Tag: christianity

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Updated Manifesto of Sorts (what I believe in my deconstructed life)

I occasionally like to write these “What I’ve Learned” or “What I believe” posts, as I am continually learning, growing, healing, endeavoring to know more and more about myself and the world I inhabit… it helps for me to get it down somewhere as I have been deconstructing.

Was on a Facebook thread earlier where people were discussing their negative views about the bible… I usually don’t actively seek out participation in such things, what’s the point, people will believe what they will, but I decided to voice an opinion… that the bible is full of really bad stories (I pointed out only one in Genesis but there are oh so many) and that for me, I have seen the man behind the curtain, and there is no wizard there. That is a pretty succinct description of how I feel about religion or God or Christianity or the bible these days. (I assume you get the Wizard of Oz reference.)

It’s not that I am necessarily against faith or a Creator as concepts. It’s just that I cannot get on board with God as represented in the bible and Christianity. I can no longer, in good conscience, claim to believe in the truth and veracity of it. I believe all religion is man-made. The bible contains words of wisdom, psalms, some things that seem to be good and positive and life-affirming, but unfortunately, that’s all I have to say about it that is GOOD. It is, by and large, a work of fiction, and more it is designed to be utterly and absolutely worshipped and looked upon as absolute truth, indeed Christianity believes it to be holy in and of itself. I cannot go there. No more than I can go there with any other religious scroll from any other new or old religion.

I like the idea of faith, something greater than ourselves that lends us hope and foundational security and a way to just dump our problems onto another being to deal with… the idea that I do not need to save myself, that idea is tempting, but I have found it false. I DO need to save myself, encourage myself, believe in myself, not view me as a filthy broken sinner. I’m a human. Fallible. Capable of great good and even of evil. I believe we are born (or meant to be born) with a basic understanding of good and evil and a basic conscience (I believe this instead of the idea of Original Sin.) Just as there are birth defects of other kinds, some seem to be born without this conscience. Some seem to have it beaten out of them by life and circumstance. I believe only the most “defective” would actually choose evil (without negative, abusive environmental factors).

And making mistakes or bad decisions is not necessarily the same thing as being evil. People have to grow and learn and mature and often only accomplish this the hard way, by learning what NOT to do, discovering consequences, often with the best of intentions. That’s about as basic as it gets for me, when it comes to a belief system. I see so much toxicity out there connected to church, religion, faith and it makes me a bit crazy. All the horror, murder, and death connected to faith… it could fill an ocean. Wars fought, entire people groups wiped out, much as Hitler tried with the Jews, the Spanish Inquisition and many other horrors throughout history. All in the name of some god. Some bloodthirsty god. Nope not for me.

Humanity isn’t perfect, but we are all we’ve got. We have to evolve and get better. I sincerely hope we do.

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Deconstruction or Annihilation

One of the first “Jenga bricks” to be pulled out for me, was realizing that I had no special protection for being a Christian. I’d heard and read this theology of “umbrella of protection” that basically teaches that if I’m really good and behave myself I will be protected from all harm. Once that brick was pulled the rest of the demolition was easy. It all fell apart.

The 2nd biggie was realizing that I really, deep down, once I really stepped back and examined things, canNOT in good conscience believe that the bible is literal. There’s just too much batshit stuff in there. Zooming out helped me come to the conclusion that a lot of it was the time/culture/ignorance they were living in combined with patriarchal beliefs and that need for control that men have had from the beginning. I believe there is a lot of good stuff in there, but also a lot of nonsense, capped off with what is basically a voodoo curse in the back. (Even though we also should not suffer a witch to live.) So use magics when and how I say, is what they were thinking. Patriarchy. Control. The boot on the neck. Yeah.

Ya wanna talk magics? Raising the dead is dark magic according to anyone who says anything about magic, so… that’s weird. Healing, walking on water, all magic.

So, for me, there are such things as miracles and gifts, but they are not intrinsically good or evil. Just like a gun or knife or fork or ax isn’t good or evil, it’s about who wields the power and how they use it. Many of the recorded “miracles” happened to people who were not even people of faith, so that was telling. Many so-called angelic sightings or NDE’s, same. (Near-death Experiences)

My conclusions then, (and I am not totally done concluding and never will be) is that there is a TON of crap none of us really understand or are even really capable of understanding. Which can be disconcerting and feel like annihilation. The earth moves under our feet. Plagues and pandemics are real. I believe there is life on other planets and we have likely already made first contact, only the powers that be feel we are not able to handle it yet, and they would be right.

I mean FFS. Look at how we have just been behaving about science and medicine and fact.

So. What does this mean for the person who feels the way I do? How do we cope? We learn One Day at a Time. We struggle, we enjoy every moment we possibly can. We accept that there is much we cannot understand or control. We fight to survive.

Peace Out, peeps!