Why I cannot be a Christian
I find many good things about Christianity - the wonderful poetry and prose it has produced, its teaching of the "Golden Rule" - I find more bad than good, and so I cannot be a Christian.
Up until last year I was a fairly liberal sort of Christian, technically Episcopalian, but I didn't really go to church. I learnt a fair bit about my faith, though, but I kept finding niggling problems which eventually drove me away entirely. These were those problems.
Hatred
Christianity has been an agent of hate for thousands of years now, and some of the most hate-filled people I've ever seen are Christians. People who think its perfectly ok to call people names, ad hominem attacks, to say that gay people are evil, or women are evil, to tell other people how sinful they are, without ever acknowledging they might have sinned too. (Well, they do say they sinned, but its notable that the "sins" they mention are never of the same magnitude as the ones they condemn)
Of course, it could be that those people who love to condemn, and shout, and call names, are just aberrations. That they don't represent "true Christianity". But the model for those people is in the Bible itself! Jesus called people names like "viper", without saying why the Pharisees were wrong, he just called them names instead![1] Paul said that women were "saved through childbirth" [2] and were inferior to men, and the rest of the New Testament is full of condemnations (as well as exhortations not to condemn others) and anger. You can see where the model for the hate-filled Christians comes from!
And then, when we look at Christian history (and in the West, it has been mainly Christian history) then we see yet more hatred! It was Christians who, for the glory of their God, massacred people in their desire to possess the Holy Land, who burnt "witches" and "heretics" at the stake, who tortured those who dared deviate from their ideas of religion. And it wasn't just Catholics who did this, oh no, it was Protestants as well, who burnt heretics, and James VI & I is famed for his hatred of witches. Both sides did it, no one seemed to mind, hatred is quite permissable it seems, if you are a Christian.
Now, you often hear Christians (particularly the nice and pleasant people who make up the majority of Christianity) saying that that was a grevious sin in the past, a huge mistake, something that they would never do. I've no doubt that those people wouldn't actually kill nonChristians, or torture them, in fact I'm sure they would rather just preach to them, or whatever. But however nice the people, the system still is wrong. Imagine that a neo-Nazi came to you, and said that the holocaust had all been a huge mistake, it wasn't the true essence of Nazism, and he personally would never do that sort of thing. Would you praise his system? Would you see him as a respectable member of the community? Would you agree, and listen to him when he tried to make you a Nazi? Of course you wouldn't, but thats just what Christianity asks us to do, to ignore the horrible atrocities of the past, and join them. I for one cannot, for that reason.
Matthew 7:17-18, 20 So, every sound tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears evil fruit. A sound tree cannot bear evil fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit....Thus you will know them by their fruits.
From this, Jesus' own words, we can see that, were Christianity a "sound tree" it could not have borne the hatred and death is has done.
The Hatred of God
Particularly in the Old Testament, we can see where the idea of hatred as a righteous force comes from. It comes from no less an example than God himself. The God who is said to be pure justice, and love, orders the most horrible atrocities to be committed, atrocities which, if a man were to do them, would land him in a war crimes tribunal, and imprisonment for life amid cries of horror from everyone.
A God who makes laws like "do not murder" should obey his own laws - otherwise what is the worth of those laws? Let me show you the two most horrific passages in the Bible as an example.
Hosea 13:16 Samaria shall bear her guilt, because she has rebelled against her God; they shall fall by the sword, their little ones shall be dashed in pieces, and their pregnant women ripped open.
Can anything be more horrible than this? Hosea is here prophesying that God will punish the Samaritans for idolatry by bashing out the brains of their children and ripping apart pregnant women!!! How could those children, or the children in the womb have been idolaters? How can the pro-life folk support their stance with such passages in the Bible as this? How would we feel if a man did these things to others, even if he said he had God's approval?
What makes it all worse is that there is actually condemnation of doing just this later on in the Bible:
Amos 1:13 Thus says the LORD: "For three transgressions of the Ammonites, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment; because they have ripped up women with child in Gilead, that they might enlarge their border.
