It seems that wherever you find disaster you find Godsplainers - people ready to explain to you exactly why God made this terrible thing happen. No matter if it's a natural disaster like an earthquake or tsunami or a wholly man made one like a terrorist attack, the Godsplainers will tell you exactly which offense to the Almighty brought this about. Like the prophets of old, these good men and women help us make link the invisible cause to the tragic effect, links we would normally not have percieved - like the link between gays and terrorist attacks and 200 year old voodoo ceremonies and earthquakes for instance.
It's a wee bit baffling then that a recent disaster in Ohio is so absent of Godsplainers. Maybe no one is Godsplainin' this one because it's just a little too easy. I mean someone builds a 19 meter styrofoam and fibreglass image of God - thereby offending not only the Commandments but also good taste - and it then burns down after it gets struck by lightning it should be a bit of a no brainer right? Yet the good folks over Solid Rock Church seem completely baffled as to why their giant idol was burned to the ground. Is this perhaps a case of being blinded by a flash of the obvious?
We need some Godspainers out there STAT! They actually plan on rebuilding that monstrosity at the cost of $700 000 (it cost $250 000 to build originally). That's US dollars by the way, not Zimbabwean dollars. Is it just me or does that seem kinda excessive? For once it would seem like having some Godsplainers around would actually benefit the needy! On the other hand, who am I to judge? I'm sure the widows, orphans and homeless of Monroe will all feel better once the town has its giant plastic Jesus back!
Can you imagine being a fundamentalist in the days of Isaiah?
You live your life according to the rules of Scripture, you do the things it tells you to do and you shun the things it tells you to shun. Then all of a sudden along comes this guy and tells you that you are wrong. Worse, he claims that God is the one that thinks you are wrong! Just the other day you brought your sacrifices to the temple and now this guy proclaims:
""The multitude of your sacrifices – what are they to me?" says the LORD. "I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fattened animals; I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.
When you come to appear before me, who has asked this of you, this trampling of my courts?
Stop bringing meaningless offerings! Your incense is detestable to me. New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations – I cannot bear your evil assemblies.
Your New Moon festivals and your appointed feasts my soul hates. They have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them."
Doesn’t that just make you angry enough to stone the guy? How very dare he? God doesn’t want your sacrifices? Poppycock!! You know this Isaiah guy can’t possibly be speaking the Words of God because you know the Bible. You know that it was God who explicitly commanded those very things in the books of Moses. Sacrifices and incense and holy days weren’t your ideas, they were what God told you to do in the Bible! So where does this Isaiah get off claiming something different? Oh but wait, listen to what else he said:
"Learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow."
Well now it all makes sense, doesn’t it? He is clearly one of those liberal socialist hippie types who care more about “social justice” than about the Truth of the Word of God.
Yeah, somehow I think the Jewish equivalent of a Bible Thumper at the time of Isaiah may be shocked to see how the Bible eventually turned out…
The point I’m trying to make here is that it is very possible to be doing what the Bible tells you while completely missing what the Bible is telling you. The reason I’m doing this is because I finally figured out what why the Manhattan Declaration bothered me so much.
See, from the moment I first heard about this document the wrongness of it made we want to blog about it and yet I had trouble pinning down exactly why it upset me the way it did. Here you have this document signed by thousands of Christians, including hundreds of the most prominent leaders of the Catholic, Evangelical and Orthodox churches and it basically states that the focus of Christianity should be the following 3 things:
Being against abortion,
Being against gay marriage and
Being for “Religious freedom” – which basically translates to the idea that Christians have the right to legislation against abortion and gay rights as well as the notion that they must fight all legislation supporting the legalization of abortion and gay marriage.
There is just so much wrong there that I had trouble knowing where to start! I finally get it now though. The big problem here is not the hypocrisy that characterizes so much of the “pro-life” and “sanctity of marriage” proponents. No, the problem here is the heartlessness of it all.
