MEETING MY DEMONS

My friend Ram, a Turkish-born guy who I met in Amsterdam in the early 70s, lives in Boulder now. He got in his hippie VW van and took 6 weeks off to drive out to California to visit his friends out here. Last night I took him and my friend Irwing to dinner. Ram played his sitar for us before dinner and then we went to my favorite raw food restaurant, Jade Cafe. Ram regaled us, nearly uninterupted, with his wisdom of the ages all evening. It was a lot of eastern philosophy through the western prism of a free-thinking Moslem-born Buddhist musician. Today Mags sent me this piece for DWT and I wasn't surprised that so much of her spiritual path has crossed back and forth over the same path as Ram (not to mention The Beatles)-- especially the conclusions.

It had to happen one day. I had to come face to face with the demons of my past religious life. The current Middle East explosion daily brings me to understand how irresponsible my previous life of “faith” was for me and for the world.

Here I will confess that I used to believe, or at least tried to believe that Jesus would someday return. Perhaps I can cut myself a little slack because I believe to my credit I studied the subject of the rapture and the return of Christ more out of doubt than out of faith. Before you get too bent out of shape and make fun of me, let me tell you that when you have heard about this from the time you were a small child, it tends to stick unless you have information to take its place.

There are a couple of different schools of thought out there, or there used to be. One was that Jesus would some day return after a great and awful Tribulation. And, the other was that there would be a catching up or “rapturing” of believers before such an event. On the one hand, believers would be subject to the Great Tribulation, and on the other, they would not, but be saved at the last minute from such a terrible time.

It all seems silly? But, consider this. The signs of the coming of the Christ were said to be floods and wars and awful disease and destruction of our natural environment. So those who are waiting, are seeing those events coming to pass.

After years of Bible study and study of other sources, I was able, as a believer to set aside the belief in the bodily return of Jesus. I simply could not find any evidence in the Bible that supported such a return. Instead I began to see us as instruments to accomplish love and peace.

However, what we hear throughout our lives those myths we hear over and over again, sick with us. And, whether or not they are true, I certainly am able to handily imagine George Bush and his fascism as the Beast and the Anti-Christ.

But, I do digress. As far as I am concerned, and let me be on record saying this… There is no second coming scheduled and there is no rapture planned. And, there may very well be no Christ and no God to plan either of these events.

Ann Coulter recently authored a book claiming to describe us liberals as Godless. She may be right about that part. I have no idea, and I have absolutely no intentions to read her book. It matters little to me what such a prolific liar has to say about anything. But, in one respect, she is not wrong. I am more or less Godless.

What does that mean in moral terms? It means that I am responsible for what happens to me and to others around me as a result of my beliefs and behaviors. Did you get that? When I was not Godless, but Christianized I was not really responsible. I was not responsible for my own life, since God had a will for it, and all the unhappy or happy accidents in that life were God ordained. Anything I did could be forgiven. I was special, I was encouraged to think of myself as royalty. Hokie Smokes!!

One needs to take a moment, think about living a life where those you love are ordained by God for you to love. The gays and the less fortunate were simply not worth of the specialness that awaited me. They were to be converted or condemned. Even the sick need to have more faith. And, if they couldn’t muster that faith, then pester them to get saved. Blindly follow your husband. Blindly follow your pastor, do not question… no matter how many children he might molest. Whatever you do, duplicate yourself by putting guilt trips on all of your friends and neighbors in order to get them saved.

No matter how unspeakable my behavior, I was a Christian. I was listening to God.

In that world, there is no morality. There is no responsibility. Destroy the planet, who cares? God is making us a new one. People die. Cool, they are going to heaven…yay for them. Wars break out, never mind. It is fine. God told you to bomb those people because they are not in favor of everything Israel does, they do not like us Christians… fine they must be God’s enemies too. Never mind that there are tiny babies dying, that there is great suffering, sadness beyond our limits of understanding. It is easy to forget that we have the luxury of watching it all on our TVs. No, it is not my problem as a born again Christian. It is time for me to cheer because Jesus is about to rescue my special Christianized ass.

On the other hand… Without God, I have no place to hide. Without God, I can only see that if I raise my hand against my brother, then I am to blame for his injury. Without God, I see that if I destroy the world I live in I am responsible. Without God, I must see that my treatment of others can cause them suffering and that suffering is not good, and it cannot be seen as ordained by God. Without God, I have to plan for myself, provide for my own, and work to make the world a better place for those who cannot do it for themselves. I have to see that God is NOT going to rescue them. I must, we must.

I am a better person without God than I ever was as a person who claimed to know God.

Christians waiting for the Rapture are not moral. Christians who abandon the world to destruction and even applaud it are doing evil. If you do not see the lives being lost, to make your biblical fantasies come true (they won’t), then you are to be pitied, you and those around you. You are not a responsible member of the human race. Maybe by saying this publicly I can put to rest my own demons of guilt that I would ever have promulgated such a destructive world view, that I would ever have proselytized anyone else to be so truly Godless in the world.

Amen

From Mags