I DESIRE TO GO TO HELL, NOT TO HEAVEN.
IN HELL I SHALL ENJOY THE COMPANY OF POPES, KINGS AND PRINCES,
BUT IN HEAVEN ARE ONLY BEGGARS, MONKS, HERMITS AND APOSTLES.
Nicolo Machiavelli
My childhood outlook on religious concepts, in the all-encompassing meaning of that phrase, the definition of life, itself, the why where and how of it all, were ideas I would ponder during moments when I chose to drive myself crazy.
I had only casual confrontations with organized religion as a youngster. My maternal grandmother embraced Catholicism on the occasion of her 3rd marriage. This union produced her third child, a daughter, technically speaking my half-aunt, 4 years prior to my birth.
Due to our closeness in ages, and the fact I had no siblings, I unofficially adopted Geneva as my sister. At least that is the way I felt toward her. As for her feelings toward me, I am sure they weren’t always the warmest.
Looking back on those years I find myself wondering from time to time just how Geneva managed to avoid killing me.
My parents divorced when I was an infant. I lived with my father’s mother but spent a great deal of time with my maternal grandmother, often driving Geneva to the brink of homicide.
There was one time in particular that I recall when she came the closest to ridding herself and the earth of me. That was the day she almost convinced me that I was capable of flying.
She stood behind me at the top of a flight of stairs urging me to flap my arms and fly down to the ground floor of the house. She went as far as giving me a gentle nudge, all the time assuring me, "You can fly! Honest you can!"
Fortunately a little voice within me obviously whispered, I doubt it.
I often accompanied Geneva to Sunday Mass, a weekly ritual I’m sure she thought of as a chore, especially when she was forced to drag me along. I enjoyed it — when we went — and it was not until several years later that I tattled to my grandmother about what frequently happened when she sent us off to church.
There was a drugstore on the corner across from the stately old church. Geneva and I sometimes ended up at Polly’s slowly sipping cokes. We would watch the church through the front window of the drugstore and, once the worshippers emerged, we would return to Geneva’s home looking as angelic as we could manage.
Although I felt this was a truly wicked thing to do, especially when it came to lying to my grandmother, I usually could placate my conscience. After all, Geneva was the Catholic, not I. There were, however, those Sundays when we actually attended the Mass. The ceremony captivated me.
The service, still in Latin at that time, sounded mysteriously melodic and holy to me. I would keep a careful eye on Geneva to be sure I stood, knelt, sat, bowed my head and "crossed myself" at the appropriate times.
After seeing "The Song of Bernadette" I even allowed myself to daydream about being a Nun. Such daydreams came to a screeching halt after I witnessed the results of several beatings of my maternal grandmother by my step-grandfather. He would leave her bloodied and bruised, go upstairs to bed, arise the next morning and go to confession.
My paternal grandmother wasn’t a member of a church. I always knew she was a Christian and, more specifically, a Protestant. I assumed that was the category into which I fell.
There were those moments of subtle religious infighting between my two grandmothers. Geneva told me that Catholicism was the only true religion. If you were not baptized Catholic, when you died you went straight to Hell and stayed there. Period.
My father’s mother, who was just a Christian and a Protestant like me, was having none of that. As far as she was concerned all Catholics were rednecks and had an equal, if not better, chance of ending up in Hell as we did.
In those younger years I had no idea of what a redneck was but the phrase sounded as if it was something not especially nice. That assessment, however, did not fit either my grandmother or Geneva, both of whom I strongly believed were extremely good people.
There was a conviction that both sides agreed upon: Jewish people, as a class in general, were of no particular intrinsic value. This despite the fact I had been told that Jesus was a Jew and we, as Christians, were to worship Him.
Another message that came through loud and clear was the undesirability of people who were not white. This notion really threw me a curve back in those early years while I was still taking such things literally.
My skin color was not white; it was more beige that entered the realm of light brown every summer. The few Chinese people I would see didn’t, as far as I could discern, have what I would call yellow skin. I don’t recall meeting up with any American Indians but I nonetheless decided their skin probably wasn’t truly red.
When a pre-teen I took a bus ride to a now forgotten location. I was watching out the window when I noticed a young black boy walking his dog. I have always been an animal lover and can distinctly recall my reaction to what I saw: if that black boy loves his dog, I thought, and his dog loves him then there’s nothing wrong with being black. From that impressionable point on, I ceased believing what adults told me when they spoke of other races and religions.
As a 13-year-old I enrolled in art classes. That was where I was taught that black is the absence of all color while white is the presence of all. I was left with the confusing idea that those we then called Negroes or Colored people had no color while I, as a white person, represented every color of the rainbow.
As happens with most of us, if we are lucky, I grew steadily older and hopefully wiser.
The finer, more complex aspects of organized religion would continue to baffle me.
Among those whom I joined in my questionings were the ones who felt they had found The Answers and, whenever the opportunity presented itself, I would familiarize myself with the basic premises of those Answers. I found them equally bereft of logic as the more contemporary philosophies they attempted to replace or supplement.