Basically, it tells Christians to be like my fictional Jewish Torah-thumper, to care more about bits of Biblical Law than about people who actually need our care. The Manhattan Declaration really shows its heartlessness by telling Christians not to care less about the heavyweight concerns of Scripture – the poor, the disenfranchised and the lost – and rather invest their energy in fighting against the featherweight concerns*. Claiming that sexual matters constitute a major theme in the Bible is like claiming Tom Bombadil is a major character in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. If you take every verse in the Bible even tangentially related to sexual matters and place it on one end of a scale and then drop every verse on poverty, money and social justice on the other end the sheer weight of those verses would launch the sex verses over the horizon like a catapult. How weird is it then that I can find large numbers of Christians who would happily condemn me for not condemning homosexuals but pretty much none who would condemn me for owning more than one warm jacket when there are people around me who have none?
I don’t know about you but I don’t have to try all that hard to imagine being a fundamentalist in the days of Isaiah – I already know because in many ways that’s exactly who I am. If Isaiah was here now, he would be pointing his finger at me and telling me that I am the one missing the will of God. He would be completely correct too, I am completely out of touch with the lion’s share of Biblical teaching – I don’t share with the poor, I’m not looking after the orphans and widows, not clothing the naked or feeding the hungry or seeking justice for the wronged. I have no defense, I’m guilty.
Its easy to make your religion be about following the parts you like with and only opposing those sins that actually offend you or set off your personal “ick” factor. Actually caring about people the way God commands on the other hand is really hard! Loving the unlovable doesn’t come naturally, at least it doesn’t for me.
I think we need more Isaiah’s. Or at least we need to listen more to the ones we already have.
* Think I’m exaggerating? Here is a quote from an interview with one of the men behind the Manhattan Declaration: “They say they also want to speak to younger Christians who have become engaged in issues like climate change and global poverty, and who are more accepting of homosexuality than their elders, the same source informs. They say they want to remind them that abortion, homosexuality and religious freedom are still paramount issues. “We argue that there is a hierarchy of issues,” said Charles Colson, a prominent evangelical who founded Prison Fellowship after serving time in prison for his role in the Watergate scandal. “A lot of the younger evangelicals say they’re all alike. We’re hoping to educate them that these are the three most important issues.””
See? He comes right out and says it, opposing the gays is more important than dealing with poverty.
To be against blasphemy one must be for it.
To oppose heresy one must allow it.
Does that seem contradictory to you? Hear me out.
To those who claim to love God and value His Word, things like blasphemy and heresy are perverse and destructive and therefore we keep them undiscussable, unmentionable, not up for debate. We consider such things taboo – they may not be talked about or even thought about. But I contend that blasphemy and heresy thrives in the dark, that it becomes stronger when it becomes untalkaboutable.
It is in our nature to build a fence around taboo ideas. Then to ensure that no one dwells to close to the fence we keep building wider and wider fences around the original offensive notion. Almost inevitably these fences will begin to include our pet peeves and prejudices. After a while, we start making more things taboo in the name of avoiding blasphemy and heresy when really it has become more about what we find offensive rather than what God may find offensive. This is the point when tradition starts to void the will of God. This is when people start to forget that “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath”. Over time, orthodoxy itself can become heresy. Religion itself can become blasphemous.
Think about it. Jesus and the Apostles were considered heretics by their theological peers. The first Christian martyr was executed as a blasphemer.
The Prophets weren’t persecuted by atheists.
What do we lose by engaging perceived heresy instead of silencing it? If we are right then we may gain a deeper understanding of our own position and we may win over either those who disagree with us or those who are undecided on the matter. At the very least it will give us a clearer understanding of the mind and motivation of those who disagree with us. There is of course also the chance that engaging that which we find offensive will bring us to new and different points of view. We may learn that we have been wrong all along and in these cases engagement offers us what silence never can – the opportunity for renewal. Is a religion that can live only in the silence of its critics really a religion worth following?