Here God says through Amos that he's going to punish people for ripping up pregnant women, all while he orders this done himself!
The second set of horrific passages deal with children:
Isaiah 13:16 Their infants will be dashed in pieces before their eyes; their houses will be plundered and their wives ravished.
This will be God's punishment - to kill the innocent and sanction rape. Nice, eh?
Psalm 137:9 Happy shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!
This is that famous psalm beginning "by the rivers of Babylon", lamenting the exile of the Jews in Babylon. The Psalmist declares that its a happy, rejoicing person who will brutally murder the Babylonian children by bashing them against rocks! Now, we could understand the Psalmist saying someone would be happy to fight against the Babylonian adults, or the Babylonian army - as they were the ones who had exiled the Jews, but their children had nothing to do with it! This is just spite, and God-sanctioned spite at that, as we remember that Christians consider the Bible to be inspired, and many of them believe it inerrant too.
From the Old Testament we get a view of a very bloodthirsty God indeed, who doesn't mind killing the innocent to revenge himself upon those whom he considers to have insulted him. I don't know about you, but this isn't a God I'm particularly inclined to follow.
Christians don't follow the bible, why should I?
Lets say we ignore the two biggest reasons to reject Christianity, or we get round them somehow. Now, we are to judge Christianity by its fruits, so what are we to make of Christians who ignore what the Bible says? I would say that if Christians themselves do not, generally, follow what the Bible says, then the Bible isn't worth very much, and its certainly not as "holy" as its made out to be.
The biggest one, and the one which gets on my nerves the most, is the commandments about prayer:
Matthew 6:5-7 "And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And in praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their many words."
Jesus has three main points here:
- Don't pray in front of people
- Pray in secret
- Don't use loads of words, keep it simple.
Now, many Christians will pray in front of you, will start praying for you in front of you, to make it quite clear what they think of you. They tend to get a bit ratty if you remind them they should pray in secret, or silently, and God will hear them just the same. There is no reason to pray aloud, in public, (except if you're in church) unless you're just doing it to say "look at me! I'm holy!". Likewise we see Christians praying using extremely repetitive words - go into a Christian chatroom like the one on Yahoo! and you'll often see Christians saying "praise him" over, and over, and over, or similar phrases. Yet this is just what Jesus said they should not do! When Christians don't follow the Bible, why should we assume the Bible is actually from God?
The other thing Christians don't do is turn the other cheek:
Matthew 5:39, 42 But I say to you, Do not resist one who is evil. But if any one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also...Give to him who begs from you, and do not refuse him who would borrow from you.
If you hit a Christian, will he just offer his other cheek? If you sue him, will he just let you and not sue back? Will he take you to court, report you to the police if you commit a crime against him? Yes, he will, but the Bible says he should not resist you! If you ask any Christian who doesn't know you for money, will he lend you it? If you are begging on the street, will he always give you money? No. Christians act just like anybody else in this respect - and for that I wouldn't fault them, except that their Bible (and their God) says that they shouldn't do this. There is a good quote from the book The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists saying:
"Jesus...said that if anyone tried to do His disciples harm, they must never resist, but forgive those who injured them and pray God to forgive them also. But the vicar says this is all nonsense...The vicar teaches that the way to deal with those that injure us is to have them put into prison, or-if they belong to some other country-to take guns and knives and murder them, and burn their houses." (Robert Tressell, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists)
Those are my reasons for rejecting Christianity, more may be added later as I remember them!
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Notes
1. Matthew 23:24 You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!
Matthew 23:33 You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?
Jesus is here addressing the Pharisees, and he insults them in many other ways throughout the gospels.
2. 1 Timothy 2:11-15 Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet woman will be saved through bearing children, if she continues in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.
This is a deeply unpleasant passage, teaching that women are permanently inferior to men, more sinful, and can only be saved through having children. For a really unpleasant Christian interpretation of this passage, go here, the author of that website is a Pastor, and he teaches that women are commanded to have children, and infertile women are damned.
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© Aeron McCarthy, 2002
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