When it comes to what passes for Christianity, in most places, by most people, most of the time, then I’m an unbeliever.

I don’t believe in the God writ large in most of the Bible. I don't believe in a God ‘up there’ who looks ‘down here.’ Then schemes and plans, has favourites, predetermines outcomes, blesses chosen leaders, and causes people to die.

That all just sounds like power and control. And humans creating a God in that image.

The dominant God in the Bible is a male who has a favourite race, gender, and individuals. That same God does, or allows, violent acts to get people to agree with ‘Him’.

Whereas I don't believe for a minute that a God caused, for examples, Noah's flood, or drowned Pharaoh's army, or destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem, or gave permission for Jesus to be crucified.

I don’t want to be ‘saved,’ especially if it means that someone else had to suffer. I don't think the violent deaths of great people, like Jesus, ever have a good purpose. And I don’t believe in a heaven for winners and a hell for losers, whether the criteria is belief or behaviour. Indeed, I get cross about how religion has used the promise and threat of heaven and hell to coerce and abuse people.

The thinking around this God and saving business also sounds like power and control. And it also sounds violent.

For it’s only a small step to think if God can kill ‘His’ enemies, why can’t we? If God has chosen people, then there are unchosen people who can be subjugated or driven off their land or denied entry, because we are chosen and they’re not. We are the saved winners, and they’re not.

Which is why I need to say from time to time what I don’t believe.

Because time and again, people will enact policies or commit actions of violence and justify them in reference to God and the Bible. So, policies and practices that discriminate against those who are women, queer, poor, or not of a pale skin pigmentation are validated by reference to the testosterone God, the Bible, or the traditions the Church has created and propagated.

For the Bible and Religion is strong on the mythology of violence - winners and losers, insiders and outsiders, saved and unsaved. And it is much weaker on the mythology of connection - of the whole earth being one family, of all people being joined together as one body, that when one suffers all suffer.

It is this weaker mythology that our world now so badly needs, for the deeply entrenched patterns of violence, subjugation, and dominance are destroying the planet, destroying us all.

If we are going to work for peace and the health of our planet, believe in it, create ways and means for it to recover, regenerate, and flourish, then we just can’t ignore the dominant God in the Bible. Tempting though that may be.

Glynn

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‍(Image: Cornwall Park, from “Two Honest Truths” blog)

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