Regarding blasphemy, does the Bible not show God more than capable of either smiting or forgiving those who trespass against Him? Surely a deity who requires men to avenge offenses by other lowly men is not really deserving of the title?
So then I ask that you consider the following.
Which is the greater blasphemy? Is it to possibly offend a Being who is more than capable of vindicating Himself? Or is it to destroy – whether literally or figuratively – a man made in His Image?
Which is the greater heresy? Is it making a statement that goes against orthodoxy? Or is it being unwilling to even consider that not everything orthodox is right?
What is a Faith worth having? Is it something that crumbles when challenged or something that becomes purified by questioning?
Which is the more blasphemous act? To offend a Being great enough to forgive those who trespass against it or to presume to act on God’s behalf?
Which is the more heretical act? To question dogma when you could be mistaken or to enforce dogma when you could be mistaken?
Is it just me or does it really suck not to fit in? Now I know, there are many out there – mostly conspiracy theorists and emo teens – who revel in the fact that they are not one of the sheeple, going against the stream instead like someone in a whiskey ad. I don’t buy that though. If years of being a misfit have taught me anything it’s that most alleged non-conformists merely traded in one kind of herd mentality for another. If there is one thing a non-conformist hates even more than a conformist, it’s a non-conformist who fails to conform to the norms of non-conformity. Suffice it to say, I’ve been disabused of the notion that not fitting in is romantic in some way. It just sucks.
Besides, for me this isn’t about clothing or taste in music or even political views. If only my problems could be that trivial. Unfortunately the places I have trouble locating my place in just happen to be the very places human beings draw their sense of self and identity from, namely culture and religion. I can’t delude myself into believing that this somehow makes me special and enlightened because I suspect that I struggling with the same question that millions of my fellow human beings are struggling with. Culturally I know that it’s a rather confusing time to be a White Afrikaans South African, especially one who grew up in Apartheid South Africa. At this point you can’t really open a Sunday Newspaper without seeing some kind of debate in it regarding our place in this country (and whether we still have one). My cultural dilemma is slightly less academic though. Thing is, I was raised to be very patriotic and I grew up loving everything about my culture. But then 1994 came around and with it, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and I had to come to terms with the fact that not everything I believed about my culture was as true as I once believed. My dilemma therefore is that of a child learning suddenly that his parents are deeply flawed and imperfect human beings. I actually think that sums up my trouble with my faith as well. I used to be a True Believer, with unquestioning faith in God and the literal, infallible Truth of Scripture. Alas, just like my faith in the nobility of my culture had trouble surviving contact with the truth about Apartheid, my faith had trouble surviving contact with the Information Age.
On the other hand some people choose to distance themselves utterly and almost violently from their former identities. Just like I’ve seen some of my friends join Facebook groups where they can sit around all day telling each other what a magical happy time for everyone the Apartheid years were, I have friends that hardly even speak Afrikaans anymore. Seems that there is an entire generation out there of people who’s very identity rests on rejecting everything Afrikaans, Christian, Calvinist and Traditional. Now on the one hand, I don’t blame them since I agree that both culturally and religiously there are a lot of things worth rejecting. Heck if you’ve read a few posts on this blog you would be excused for thinking that’s what I’m all about too. You’d be excused, but you would be wrong.
See I can’t just take off my faith or my culture like an old pair of socks and pretend I never wore them. I did grow up as an Afrikaner and I did grow up as a fundamentalist, Pentecostal Christian. These things are part of me whether I like them or not. Yet while they may be part of me they are not me. Therein lies my sense of unbelonging. On the one hand I have to try and deal with the fact that not everything I once considered true and right is true or right. For this reason I can’t simply fit in and belong anymore. On the other hand I can’t pretend that nothing of what I once considered true and right was true or right. Whether we are talking about Charismatic Christians or Boere Afrikaners, these are people I spent most of my life with. As tempting as it would be, I can’t simply reduce these people to broad stereotypes in order to distance myself from them and all they stand for because I’ve known these people all my life. I’ve been “these people”. In some ways I guess I still am.
