Magellan's Log: The First Rule of Religion

P4130011.JPG (42412 bytes) The First Rule
of Religion

Fellowship, reminders of transcendence, a group commitment to and funding of good deeds, the complex comforts of ritual at the beginning and end of life: Organized Christianity provides all this in various ways and to various degrees. And many church members and even some churches do good works day in and day out quietly, without the delights of tooting their own horns and filling their own pockets through a 24/7 TV channel. But truly, the hypocritical religious cup runneth way, way over. The problem is twofold.

1.
The first part Richard Goldstein managed to reduce to four words: "intolerance passing for righteousness."

2.
The second part the Greeks long ago reduced to one word: "hubris." "We love the sinner but hate the sin." What enormous unexamined pride lurks behind that fake-righteous pose which assumes, among much else, that "we" have a complete and accurate take on just what is a sin and what isn’t.

And of course that assumption is possible and wholly justifiable because either:

1. God speaks directly to "us", or

2. God spoke directly to humanity 2,000 years ago and the current English Bibles are accurate and unambiguous translations of his speakings.

Which is the greater miracle here, that a deity who allegedly created hundreds of billions of galaxies nightly (and apparently daily) speaks directly to individual humans, or that dictation received a couple of millennia ago and several languages distant has survived time and numerous translations to arrive intact and in toto in contemporary English?

Ah pfui. This is all such old stuff, repeated in every generation unto the nth.

You church-goers see yourselves at least, at least as lighting candles (however tiny) instead of cursing the darkness. But so great has the hypocrisy of your organized religion become that I must ask: Are you not in fact by your presence and your support spreading the darkness?

What kind of candle is it that makes women (at best) second-class
   members of your religion?
What kind of candle is it that deems birth control a sin?
What kind of candle is it that damns people who love people of the
   same sex?
What kind of candle is it whose holder says, "Oh, you’re citing extreme
   examples. I’m a Christian and I don’t believe any of those things"?
What kind of candle is it whose holder says, "Go right ahead and cut my
   son's genitals. No problem"?
What kind of candle is it whose holder says, "What I believe comes
   straight from God, and if you don't believe the same things you're
   going straight to hell"?

How is the "good" quiet Christian different from the "good" quiet German who 1) claimed not to have known about Auschwitz and 2) who claimed he would have condemned the camps if he had known about them, yet who energetically and eagerly worked to support a government busy killing 6,000,000 Jews, homosexuals, and gypsies?

Is a flawed church better than no church? Is partial piety possible? Some churchgoers revile me because my skin is black, because I’m homeless, because I’m gay, because I adhere to a different religion, because I’m not one of the elect. What is the effect of such reviling on those who revile? In church, they hear their revilings supported and reinforced in weekly homilies, after which do they not return home filled with comfortable smugness?

Do piety and humility not vanish instantly when they speak their name?

Who needs to forgive the lily its raiments, the tiger its fearful symmetry, and both their baffling beauty? The harder task is to forgive priests, pastors, and parishioners their carefully constructed, pridefully donned, and happily paraded piety.

The first rule of medicine is, above all do no harm. Should that not also be the first rule of religion?

END

Back to Magellan's Log 52

Magellan's Log front page

Send this page to a friend.