For a while I considered myself an agnostic but that, too, didn’t hold water for very long. I may have found the popular concepts of God confusing but the philosophies of atheism and agnosticism appeared even more clouded.
The potential for fear in organized religion is one thing I’ve never been able to understand. The idea of a loving God who keeps His followers in line through fear strikes me as incongruous. How can you must love God be juxtaposed with you must fear God?
The only advantage I could perceive Catholics to have over most other religions, especially the Protestantism with which I was familiar, was the opportunity and advantage of going to church, confessing your sins and receiving absolution.
Catholics could sin, be forgiven, and then sin again. Absolution was always available in the confessional. Penance had to be done by the sinner but I never believed that any amount of Hail Mary’s could forgive my step-grandfather’s sin of beating my grandmother.
The notion of a grand and glorious Heaven somewhere up in the sky and a terrifying Hell somewhere deep in the bowels of the earth also lacked sense to my child’s mind.
Even back then I had some knowledge of the universe and the mere definition of an up or a down was not possible.
Besides, what rational human would choose to spend eternity sitting on or walking about on clouds? Or flitting around the sky with angel wings while strumming a harp?
The first thought that always occurred was that such an existence would be boring as Hell. But that was a poor analogy, for Hell would contain far more interesting people.
I can also remember wondering, as a child, about the size of Heaven and Hell. They would have to be extremely large places what with all the people who had died since the beginning of time and were still dying every day. There would have to be zillions up there and perhaps a lot more suffering eterna damnation down there.
But yet if a person were to completely negate the concept of the tall, bearded man in long robes who, for unknown reasons, was usually depicted as a Caucasian — and who was born in Jerusalem, an area that is separated from the African Continent only by the Suez Canal and the Sinai Peninsula — then what can be accepted as an answer to the riddle of life?
There are the theories of Evolution and Creation, each hotly defended by believers. Neither however has been proven beyond the proverbial shadow of a doubt — or they wouldn’t be called "theories".
Both beliefs have some loose ends that must be gathered and tied by faith.
I’m not at all opposed to faith. I have faith that the sun is going to appear in the sky tomorrow morning and that I will more than likely be here to see the resulting daylight. I have faith in many things.
I do have difficulty accepting any work of literature that had its beginnings back as far as the Bible as being infallible.
I don’t accept the Bible as historical, word-for-word truth. I have a far easier time agreeing that consummately wise and compassionate men — and women — probably inspired it.
The Bible wasn’t written by God but by His disciples and followers. For a good many years its words were laboriously hand copied by monks who devoted their lives to the task. The Monks were considered Holy but were nevertheless human. I simply can’t conceive of the contents of the Bible being totally free of error.
When one pictures row upon row of tables at which these Holy men sat, day in and day out, year in and year out, copying from other copies — since all couldn’t copy from an original — it is mind-boggling.
Whenever anyone questions the ability to believe those centuries of re-copying copies an expected reply from the Fundamentalists is, "some things must be accepted on faith." Or, so what if it doesn’t make sense. Believe it anyway.
There are some verses in the Bible that I fear call for faith in common sense.
The Bible, for instance, gives women a very raw deal, holding them totally responsible for bringing evil into this world.
From what I understand, in essence, all Eve said to Adam was something along the line of, "Here, take a bite of this apple," and Adam did. And all Hell broke loose. Just because Adam didn’t have a mind of his own, or was at least a real pushover; he and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden and thereafter had to wear clothes.
According to the Bible we are all the result of a lengthy list of what had to be incestuous begetting — and must go through our lives carrying Original Sin.
After first hearing the story of the rib that was taken from Adam to create Eve, I spent a few of my young years convinced I was walking around with one more rib than men were.
According to Genesis, on the 5th day God decided to create man: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created him them; male and female created him them." (Genesis 1:27).
And, the very next day God decided it wasn’t good that man should be alone. So on the 6th day he created woman (Genesis 2:18-25).
What happened to the woman He created the day before?
Eventually I was apprised of Lilith when a friend of mine informed me that Lilith was Adam’s first wife. I was frankly astounded! Adam had two wives? I fear that raised more questions than it answered once I did a bit of research to verify my friend’s explanation.
Unless dear Adam was a bigamist, who served as a divorce lawyer?
I had always been led to believe that marriage was a man-made concept. After all, I could find no mention of it in my Bible. Not unless I read it there and promptly forgot about it.
So who married Adam and Lilith in the first place, and after that amazing divorce, who married
Adam and Eve in the second place?
Adam was obviously not lucky in his choice of women if he had a choice, which he obviously didn’t. Lilith is said to have been a real – well, just change that first letter in "witch". Then think of the trouble Eve caused him.
I feel it is more just to blame Adam for the sin in our world. He certainly could have refused to bite into that apple. If the roles had been reversed, I doubt if Eve would have been so easily persuaded to eat something God had very clearly forbidden her to eat.