This leaves me stuck in the limbo of unbelonging. Worse, it leaves with in a world without certainty. I don’t get to live with the happy certainty of a true believer and I don’t get to live with the renewed certainty that comes with rejecting all that you believe is wrong. But I guess that gives me a reason to keep blogging. At least here I have room to keep searching, to keep asking questions. Maybe in time I will learn to ask the right questions. Maybe not though, maybe I’m just starting down a very long and uncertain road. I guess there is no way to know that right now and that too kinda sucks. I’m human after all, I crave certainty, I want to know I’m right, I long to believe in a group of my own. I’m often tempted to follow those who seem so certain of themselves, who seem to have it all worked out so much better than me. I just happen to be unable to do that right now.
But before I start sounding like the emo teens I disparaged not so long ago, I have to add that I am becoming more and more appreciative of one particular form of questioning certainty – satire. When someone questions and confronts the beliefs we hold dear it’s easy to become adversarial in return and not consider that some of that criticism may be valid. When properly done, humour seems to circumvent that response entirely and (when done right) may even cause us to pause and reconsider some of our most dearly held beliefs. In my previous blog you may remember one of the so called “New Mystics” pontificating about how their ridiculous “Tokin’ the Ghost” rituals are actually powerful tools to break down religious mindsets. It’s really not though, its just really stupid. Now compare the following video:
See? Now THAT is how you break down religious mindsets you air sipping, Bible sniffing, pretentious halfwits! Satire is an incredibly powerful weapon when used right. It can do more than just confront you with truth or questions. It can get you to honestly ask the really important questions yourself. Questions like: Do I really sound that silly? Do I really come across like that big a douche? Could I really be such a hypocrite? No matter if it’s political, cultural or religious, if it is that easy for people to make fun of you maybe its time to pause and ask yourself why.
Now I freely admit, I’m still a novice – which is why my attempts at satire may sometimes come across more like mocking. Oh who am I fooling, maybe sometimes it really is mocking instead of satire. Usually though in my own imperfect way, I’m just trying to tell my friends, my family, myself, my nation and my fellow Christians one thing:
You may crazy and ridiculous and sometimes you completely embarrass me but I still love you all. The only reason I mock you and make fun of you and challenge your ideas is because I think you are worth saving. You may be wrong about so much but I still think there are things worth keeping about you.
With imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, I decided to emulate my favourite online humour website – Cracked.com – and do some list style humour. After seeing some pretty crazy Christian videos online lately I thought about doing something along the line of a “The 6 most ridiculous things done in Church”. However after pouring through the many many offerings of Youtube I found myself less amused and more saddened. After watching the 6 videos I chose I started to feel that a more appropriate title would “6 Videos that would convince an outsider that Christianity is a scam”. You may not agree with that assessment my gentle reader but to me, these videos all point to some serious problems within the Body of Christ. It is then juxtaposed between satire and sorrow that I present the following in no particular order:
1 – The Holy Ghost Hokey Pokey
This video clip really caught me by surprise. It’s not that I’ve never seen church folk retool secular music into worship music before. No, despite often declaring Satan to be a copycat who is forever offering counterfeits to the great things of God, Christians have often and without a blush of irony, brought “worldly” things into the church. The thing is though, they usually at least attempt to (awkwardly) “Christianize” it first at least – for a great example see this worship leader’s rather painful attempt to squeeze the word “Jesus” into the lyrics of “You spin me round”. Not here! The motto at Morningstar Ministries must be “Go big or go home”* because they don’t even opt for one of those songs that is about someone’s girlfriend but could sorta be about Jesus too. No, they whip out the freakin Hokey Pokey and they do it with a straight face (though I’m not ruling out that this was some sort of elaborate prank on the congregation). My problem here is not simply with the practice of lamely copycatting secular media in the church. I really hate the way that things that are clearly not spiritual are treated as if they are deep wells of spiritual wisdom. This video demonstrates incredibly well that you can get away with anything in church, no matter how obviously ridiculous, as long as you claim it has spiritual significance. After all, who can prove you wrong? It’s not as if anyone can actually look into the spiritual realm and call shenanigans. It kind of reminds me of this one time in church when there was a fashion show on stage. Only it was presented as “Not a fashion show but a parable told by prophets”. To me however it just looked like all the good looking people on the worship team strutting their stuff to Number One Crush by Garbage (there were some Bible verses on in the background at least, but still…). Of course, I acknowledge I could be mistaken. Maybe the Holy Ghost Hokey Pokey really does have magic healing powers. If I ever saw the HGHP heal anything other than non-specific aches and pains – like say blindness or pneumonia for instance – I will take it all back.
