Years ago, if I heard a song that insulted God and faith outright, I'd do the good Christian thing and shut it out. As I've grown, though, I've realized a few things about people who hate God, mostly that their perceptions of him come from other people. I can easily criticize an album like Cursive's The Happy Hollow for Tim Kasher's blind rage and clear bias, but the fact of the matter is that, if Kasher's experience with Christians teaches him that God is cruel and cowardly, that's the Christians' fault more than it is his.
Where do we get the idea that God is indifferent to human suffering? Jesus, as presented in the gospel accounts, is clearly the antithesis of this concept. Yet people outside the Christian church often hold very negative opinions of the Christian God. To me, it's no mystery why, and it's no fault of theirs. On Sunday, when the House of Representatives finally passed a bill for health reform, they did so amidst the protests of countless Republican "Christians" who demonstrated their desire to continually withhold health care from the nation's poor and disadvantaged in order to protect the bank accounts of the rich.
If this is the God that American "Christians" represnt, it's only natural that a anyone who cares about the things Jesus cared about would hate him. If the Kingdom of Heaven is on your heart, but your only perceptions of God come from hateful, pro-war social Darwinists, it's only right that you hate the god they portray. Left-wing liberals don't hate God at all; rather, they hate conservative Christains' idol, which is the only god many of them know.
Read these lyrics and, rather than feeling insulted, ask yourself what experiences with believers in God would lead someone to feel this way.
From Kevin Devine's "Hand of God"
In the hand of God, there's a cattle prod
That keeps shocking us along
Till we're flung from roofs without parachutes
To fill in patches on His lawn
And there's an iron gate where patrolmen wait
To keep the chosen people safe
From the infidels and their terror cells
Rifles blessed with God's good grace
And there's a shining path jeweled with shattered glass
And hemmed in with barbed wire
So you can skin your feet, but you can't come free--
Oh, Hallelujah, higher and higher!
And you curse their Lord for all he ignored
In His flawed and vengeful plan
Cut yourself some slack against a deck so stacked
I mean, come on, you're just one man.
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DC Talk said, "The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, then walk out the door, and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.
The only problem I have with this is the sentence, "To me, it's no mystery why, and it's no fault of theirs." To discount the responsibility of the observer isn't fair. Not that anything is ever fair, but we have a choice. I agree with everything you've said except this. My opinion is completely subjective and based on personal experience of course. I have seen the catastrophic destruction human beings have created and justified in the name of God. For a while, I did hate God. If he's so grand how could he let it happen, right? But then I grew up a little and stepped back, and remembered the teachings of Christ himself. All about love and equality and helping your fellow man. How could I possibly hate that? Hate a man who would perpetuate such ideas? I do not hate God, nor what he stands for. I think that to hate GOD because of what his followers have done is completely irresponsible. That has been my biggest problem with organized religion, particularly sects of Christianity, there's a LOT of irresponsible "its God's will" denial bullshit. But I do not hate God, I understand the emptiness people feel, I understand why they turn to Him, and I am all for anything constructive that helps people feel secure. I don't agree with the extremities people take their "faith" to, but I do not hate the ideas.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree. The problem, Alice, is that you're far more intelligent than most people, and most people have a very hard time differentiating between a philosophical ideal and those who distort it. People do need to learn to do this, of course, lest they miss out on what the teachings of Christ (or any good things, for that matter) have to offer, but I don't see hatred of God as a fault in people who hate God so much as in those who misrepresent God. Unfortunately, even if it's not their fault, it is their problem, and it's heartbreaking to see people reject such a revolutionary message based on their experiences with other people rather than their exploration of the message itself.
ReplyDelete-Evan
(This is especially true of people who don't believe in God in the first place, or those who hold a Gnostic idea of an imperfect creator and so can very easily attribute to him the faults they see in his so-called followers.)
ReplyDelete