I came of age in a Christian fundamentalist religion.  You know the type, replete with the stereotypical hellfire and brimstone, where all women, even girl-children, are considered, potentially, either Jezebels or Lot’s daughters.  We were not just daughters of Eve, there, but Eve incarnate, designed by our very natures to lead men astray whether we willed it or no.  Evil in our hearts, and powerless to control it, we were worse than Cain who slew his brother, worse than Isaac who would have slain his son, worse even than the matricide king, we, the daughters of men, would inevitably lead men astray.  Though not always by will, the result of our very femininity was both inexorable and inherently evil.

It was probably here that I began having issues with church.  But while the nature of my own evil might have given me pause, it was not, in fact, what finally caused me to leave.

The ultimate catalyst was the hatred inherent in the fundamentalist doctrine I grew up with.  It was a church where “love the sinner, hate the sin” homilies abounded, and yet I saw no evidence of loving sinners, only hating sin.  And the vile wretches who had the misfortune to be caught committing them.  And the sinners’ children, as well, who were guilty by progenation.

It was a call to arms then.  “Onward Christian Soldiers” wasn’t allegorical, but literal, and we were all – even we Eves – to take up arms against our fellow men to see God’s Kingdom well and truly established.  In fighting the Good Fight, we otherwise irredeemable repositories of sin might, somehow, see ourselves redeemed.  Ah salvation guaranteed.  The promise of an afterlife filled with naught but milk, honey and lotus blossoms, sitting at the feet of the almighty, and with less care than the lilies of the field.  You can imagine, can’t you, how sweet that sounds?  Especially to angst-ridden teenage outcasts looking for some sort of acceptance?

And yet the acceptance required a price, one I was ultimately unwilling to pay, the sacrifice of one’s conscience, of one’s humanity, to the Great Homogenizer.  It required hating one’s fellow man for no better reason than divergent beliefs about the divine, or even different interpretations of the same belief. 

Following the logic to its end, the doctrine required threatening judges, and killing doctors who performed abortions, and disenfranchising homosexuals, and executing children, and murderous imperialism in the name of a God who, if He existed, I was sure would not approve of the things being done in his name.  If a God could send his only son into the world to die, only to save this inveterate, injudicious, intolerant, scrap of biological ephemera called Man, then surely, thought I, he would not want us killing each other over the question of occasional pork consumption.  Surely, such an enlightened entity, and one that not only believed in free will, but purportedly endowed humanity with it, would not only allow for divergence, but also even enjoy and celebrate it.

It was, it seems, the beginning of heresy.

It was certainly the beginning of apostasy, followed by agnosticism.  And yet I cannot but think that God, if such exists, is better served by apostates and agnostics who follow the love aspects of those vaunted biblical teachings, than the self-appointed righteous who stand on the temple steps and loudly condemn all they see.  I cannot but think that Jesus / Yeshua, the man who dined regularly with lepers and whores, would prefer a following bent on helping their fellow men than on “making them pay.”

I wax philosophic I know (or perhaps more wan, depending on the reader’s point of view), but recent events – or perhaps it is the events of my lifetime – cause me to want to put pen to paper, or its electronic equivalent.

For those who claim to be Christian, and yet hate and sow hate, I say – I don’t buy it.  I haven’t bought it since I was 14 and old enough to figure out that the X chromosome was not also the evil genome, and the Y chromosome wasn’t a biological panacea; that love is utterly incompatible with hate; that hate, in any form, could never lead to peace or the metaphorical (if not concretely physical) Eden to which various religions promise a return.  There is no such thing as “love the sinner, hate the sin;” it’s merely a simplistic salve designed to soothe an undemanding conscience.  It’s flip-flopping at the highest level.  One should, instead, endeavor not to hate at all.  Or, if one must hate, hate honestly, without trying to cast fear and vitriol as somehow well-intentioned.

But then there are two Gods.  And liberals cannot forget the second.  The same God who is said to have inspired 1 Corinthians also inspired Revelation.  Unless the Council of Nicea got it all wrong and fell for a false prophet, that is.  But I don’t suppose that could ever happen.