2 – The Christian Side Hug
This video is why I hate Poe’s Law. Everytime someone posts this video there is always some debate whether this is meant to be a joke or not. Honestly how could you tell? Either way it shows conclusive proof why Christian Ministries need to stop attempting to be “cool” and “relevant” because they tend to end up being neither. Whoever wrote the lyrics to this travesty obviously didn’t have a clue what a “roughrider” was for one thing… I for one tend to think that this was not meant as a joke. After all, the side hug is a very real Church phenomenon. But let’s say for the sake of argument that this was only a misguided attempt at humour by some Christian Youth Ministry. It really changes nothing. As the proverb goes, “Many a truth is spoken in jest”. Even if this was done jokingly, it still highlights some of the incredibly unhealthy attitudes in some churches regarding relationships and sexuality. Notice how in that song it is the girls with their dirty sexy bodies who are to blame for dragging virtuous young men into the seedy world of hugging? As a student I also saw first hand the damage such all-touching-is-bad dating policies could do. You tend to end up with either a church full youngsters riddled with deep shame and guilt for the imaginary sins of hugging and kissing or thanks to a strong “Christian courtship” program you could end up with a church full of single 30-somethings who are too dysfunctional to date anyone.
3 – Tokin’ the Ghost
Now while this video may seem like an obvious joke, the unfortunate truth is that the “New Mystics” are very real and draw a sizable following. I would like to state categorically that while my profile description mentions my leanings toward Christian mysticism, I am in no shape or form affiliated with these guys nor would I wish to be associated with them. While these guys may seem like an extreme fringe what they do here is something you may find in a great many Pentecostal and Charismatic churches, namely the practice of taking one or two (or half) verses from the Bible and then using that to build a teaching/theology completely different from all orthodox doctrine. Makes for some very entertaining, albeit nutty, sermons!
4 – The Holy Ghost enema
I considered using some footage of Benny Hinn here as the man is a goldmine for strange Christian videos. He even has some videos of his ministry mixed to “Let the bodies hit the floor”! But then I thought that was just too darn easy and I went with this video of his wife instead. “What is wrong with that video?”, you may ask me. (If you did, I guess my follow up question would have to be “Are you kidding me??”) This video – as well as most of the rest here – shows a very disturbing attitude that reminds me a bit of the story of the Emperor’s new clothes. What Mrs Hinn (and the others here) is doing is making her words reproof proof. See if you think what they are doing or saying is ridiculous then the problem is you. You aren’t spiritual enough, you are too cerebral, too religious, too uptight, you are the one who is out of touch with the Spirit of God. If what they are saying seems senseless then it is only because you are the one that lacks sense. Maybe it’s just me but I see a very obvious problem with having an attitude like that…
5 – The Piano Prophetess
Where does one even start on a video like this? It kinda makes you miss the Old Testament days when there was actually a penalty for making BS claims and passing it off as the Word of God. This is a problem I have with a lot of what passes for prophecy in the church today. There are lots of ecstatic utterances, wild, completely unrealistic promises are made and then… Well then nothing tends to come of it but that doesn’t even slow these prophets down. They get to carry on consequence free. I always wonder why no one ever seems to follow up, why no one ever calls them on all the promises (from GOD remember!) they proclaim that come to nothing. This one is actually worse than most, she is asking for money (lots of it) based on this alleged “word”. Again, if it turns out I am wrong about this and Christians really do become the Lords of all Media™ (media, media, media, media, media, media) I will apologize most humbly.
