The Big Guy

Omnipotent, omniscient, all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful, king of kings, creator of creators, the Big Guy up in the sky.

Here in the Western hemisphere this entity is called God.

Christians believe that the god they worship has a vested, personal interest in every moment of their lives. They believe that God has a great plan for each and every one of them, and that it is foolish to even attempt to understand the complexity of His plan for them. Every single thing that happens to every single person on the planet happens for a divine reason.

And yet Christians pray for things to happen in their lives: health, love, happiness, wealth, and on and on. It seems to me that praying for things is contradictory to their dogma; if God has everything laid out, then what is the point in asking Him for things? If God is all-knowing and all-powerful, then isn’t praying for things a means of second-guessing the almighty? Or is God just the grown-up version of Santa Claus?

There is much more to this than just asking favors. Christians claim that they have to confess their wrongdoings to God in order to obtain forgiveness, and accept Jesus into their hearts as their personal savior so that they may go to Heaven. One of the many problems I have with this ‘logic’ is that if God is a perfect being without sin, where did sin come from? We are told that God forbade Adam and Eve from eating the tainted fruit in Eden – the tree from which this fruit grew was called Knowledge. It must be assumed that this all-knowing, all-powerful deity has incredible intelligence and, according to the bible, man was created in His image. So then, did God really wish his creations to remain ignorant? To me, that stinks of pride and ego, traits uncommon to an entity which is ostensibly above all human folly.

God is said to have created the heavens and the earth, and all its inhabitants. God created the angels, one of whom was Satan. Satan fell from grace and was banished to rule the damned in Hell. If Satan was always an angel, how did he fall from grace? Once again, if a perfect being who created all things in His image, how can any of those things fall from grace? If we are to understand what is being told to us, God rewarded Satan’s fall by giving him dominion over an entire kingdom. So it appears that since this “perfect being” which creates humans in its image that are less than perfect, it stands to reason that perhaps this divine creator may not be so perfect after all. If everything we do is part of His plan, then He already knows we will screw up from time to time. Some of us will learn from our mistakes, some won’t. But this is no surprise to the Christian God.

God is said to have impregnated a teenage Mary without the benefit of physical contact, and without her knowledge or consent. Does this sound like a case of cosmic rape? The result of this non-sexual intercourse was the birth of Jesus, who is supposed to have been the son of God. For such an important person, one would think that his life would have been better chronicled; yet, between his birth and subsequent death, there are thirty-three some-odd years which are almost completely unaccounted for in the bible. The books written about him weren’t even written until long after his death and even then, they are wildly contradictory, and written by imperfect humans with very specific agendas including the keeping of slaves, bigotry, intolerance, the subjugation of women, and how to raise fig crops.

The God of the New Testament is portrayed as a kind, loving god, a far cry from the sex-obsessed, brutality-inclined, vengeful demagogue of the Old Testament. If God is perfect, why the makeover? When God actually put his own son on the Earth to show us humans His divine love, He allowed His son to be sadistically tortured and murdered! How on Earth are we supposed to believe that this god of love and mercy would allow such misfortune to be visited upon his own child and as a result, we are supposed to love Him even more? The punchline is that God let his son be killed for the sins of all humans, including those who lived long before and long after the time of Jesus. Now, if a father (or mother) today tortured and killed their child and explained that it was because of the sins of the world, that parent would be tossed in the loony bin quicker than you can turn water into wine. But since God did it, everything is supposed to be okay.

God piles pain and misfortune upon those who are demanded to worship Him, and the faithful are supposed to take it all with a smile because it’s all part of His divine will. God will punish you and those around you, and you are supposed to thank him for it. God shows no love or regard for those He created, but demands complete obedience from all, under punishment of eternal damnation. Sounds a lot like an abusive parent, doesn’t it?

“Do what I say without question, or I will make you pay.”

“I hurt you because I love you.”

God is nothing more than a fairy tale perpetuated by corrupt men and women who seek to control the weak and the stupid and get rich in the process. Religion is big-money entertainment, just like professional wrestling. The only difference is that religion doesn’t have to pay taxes and the rubes really, truly believe that they are getting something for their money. Religion exploits and thrives on the fears, ignorance and prejudice of its adherents, for whom I can only offer a pity that is marginal at best. As priests continue to find themselves in trouble for the sexual exploitation of young parishioners, as televangelists continue to rise, only to perpetually fall upon their own (often phallus-shaped) swords of greed and perversity, one would hope that the people would begin to realize that the god being sold to them is, at best, a false bill of goods.