Christians

With this piece, Salvation, I’m about to broach a serious topic:  religion.  The story is that of Langston Hughes, when as a boy, he was told to accept Jesus into his life, told that he would see Jesus and would be happy for the rest of his life, knowing that God’s only son was there with him.  The story ends with Langston crying into his pillow, for Jesus had not come to him, and he now believed that Jesus was a thing of fantasy, not truth.  He had lied to his entire church and lost his faith in one fell swoop.  My loss of faith in the Christian God and Jesus was not so abrupt, but just as complete.
It’s an interesting thought and comical in retrospect.  I disbelieved the Christian God before I disbelieved Santa or the Easter Bunny.  Most of my family were comfortable in their belief system, but I was not.  From as far back as I can remember, I doubted the existence of God and of Jesus.  Eventually, I realized that the cause was one message blinking in my head whenever Jesus came to mind: Does Not Compute.  I don’t mean to say that I think only as a computer or that logic is the supreme force in my life.  I’m a very spiritual person, but something about Christian theology and dogma simply didn’t pull through when put to the test.  I think the word closest to what I now consider myself religiously is ‘Druid,’ but there are elements of many other faiths smashed in with that one, so it’s all become quite complex.
This brings me to my theme: People.  These people are Christian, and that’s fine.  The people I want to talk about are the Traditional Conservative Christian Right.  These people disgust me, truly.  They are a people ruled by fear of change, god, thought, freedom, and most things that I hold dear.  These people are exactly the kind of people that the Pilgrims and other people fearing religious prosecution came to America to avoid.  They think that they can take their opinions on social issues (like abortion, marriage, etc) and turn them into law in a country that was built on the idea of separating religion from government.  They’re so wrapped up in their dogma that they reject logic, reason, and free thought as the workplace of Satan.  Sayings like “An open mind is the devil’s workshop,” “The devil is a being of thoughts,” and “If your mind is too open your brains will fall out” are just a few of the resulting tokens of “wisdom” passed around their close-minded circles.
I’d like to give you a quote now, a quote by none other than Mahatma Ghandi.  He said, “I like your Christ.  I do not like your Christians.  They are so unlike your Christ.”  In this, I believe he was absolutely correct.  Jesus was a being focused on loving thy neighbor like thy brother.  He believed that sharing and selflessness and tolerance and (most crucially) love were the center of all things.  These Christians (I even have trouble calling them Christian) use politics and nonsense logic to smother all other ideas, promoting instead their own ideas not only in cultural practice, but in government and law as well.  I’ve never understood how someone could read the Bible and emerge with their point of view.  In my mind they aren’t truly Christians.  They are cowardly, fear-driven people who fear change and non-conformity.  They are warmongers and spreaders of hate, all squabbling tooth and claw to give Christianity a bad name… all in the name of Jesus, the Messiah, our Lord and Savior.  Ha.  The Bible (and specifically the gospels) is(are) better read as a series of fables… didactic stories.  They show us how to live and treat one another:  with love and caring above all else.
My own personal experience with them is not nearly as extensive as others, but here in Virginia, USA, in the year 2009, it’s difficult to remain untainted by the foul taste they leave on government.
So that’s the problem; where’s the solution?  That’s the most infuriating part of it.  They take any attempt to make them think logically as an attack on their faith.  They start getting offended and yelling incoherently, then, amidst the yelling, they start offering poor arguments, poorer examples, and absolutely no concrete reasoning.  They make arguments from ignorance, and considering my affinity for debate, this is appalling to me.  It’s like someone upending a chessboard before they lose and claiming they have won.  I then reset the board and soundly crush them a second time, but again instead of admitting defeat, they upend the board one move before checkmate.  And the number of people watching who agree with the board-thrower’s logic is stunning.  My faith in humanity slips another notch, and the question bubbles to my lips, “How can so many people be so A) stupid, or B) ignorant of the rules?”  It baffles me.  They are a plague, a cancer of this planet, of our society, and we just haven’t figured out how to get rid of them yet.