6 – The Cancer Pastor
As you can see I saved the worst for last. This whole incident was just a new level of reprehensible. However I don’t think it happened because Christians are too gullible or too easily emotionally manipulated. Honestly, I believe any group could have been taken in by a guy like this. After all, he wasn’t some sleazy conman who worked his way into their ranks, he was a trusted member of the group since childhood. He had everyone fooled, who could have seen this coming? But really, it was because of porn? Porn made him do it? Seriously? James Dobson would be proud I guess but honestly you can’t blame porn for every bad thing you do. On the other hand, remember what I said earlier about the unhealthy attitudes in church toward sexuality and the damage it can do?
This little sampling reminds me of a Woody Allen movie quote: “If Jesus came back and saw what's going on in his name, he'd never stop throwing up.”
*It may be an unofficial motto but still. They didn’t just get a building for their church, they got themselves the old PTL compound! When Rick Joyner allegedly went to heaven he didn’t just get an anointing from God, he got the mantle of the Apostle Paul! These guys don’t screw around!
I won’t lie to you, things have been a little tense in sunny South Africa lately. The recent brutal murder of a prominent (far)right winger has pushed the idea of Uhuru out of the fringes and into the mainstream. For those unfamiliar with the concept, Uhuru (aka Night of the Long Knives, aka Operation White Cleanup) refers to an alleged plot by black South Africans to wipe out all white South Africans in one night of brutal and highly coordinated bloodshed. Now like all good conspiracy theories, rumours regarding this have been around in one form or another for quite a while but due to recent events more people appear to be taking it seriously. The good news is that cooler heads seem to be prevailing and so far all we have is a lot of threats, posturing in the media and smacktalk on Facebook.
So today while discussing said internet tough talking, my cousin made an interesting observation – Uhuru has become something of a religion for some people. This struck me as very accurate but then I realized something. Just last night I had been arguing with someone who believed that the UN was trying to disarm the United States in order to turn it into some sort of socialist colony for the shadowy One World Government. This made me realize that all this talk of Uhuru is really just a local expression of an international religion – the Religion of Fear. Think I’m being ridiculous? Let’s take a look at just how religious the fearmongers of the world have become.
Just like religion:
Fearmongering relies on prophecy
To keep the flock faithful, they must live under a continuous cloud of anxiety and naked fear. In order to accomplish this the ministers of the Religion of Fear keep making predictions about terrifying events that are about to unfold any day now. Peace of mind is heresy, to keep the faith is to live in constant fear of the future. Now some of these predictions just seem like wild speculation and fantasy based on nothing more than the imagination of the person making them. However sometimes you need more than that to make people believe the unbelievable. That is why the Religion of Fear often claims that their dire predictions come straight from the LORD God Himself! After all, however unlikely it may seem that the gentle lady who has been cooking and cleaning for you for two decades will one day drown your children in the bathtub, if GOD said so then it must be true. Those who believe in Uhuru tend to do so based on alleged prophecies by the Boer prophet Siener van Rensburg. In other cases people might not be as bold as Pat Robertson in claiming to have heard tidings of doom from God personally but they instead claim to have figured out the key to understanding obscure Biblical prophecy, which really is the next best thing.
