Well, despite a dozen or so regular years of attendance at Sunday School when I was little more than a new potato, I’m no expert, but this does rather fly in the face of one or two of the things I did manage to pick up during those years. I seem to recall there was a fair amount of encouragement to believe that “God” “loved” all of us, even the lowliest sinner. Well, I don’t really believe that there’s a whole lot of love in tearing down the whole darned world, and hurling us all into the abyss along with it, is there…? Mind you, and I’ll admit to being a tad vague about the small print here, but I now seem to remember some sort of “get out” clause about it being a sinner who repenteth, or some such.
Whichever way you look at it, I guess that I’m well and truly screwed anyhow.
Actually, you’ve got to hand it to the more radical end of the religious spectrum, they really do seem to enjoy the prospect of a good old-fashioned apocalypse. Perhaps it’s got something to do with that sense which some of the faithful seem to exude of quite literally being ‘holier than thou’ or maybe it’s just a suggestion of having just the slightest smug sense of superiority which tends to go against much of the philosophy that I used to be taught at that Sunday School. I guess it really was all wasted on me, though, although again (and I’m fully willing to accept that my memory of these things is pretty foggy), I kind of remember that demonstrations of smug self-satisfaction, or put more simply “pride” were to be frowned upon and probably didn’t earn many brownie points in the “not being a sinner” stakes.
The problem I also have with much organised religion is that the most deeply fundamental of the God worshipping element aren’t even prepared to accept that there might just be another point of view. Certainly many of the more extreme churches, be they in the US or elsewhere, seem to spend a great deal of their time and energy going around dismissing any other alternative religions that disagree with their own fundamentalist stance, and sometimes find themselves burning copies of other faith’s holy books, which, when you really think about it, seems to be a damned stupid thing to do if you’re then going to take offence if someone does the same to your holy books.
I tend to be on the side of those who believe that you’re more likely to promote a greater sense of understanding if you try reading books rather than burning them, but then I fully admit to not really understanding that kind of blinkered total belief in my own sense of being right and everyone else being mistaken in their own beliefs. Perhaps that’s why it gets called “blind faith”…? Whatever it is, I hardly think you can really complain if someone on any side of the argument gets annoyed if you blatantly burn their most sacred objects as if they are so much worthless junk. The expression “Sauce for the goose” does rather spring into my mind here.
Meanwhile I do think that society has a slight tendency to believe that the non-believers amongst us are incapable of being ‘good’ people, and that only those with some kind of faith are capable of not being selfish, which is a suggestion which I quite frankly rather resent. Some of the most bitter, selfish and judgemental people I’ve ever known have purported to be of a religious nature, and equally, some of the kindest and most generous have never been in a church or opened a religious book in their lives. The fact that I know that I personally am capable of being hugely selfish some of the time does not mean that I am not capable of the (admittedly rare) acts of generosity and selflessness. It’s just how we, as imperfect human people, are. Surely, as long as we are all trying to do better and to not cause any harm to others as we pass through this brief flicker of life between those two great darknesses, that must be a good thing, mustn’t it? Whether or not you choose to spend your life believing in some greater power or not should just be a matter of personal and individual choice, and not be some massive stick to beat up any of those others who just happen not to agree with those beliefs.
Ultimately, whatever you choose to believe is your business, but it’s always worth remembering that all structured religions are inevitably human constructs, and our various religious movements were created by human beings to help to make some sense of our sometimes very strange seeming world. Whether you choose to believe that those words were handed down from on high, or put into the minds of those humans by some higher being or power is up to you, of course, if that helps you to make sense of it all and square whatever circles you might have to in order to get to where you want to be.
It often disappoints me that modern theological thinking is so eager to dismiss the ancient ‘primitive’ religions and choose to ignore the simple fact that those belief systems were just as “real” to those who believed in them as any of the modern ones are to their believers nowadays. So many ancient religions that are now looked upon as being perhaps a little bit silly were taken completely seriously by those that practiced them at the time and were believed in utterly by those that followed their practices. Entire cultures and societies lived their entire lives and died quite contented within the accepted boundaries of those belief systems and yet modern eyes choose to disregard their importance and sometimes just consider them to have been slightly ridiculous. However, if you dare to suggest that the faiths of our era might not look any more sensible to impartial eyes after a couple of thousand years in the crucible of time, you are damned as being some kind of heretic.
Throughout all human history, every culture has had some kind of organised religion, and some way of trying to comprehend and make sense of the random nature of our world. It also has to be faced that, despite the comfort many find in their beliefs, plenty of misery and suffering has been caused in the name of religion and trying to impose one or other belief system upon people who have believed otherwise throughout the centuries. Whether they were the Gods of Ancient Egypt, the Aztecs and the Incas, every society has felt the need to worship or appease some kind of greater power, and convert people to the “truth” of their own thinking. There were once Norse Gods, and both the ancient Roman and Greek Empires worshipped a whole spectrum of Gods. Even the people of the Stone Age felt the need to pay homage to the sun, the moon and the fires erupting from the very earth beneath their feet, but very few of those once strongly defended ideologies have much in the way of supporters nowadays despite the bloody battles fought in their name so very long ago.
Ultimately, whether or not any of them had more validity than any other is debateable of course, but, at the time, each and every one of them had as much validity to those who believed in them as any modern deity. Just because an awful lot of people believe in something doesn’t necessarily make it true, of course, but if your beliefs work for you, then I’m happy for you, just so long as you’re willing to go on letting me believe in what I choose to believe in.
Anyway, God willing (or whatever), hopefully we’ll all still be here tomorrow and be able to begin to prepare ourselves for the next apocalypse, whenever that might be. After all, some day someone’s bound to be right about one of them. Perhaps some of us should be very careful what we wish for, and the rest of us might not do much better than to try and do something useful with the limited amount of time we’ve got left.
Still, perhaps it is worth tipping a polite nod towards the skies (or, if you prefer, the heavens) today and acknowledging that random acts of devastation (or God) can and indeed do happen. It might also just be worth wishing a slight wish, or hoping a slight hope, or (if that’s your preference), praying a little prayer, and trusting that the worst just doesn’t actually happen today.
Well, it can’t do any harm, can it?
News had just come over, we had five years left to cry in. News guy wept and told us, earth was really dying...
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