May Contain Nuts

So I think I’ve figured out the one big thing that’s going to keep me from ever going back to believing in Christianity of any sort. A few days ago I found a reference in Mihshehl’s blog (which I arrived at through Aquila’s blog via The Lyst) which referenced an entry in Blue Max’s blog, which had to do with his position on capital punishment as it relates to a certain father who video taped over 40 other men sodomozing his 9-year-old son in North Carolina. Mihshehl’s post, wonderful and faith-filled as it was, pretty much summed up my stance on what’s so whacked about Christianity: this guy can get into heaven if he just confesses his sins. Meanwhile, myself (and I’m not saying I’m a saint by any means, but I don’t sodomize little boys and take pictures of it) and a very large portion of the human population who have even the slighest shred of moral character will be going to Hell.

Given the kind of people who can apparently get into heaven, I think I’d rather hang out with Lucifer anyway :P.

Of course, that would assume that I envision the afterlife as anything even remotely related to the Christian “one-or-the-other-for-the-rest-of-eternity-plus-one” type of afterlife, which I don’t. But at least in y vision of the afterlife, guys like the one mentioned above don’t get to sleep on clouds and play harps all day. No, I think they’re more likely to end up strapped to a chinese water torture table and forced to play an out-of-tune accordion for the rest of eternity.

But maybe that’s just because I’m not big enough to forgive a guy for sodomozing his son. Forty times. And video-taping it. And selling the videos. You’d think that sort of thing would be unforgivable, though… the kind of thing that makes Jesus wonder what the hell he was thinking for letting the Romans put him on a cross. I feel sorry for the guy, and I don’t even follow his faith, because I know the kind of people he has to deal with that do. I mean, that’s just really gotta suck. No wonder god has such a warped sense of humor.

I have other problems with Christianity as well, but I think this one is the kicker, and has been for some time. It’s a fantastic safety blanket knowing that god will forgive your sins for the people whose deepest sins consist of saying “damn” a few times and maybe letting their eyes linger too long on a copy of Playboy… you know, misdemeanor stuff… but it’s just, I dunno, rather morally bankrupt in some way I can’t even begin to express to be able to do stuff that is so way beyond the “seven deadlies” it’s not even remotely humorous and basically get away with it because you have a cross-shaped “get out of Hell free” card.

I feel I should clarify that my examples of “misdemeanor sins” (I rather like that term…) are things that the Christian public in general (and perhaps the conservative Catholic/Baptist/Protestant public specifically) consider to be sins, not necesarily (or at all) something that I personally think is a sin. I have my own not-sin-related objections to porn, but I’ll save those for a different entry ;).

I am fully well aware that you can confess your sins and not be sorry for them at all, and I somehow doubt that simply walking into the confession booth and saying “I sell videos of men raping my son” to the priest is going to get you much of anywhere if you say it with this kind of attitude in mind, but even if this guy was really, truly, soul-shatteringly sorry for what he did to his son (which somehow, unfortunately, I doubt, given the severity and extent of his activities), it strikes me as unjust of a truly loving god to let this guy off considering the sheer amount of damage he has done to his son’s physical, mental, psychological, and quite possibly spiritual well-being. You can tell me that the principle of turning the other cheek should be invoked here, and you can tell me I’m being too human and base for wanting revenge for what this guy did, but this isn’t about revenge, it’s about letting a morally bankrupt soul bask in the light of god for all eternity and somehow being able to call that the action of a just, loving divinity. That just makes no sense to me, and frankly I don’t care if god is supposed to be so all-encompassingly good and loving that I can’t wrap my head around how this could possibly work out for the better. It defies any natural sense of decency to give this guy and others like him a happy ending, and to me, that’s all that matters. Jesus said “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” It was his golden rule. And people like this violate it with a severity that defies any sort of comprehension, and they do so intentionally, with malice in their hearts. I don’t care if you’re perfect or not, a good person would never in their darkest hour sink to things like that, but there really doesn’t appear to be any litmus test for Heaven besides being able to recite your denomination’s version of the Nicene Creed in that monotonous, robotic sort of voice reserved only for churches, schools, and political rallies. Whether you’re actually a decent person does not, by all accounts I’ve seen in 20 years, means diddly-crap. Like I said, if those kind of people can end up in Heaven, I think I may just prefer to stay in Hell.

That said, though, I must again stress that I don’t subscribe to this heaven-and-hell, one-way-trip type deal that Christianity supports. Rather, I believe in karma (and boy, does this guy have a truckload of it with his name on it… and it ain’t the good kind, either) and reincarnation, through which we progressively become wiser and better (or in some cases, merely older) spirits. The concepts of heaven and hell have little meaning to me as proto-tangible planes of existence to which we are shuttled after one trip across this tiny sphere based upon varying qualifications of our spirit through our beliefs and/or actions. In fact, a final destination rather escapes my ability to comprehend (or at least coherently describe) it at the moment because of the implication that we return to this plane repeatedly until we either somehow complete our understanding of things and reach an even higher plane (I guess if I had to use a word it would, for the moment, be “nirvana”) or simply fade into non-existence, tiring of our journies and failing to take from them any deeper meaning (yes, it strikes me that souls can be as shallow as the physical beings they inhabit) that my have helped us on our path. I guess if you had to draw parallels (since that is what people love to do: compare things) then I suppose “heaven” would be attained only after making many visits to this plane and learning all that would be needed to exist on some higher plane than the spiritual “waiting room” plane to which we return after each journey on this plane, and “hell” would simply be a return to the existance you just left (giving a new meaning to “Hell on Earth” I suppose).

Still, it’s things like the matter I expounded upon at the beginning of this novella of an entry that make me wonder what I was thinking when I decided to come back for another go-around here as a human being. However, many say we are all here for a purpose; that there is some reason for which we have come into this world when and where we did. Looking at the webcam window to my right and knowing (or at least thinking that I know) what mine was and now is, I again realize what made me make that decision, and I again no longer regret it for an instant.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 17th, 2005 at 8:21 am and is filed under Rants, Spiritual. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.