What If It’s Us, Not God?

I just came upon a religious website that is quite a ways from the theological roots of my faith heritage. It had a paragraph explaining the “Basic Beliefs” of the religion that triggered an AHA moment for me.

Those AHA moments are dangerous ’round these parts.

For a good while now, I’ve held the belief that the fiery place called hell is actually a creation of the human mind in an attempt to control and acquire money from other humans through fear of death and pain. My reasoning behind this belief lies in the difficulty I have accepting something as absolutely black and white when so many contradictions surround it.

I can rattle off several examples, yet the one that packs the greatest punch for me is the God is Love vs. God is a vengeful God argument. You see, the same people that preach God is love, God is the ultimate Father, God so loved the world he gave his only son, yada yada yada, also preach that God destroyed his creation once because they became so wicked he hated them, and he’ll do it again if we don’t do things exactly right, like vote for the Republicans who won’t allow gays to marry because that’s an “abomination” (Bleah!) or get dunked appropriately in the watery grave of baptism–just as soon as we can agree on what is “appropriate”.  Not doing things exactly right will cause us to spend an eternity being punished in a fiery furnace of torture.

So, this tells me that there is a supreme being, a man that isn’t really a man, but, well, he just is sorta male (according to those who think they know because we all know men are better leaders, right? Double Bleah!), who is the ultimate loving compassionate father figure, who essentially birthed us all (let’s see a man do that one!), gave us free will because he wanted us to love him by choice and not by command and fear, then issued a bunch of commandments and said if we don’t follow them, he’ll pout and withdraw from us and we’ll spend an eternity being burned to a crisp without burning up while he says, “Nanny-nanny-boo-boo—you didn’t play by my rules!”

Uh, excuse me, but where’s the free will in that? And where’s the divine supreme loving entity in that?

That folks is what I call a contradiction. There are several others within religion, many of which I began to recognized long before this one, and which led to my awakening and departure from my faith heritage.

Besides, as a daughter, a mother, even an animal care-taker, I can say with a good bit of confidence that no sane entity, especially not the supreme God of Love, would or even could do this to someone in their care. I mean, I know for a fact that there were times when my dad’s blood pressure probably blew out the top of the sphygnomanometer (or however you spell that thingy), but I don’t think there is anything we could have done that would have pushed him to the brink of going out back and building a bonfire for the purpose of chunking me or my brother in it. It might have crossed his mind a time or two, but nothing would have caused him to actually follow through with his momentary frustration with us.

And I realize mine is quite the extraordinary dad, but this religion thing has preached all along that God is supposedly SOOOOO much more loving and incredible and giving and caring than even the most wonderful dad that has ever lived on earth, including mine.

So where’s the logic in preaching/teaching this loving father theory then scaring the crap out of us by reminding us that if we don’t love him and obey him, he’ll throw us in the big bonfire he’s built for his naughty children because he is a vengeful God?

Then there’s the whole bit about the divinely inspired Word of God that is THE AUTHORITY on God’s will for us. Except that it contains all this contradictory crap that religious people try to explain away or conveniently dismiss when it interferes with their views of what God intended for us to believe.

Oh yeah….and it took how many thousand years for THE Bible to be written? And HOW MANY different people? And HOW MANY different agendas? And how many supposedly inspired writings were dismissed when the ruler of the entire world decided to have them assembled into one book that he liked? And how many people died through the centuries because they didn’t agree with the emperor and his mignons? And how many years AFTER the death of Jesus were THOSE “eye-witness” accounts written? Don’t know about you, but my story gets better and better (and wilder and wilder) as time passes. Oh yeah….God possessed the writers’ bodies, glazed their eyes, and wrote HIS words through them.

Yeah…..Right.

I’m thinking the almighty supreme God would have made it a little less contradictory and a little more clear than the mess he is credited with creating that we call Christianity. Messes are usually made by men, not supreme beings. The only things I believe to be divinely inspired about the Bible are the egos of the ones who assembled the writings and proclaimed it as Divinely inspired. I’m pretty sure their Divine was no one any higher up than than a Roman ruler.

Religion is apparently the only acceptable field where otherwise rational, skeptical people can suspend all logic and intelligence in defense of their beliefs and get away with it. Hence, we have hell because the Bible says so, and because Mommy and Daddy said so.

And if the Bible says so (and Mom and Dad said so), then it must be so. Even if it doesn’t make any sense.

Which takes me back to the paragraph I found a religious website that appears at first glance to be significantly different in its teachings than my faith heritage preached. Paraphrased, it says that the the Holy Spirit purifies one of karma (sin), making it possible for him to accept the full love of God in this lifetime. Then he gains wisdom, charity, and freedom.

In other words, we CAN’T accept the incredible fullness of God’s love as long as we think and act in ways that are anything other than full of love. Only through fully connecting with Spirit (which requires stripping away the rules and laws created by religion) can we begin to see the possibilities for accepting the fullness of God’s love.

Remember that guy who said there are only two commandments? I believe he was a prophet named Jesus, and I believe he said to love the Lord your God with everything inside of you, and love your neighbor as yourself. Pretty short and sweet and simple.

What if it’s been us all along, and not God who invented hell (and religion and its laws)?

Maybe we’ve been blaming God for creating the hell that we have created for ourselves. Maybe hell is right here on earth (down below?), living out eternity one lifetime at a time until one day we understand love to the point that we can release the religious crap in favor of both giving and receiving love unconditionally. Maybe the Buddhists and Hindus are smarter than we give them credit for being.

Maybe this shoots the hell out of the hell thing.