Fearmongering relies on unfalsifiable data
Another important tenet for the Church of the Fearful is to keep as many of their claims as possible impossible to refute until after the fact. After all, getting people to buy into your story when it is demonstrably false can be rather hard to do. Therefore, the prophecy of terror is usually backed up by no more than the reminder that something similar has already happened somewhere at some point in history. The rest has to be taken on faith. Since THEY are so super sneaky and have all their evil planning meetings behind closed doors in secret locations you just need to trust the fearstokers that their alleged super secret informant is telling the truth. The burden of proof is then unceremoniously passed to those who question their predictions. Prove that the death of Nelson Mandela won’t be the catalyst for mass murder! Prove that the Rapture won’t happen in 2011! Prove that the world won’t end in 2012! Prove that President Obama won’t declare martial law and round up the citizens into FEMA concentration camps! If you can’t (and honestly, who can?) that just serves as further proof that fear is wise and skepticism is foolish.
Fearmongering engages in apologetics
Of course from time to time the Fear Priesthood need to deal with the fact that the horrors they prophecy have an annoying habit of never actually happening. To handle this they have a very active apologetics ministry. Missed predictions are explained away, reinterpreted or simply swept under the rug. Anything from history to current events can be reshaped and reinterpreted to suit their purposes. To an unbeliever this may not be as convincing but the point here is that apologetics is not so much aimed at those outside of the Church of Fear but rather to reassure those on the inside that they are totally still in the right and that there is a very good and semi-plausible reason why they appear to have egg on their faces. So the Great Swine Flu Plot of ’09 never came to pass as advertised, so you stocked up on canned food and toilet paper for the civil war of 1994 that never happened, that doesn’t mean you relax your vigilance!! The future is still totally terrible! It turns out THEY were just scared of your preparedness that time, they are still totally waiting to strike the moment you stop being terrified! Reality can’t be trusted! All conflicting information is misinformation!
Fearmongers offer salvation and damnation
Like virtually all other religions, the Religion of Fear offers its faithful a path to salvation. The priesthood promises that unspeakable horrors are about to befall an unsuspecting world and only those elect few who are wise enough to accept the gnosis they are imparting will be able to withstand the terrifying things that are coming. Here it does more than just use the language of established religions, as many young religions have done before it wraps itself in an older one. This lends the Church of Crisis far more gravitas. That president is no longer just a bad leader, he is the Antichrist! They aren’t fearmongering, they are acting as good watchmen by pointing out the impending judgement of God! This isn’t just a crazy conspiracy theory, this is what the Book of Revelation has foretold!
Fearmongering demonizes opponents and critics
It logically follows therefore that if the Preachers of Horror work for God then the ones they warn against – the UN, the Illuminati, the Vatican, the Jews, the gays, the liberals, the Communists – are knowingly working directly for Satan (that's why they cause earthquakes and such). It therefore becomes safe for members of this religion to simply disregard arguments made by their critics, no matter how logical and factual they may seem. After all, how dare you trust anything from the Father of Lies himself? The Religion of Fear isolates and insulates their members against all disagreeable reality. Everything you don't like is actually part of THEM and their sinister agenda. Life can therefore be repainted into comforting black vs white, US vs THEM with all inconvenient gray areas removed. In their place the Church of Calamity gives its members grandiose hyperbole. Everything is bigger, everything runs deeper. Scientists don’t teach evolution because it’s accepted scientific fact – in actual fact they know evolution is false and they just teach it to destroy the Christian Faith in order to usher in the Antichrist. Gun control activists can’t possibly have personal and sincere reasons for opposing handguns, no they must all be working from the shadowy UN playbook for worldwide socialism. A murder on a farm is not just an act of senseless violence, its preparation for genocide.
I am only able to look at the two cultures I am most familiar with but I have a sneaking suspicion that the more cultures one looks at the more denominations of the Church of Fear one will find. In fact it may be the fastest growing religion in the world. Except of course in those corners of the world were there is enough real horror that the people there feel no need to invent imaginary ones.
