Life Changing Truths
Evan Gillick
Undergraduate/
“WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW GOD PERSONALLY?” screams the font on the cover of a pamphlet distributed by the smiling, inviting, and surely well-meaning members of Student Impact. My interest was piqued, so I tore into that pamphlet like Rosie O'Donnell at an Old Country Buffet.
Wow! This booklet contains a message of love and hope! I like both of those things, maybe this really is for me! Life changing truths, it says....hmmm....truths.
On the next page I see that this pamphlet is on behalf of the Christian god, who is always referred to as a HE. I guess this is because women are inferior to men, a belief reinforced by the book of Timothy which tells women to STFU in church or GTFO. God only wants to hear men. Oh, and by the way, women who are raped are to marry their rapist; so says Deuteronomy. Well, I guess I'll keep reading this pamphlet because HE is promising me abundant life.
“HE has a wonderful plan for your life.” That's great! I feel so good knowing that I have no actual choice or direction in my life because everything is ultimately going to coincide with the will of a divine puppeteer. I suppose that if HE is just, and holy, HE must also be egalitarian, and therefore have a wonderful plan for everybody! Apparently HIS wonderful plan included things like trapping Elisabeth F. in a basement where she was raped for 24 years, having seven children with her father. But hey! I guess that only happened to teach the rest of us some sort of lesson; it's all part of the plan after all. Oh, God, you work in such mysterious ways! I guess the 15 million people who starve to death every year fit in somehow too..... I know! Their corpses are enriching the soil and helping life to continue. Thank you, Lord, I can really see this great plan in action.
On the next page I learn that I was born a horrible monster, full of this thing called “sin.” From what I could extricate from the flowery language, sin appears to be anything and everything that the Bible or a religious authority figure disagrees with. The only way to free myself of this sin is to believe that a man named Jesus, who may or may not have existed, was horribly tortured so that my all-loving God wouldn't have to burn me eternally for the sin HE created me to have; after all, it's all a part of the plan. I'm a horrible monster but hey, HE saved me by killing HIS kid, who is also somehow HIM.
Apparently this Jesus fellow is the only way to reach God, despite the fact that thousands of religions have existed prior to Christianity. I guess permitting many centuries of the adoration of false gods was all part of the plan too. Wait, better yet, those religions were created by Satan to trick me. Continuing onward, I see that it is only through faith in Jesus that I am saved, not through any sort of good works. So, I guess I'll go murder babies now. After all, these babies are too young to commit a sin, and so I'd send them to Jesus faster, repent for my sins later, and everything would be just fine. Unfortunately those silly nonbelievers of the one true god will go to hell no matter what, spending eternity with such horrible people as Albert Einstein, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin. If only these people hadn't actively rejected the life changing truths of this Bible written by tribal nomads who thought diseases were caused by demons, and not germs. Oh yeah, science is a lie from Satan too.
The rape, the murder, the genocide, the misogyny, the needless suffering....it all makes sense now that I have these life-changing truths. I used to think the Bible god was rather evil for doing all of these things, but now that I have accepted the truth I realize that my morality means nothing, because ultimately God is the most moral. It was only my sinful arrogance that lead me to believe that having a woman marry her rapist was somehow a bad thing to do; the truth is that it is a great idea because God said it was.
I'm sorry, God, but if you are real, the Bible and this silly pamphlet just aren't doing you any justice. I am incapable of believing in a god who is ignorant of science and history, a god who picks a chosen few whilst leaving an unfortunate many to suffer, a god who chooses the easily-corrupted prophet system to extend his word rather than speaking to everyone at once, a god who orders rape and genocide to be done in HIS name, or even a god that is a male. I guess I just lack “faith” (AKA the capacity to shut off my brain and believe something either because most other people do, or because I'm insecure and need a constant invisible hug to keep me from having an existential crisis).
The following is my message to all people, everyone. I don't care if you are a Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu, or nonbeliever, you are entitled to your own opinions and beliefs, but you are NOT entitled to your own truths. And to all people of all faiths, YES, I would like to get to know God personally. What could be cooler than knowing the supposed creator of all that exists? With the exception of the last six months, I have spent my whole life trying to get to know God personally. The conversations were always one-sided. If some “God” wants a relationship with me, it is clearly this “God” who is not trying hard enough. Do you know what I do with friends who ignore me the entire 20 years I spend talking to them every day? I stop calling, and I start making friends who aren't invisible, don't ignore me, and are actually there to give me a shoulder to cry on when I need it. I'd still like to get to know a “God” if there were one, but for now, my friends are doing a much better job of giving my life purpose and meaning than Jesus ever did.