God of love with they/them pronouns and now for Trump MAGA Christians back to a wrathful, vengeful god with male pronouns. Which god did you choose?
I choose neither.
https://yadayadayadablahblah.blogspot.com/