I was reminded today of something that used to cause me endless anguish. Actually I feel pretty confident in saying that I was not alone in this either. I’ll wager that this was anguish shared by pretty much all evangelical Christian young adults, especially those in the Pentecostal movement. I’m referring to the idea of “God’s will for my life”. Now if you happen to be unfamiliar with this idea – and really you had to have been there – Christians (young ones specifically) are told that God has their whole lives all planned out. All of it. Where you are supposed to live, what you should study, where you should study, the job you are supposed to do, the person you are supposed to marry, the church you are supposed to attend and pretty much everything else you can think of. The intensity of this idea may vary from person to person but I’ve seen this taken to some ridiculous extremes. I have known people who would “seek the will of God” regarding what clothes they should wear every day or what brands they ought to buy when shopping for groceries. I wish I was kidding.
Now the problem with this perfect plan is that there is a small catch. You don’t get to know anything about it. You get to know that there is a very narrow path you are supposed to walk on, you get to know that you will be disappointing God if you don’t and that you will have to navigate the minefield of a second (or third) rate life if you deviate from it at any point, BUT you never get to know where this path is. This leads the young Christian to constantly, frantically search for this ineffable path. You are left constantly second guessing your every decision – is this the will of God or not? So you start randomly flipping through the Bible, hoping that you will open it on some Divine guidance (or was that just me?), you get in every prayer line hoping for a “word” or a prophecy and you buy every book on the subject that you can (I’m not even going to tell you how many I own...). When I was the leader of young adult and student cell groups, questions regarding “God’s will for my life” was hands down the number one prayer request.
Now apart from a lot of needless mental anguish and constant second guessing, this idea also leads to rampant douchebaggery. Commitment you made turning out to be inconvenient? Maybe it’s not God’s will for you so just quit! (It’s astounding how many Church programs suffer a sharp drop in attendance after the first few weeks) Studies/job/ministry harder and less enjoyable than you originally thought? Maybe that’s a sign that it’s not part of God’s perfect will so you should just drop it and look for something else! However if you want to see doucebaggery dialed up to 11, look no further than the warzone of broken people and hearts that that is the Christian dating scene. Going in there is that douchebag move of telling someone that God told you they are supposed to date you (amazingly, that actually works better than you would think – it happened to a friend of mine). Then there is the super douchebag move to get out of a relationship when it starts getting too real for your liking – telling them that God has revealed to you that you are supposed to date someone else (to my eternal shame and regret, I was the incredible douchebag who pulled that stunt).
What really stings is the fact that all this was for nothing. This supposedly Christian idea that was the source of so much abuse (given and taken) in my life isn’t even Biblical. Here is the thing, the Bible doesn’t leave the question “what is God’s will for my life?” as some vague mystery that we each have to puzzle out with the help of various oracles. Instead it answers that question in a very straightforward fashion: “what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” (Mic 6:8)
Heck it doesn’t just throw that answer out once, it does so again and again and again and again and again. There is no mystery, the answer has been spelled out clearly – do good to others, don’t cause evil and harm, be kind and loving and help those who cannot help themselves. The will of God for your life could not be any clearer!
What then about all that other stuff? What is the will of God regarding your career choices and marriage partner? Well the Bible has something to say about that too! It says: “Dude, whatever!” No seriously, it does! Regarding marriage, God says go for it, marry the person you love and have some kids – or don’t, being single is totally cool too. Regarding a job, God says that you should get one (just make sure it’s an honest one) that you find satisfying, do it really well and make the most of it.
So if I could send a letter to my confused younger self with only one piece of advice, I would tell myself some winning lottery numbers. But if I can send a longer message I would also tell me to chill out a bit and stop trying so hard to find something that just can’t be found. Trying to follow a script that you can’t read leads to nothing but misery for yourself and those around you. All you can (and should) do is to try to make smart decisions, use common sense, take responsibility for your life and make the most of it. What God wants from you is to do your best to leave the world a better place than the one you found. You’ll figure out the rest as you go.
I spent most of my life as a fundamentalist and discovered Reason much later than I would have liked. I'm still dealing with the trauma and this blog is my therapy. So this is me: non-conformist, heretic, fan of delicious flavour and a man without a home. I’m a cynical optimist and a really angry zen master. I am just a man trying to make sense of it all. This is my life in juxtaposition.
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