The Red-faced Warbler

Judge for yourself

I just want to point something out about my last post. I am not in fact advocating demeaning sex with deities. I personally have no desire to engage in any group sexual activities with any supreme beings of any kind (that I know of), and I'm fairly sure most gods would be uncomfortable with that scene. In fact, I'm tempted to withdraw my invitation, just so there aren't any awkward confusions in the etherworld or wherever the Trinity hangs.

A careful reader, however, will note that the vulgar comment in my last post came as part of an "if" statement, and therefore, logically, the initial condition must be fulfilled before the statement takes effect. In other words, if God is NOT fraudulently claiming to be the embodiment of good, then He need take no offense. Now, if He is in fact an evil lying bastard (note, again the 'if' here), then I submit that I should be able to insult him as much as I want to. Until He strikes me down, of course.

Some will take this as audacity, nonetheless. And this is my point. I believe that human beings have the right - even the responsibility - to judge "God," just as the governed may judge the governor, and children, when grown, will judge the parent. I am a free being with free will and the ability to determine for myself what is wrong and right, beautiful and ugly, worthy and worthless; and I decide who will have my support and my love based on their actions and my appraisal of them. God is no different. If God were to behave in respectable ways - if He is kind and wise and merciful, if He is loving and accepting and righteous - then He would get my respect and my allegiance. If He does not - if He is ruthless and destructive and pitiless, if He is petty and intolerant and selfish - then He would deserve and receive my scorn and opposition. How can a reasonable person say otherwise?

Do you ever wonder about the evil minions? Do you ever ask where those guys in the matching uniforms in some Bond villain's cave came from and why they are working for the local evil megalomaniac? I think of them as just "followers." They follow their leader (typically to their own deaths) without asking whether what he's doing is right and supportable. They help build the death rays, they launch the doomsday missiles, and they fight the heroes, somehow never allowing themselves to question the morality and the effects of what they're doing. Usually, they pay a high but deserved price for it. Perhaps they don't think it's their place to do so. Maybe they were brainwashed somewhere along the line into thinking that whatever their master did was right, no matter what it looked like. I guess it's "faith" of a kind.

Or maybe it's fear - fear of repercussions from a vengeful #1, or fear that if they look too close and ask too many questions, they'll be noticed and the other minions won't ride with them in the little automated cars.

How many people in mankind's history have been minions in this way to false gods and destructive leaders of all kinds? How does one EVER know whether one is following the right one or not?

Well, I submit that we each must decide this using our internal compass of right and wrong - fairness, equity, compassion, and justice. And that our leaders - our gods - are thus subject to the judgment of the people, every bit as much as the people are subject to the judgment of any god or leader. In fact, we all have the duty to judge in this way, lest our leaders think they can impose their will on others and take over the world for their own selfish reasons.

I will not be anyone's minion that I have not known and judged for myself to be a benevolent and beneficent leader. If he were rather destructive and venal, even if he were to bring an army to throw against all who oppose him, opposing him would be the moral thing to do. Joining his army would make me as guilty as he - even if all my friends joined too. And even if he had the power of a god and claimed to have created our ancestors from dust and ribs, this would not change.

I still get to be his judge. As do you.

So, if the doomsday Christians are right, and God is coming to rapture their self-absorbed, callous, tiny souls before inflicting massive pain and sorrow on the rest of us- if He is responsible for the contradictions and confusions in the bible, and yet expects people to have used it and it alone for “salvation” like some grand puzzle master– if He really gave us physical senses and rational thought but demands that we ignore both under pain of hellfire- if He really condemns homosexual expressions of love, but has nothing particularly negative to say about slavery- if He is the one who made me stub my toe because I imagined my friend naked, but allows the Pizarros, Pol Pots, and Torquamadas of the world free passage- if He is the one washing away entire towns of people with floods, the bad with the good and the old with the young, because the average piousness had fallen below the damnation point - if He really is the one helping the Yankees into the world series every damn year, the doomsday Christians are just His evil minions, and I will fight them all while I have strength left.

That’s the ‘god’ I insulted. And that guy can still bite me.

If that’s not your god, then we’re fine. And let me just suggest that this just may be your fight too. You have to judge for yourself.

posted by Warbler @ 10:20 AM