I regularly correspond with a handful of Evangelical pastors, missionaries, and evangelists who are having doubts about their faith. While some of them have deconverted — albeit secretly — others are caught in no-man’s land — the space between belief and unbelief. As any of these doubters will tell you, I make no effort to convert them to atheism. I am far more concerned with helping them work through their doubts, fears, and questions. Most of all, I want to provide them a safe place to honestly and openly say what’s on their minds. They know that I once was where they are now. They also know that whatever they tell me will be kept in the strictest of confidence.
Earlier today, a man who, up until recently, spent most of his adult life holding revival meetings in Independent Fundamentalist Baptist churches, sent me a text about God and his love for us. I asked him if I could share his text with you, and he said yes.
I Am God and I Love You So Much
I am God. God is love. I love you so much.
I love you so much that I set you up to fail.
I love you so much that I taught a snake how to talk, tempt and deceive.
I love you so much that I created most of you knowing you’d reject me.
I love you so much that I made infinite torture the price of your finite rejection.
I love you so much that I’ll give all who reject me a special body that will never die and never stop feeling ultimate pain.
I love you so much that I’ve made sexuality one of your most intense desires but one of your most forbidden actions.
I love you so much that I’ll let some of you be rich, powerful and comfortable while most will be poor, miserable and weak.
I love you so much that I’ll make my forgiveness and salvation one of the most obscure, secluded, exclusive, elusive, difficult, ancient, senseless, illogical and bizarre, argued, debated, opinionated, sadistic, divisive, repulsive, reject-able, laughable, unverifiable, irrational, emotional, and psychological things ever conceived.
I love you so much that I’ll hurt you if you doubt me.
I love you so much that I’ll hurt you if you trust me.
I love you so much that I’ll hurt you if you stray from me.
I love you so much that I’ll hurt you if you are closer to me than to anyone.
I love you so much that I’ll hurt you if you don’t serve me.
I love you so much that I’ll hurt you if you serve me faithfully.
I love you so much that I’ll make your suffering for ignoring me very real in this life.
I love you so much that I’ll make your rewards for walking with me only real in the next life.
I love you so much that I’ll kill your loved ones, destroy your life, ravage your body and make your best friends think it’s your fault, just to teach the devil a lesson.
I love you so much that I’ll make everything you need to know about me and my love available to you in an ancient, translated, revised, edited, copied, argued, debated, contradictory, violent, terrifying, depressing, ambiguous, bizarre, embarrassing book written by dozens of disagreeing men, spanning thousands of years.
I love you so much.
God is love.
I am God.
Christian love is essentially concerned with self-harm. It is the kind of mindfuck that allows people to hate themselves and whip themselves inside and out while smiling sweetly all the while. You know that you want it, that you deserve the hurt. Attend the local Baptist Church on Sunday and begin to pay. You will be happy. You are happy.
And it can take ages to battle the self-hate you end up with. I’m still struggling in that regard but leaving my faith has helped a lot. I don’t have to be an evil good-for-nothing sinner anymore, nor does anyone else. I can just be a person who tries her best most of the time and sometimes fails, just like everyone else.
It’s a great list that should make certain people uncomfortable, but it’s this particular one that always gets me:
—“I love you so much that I’ve made sexuality one of your most intense desires but one of your most forbidden actions.”–
What kind of God insists that “free will” is of incredible importance, but when he creates beings with “free will”, he gives them a constitution and willpower that is SO weak that they want to immediately sin, and do so every 10 seconds? That’s the “setting you up to fail” part.
Why wouldn’t you create beings that still have “free will” (if you think it’s so damned important), but have better innate willpower so that they’re much better at avoiding disobeying you? Why wouldn’t you make sinning unpalatable or painful, like drinking battery acid? You have the “free will” to drink battery acid right now, but nobody does it because it’s painful and will probably kill you. Why didn’t God set up the universe so that sinning was just like that? Something painful that generates a negative response from people? That’s just not the world we find ourselves in, and it makes no sense to say a rational being created it or is in charge of it.
Multiply those kind of uncomfortable, head-scratching questions by a thousand, and a lot of people start to realize that, “Hey, this entire thing just sounds phony and made-up.” It just doesn’t track with common sense.
That’s why I found the story of the rich young man so fascinating and unfair: Mark 10:17-31.
He does do what he needs to. He has kept the Law and should be granted heaven/the afterlife/God’s love and respect. He has followed the rules exactly and also proves it is possible to do so. But, no, now he has to give away all his money as well. We can’t have people thinking they might be able to live a good life by themselves, no siree.
I guess I recognized myself a bit in him: also in the brother that stayed at home and complains to his father in the story of the prodigal son. Always trying so hard to make God proud of me and tentatively hope he will give something back.
wow! excellent post. that sky daddy is a mean mofo! imagine what he would do if he were just indifferent?
This. So much this.
I would never put young children in a room full of toys and a loaded handgun, tell them they could play with everything except the gun, leave the room, and then send in an older child to convince them it’s okay to play with the gun after all. Yet, according to the bible, that’s essentially what God did. And I’m the weak and fallen creature? ? No wonder I lost my faith.
“I would never put young children in a room full of toys and a loaded handgun, tell them they could play with everything except the gun, leave the room, and then send in an older child to convince them it’s okay to play with the gun after all. Yet, according to the bible, that’s essentially what God did. And I’m the weak and fallen creature?”
I love this. Have to remember that one.
God created us as individuals with unique personalities and talents, yet once we get to heaven we will all (the elect, that is) become mindless automatons willing to do nothing but fall down before him for all of eternity???
One of the things that has led me away from God thinking how boring heaven would be.
Damn this autocorrect that keeps capitalizing that “g”.
Wow. A powerful and heart felt expose of the reality of the biblical God’s love.
The idea of God’s love the something christians fall back on in the face of doubt or difficult doctrines (e.g. hell). ‘We might not understand everything but we know God loves us’. Well this post shows how strange, otherworldly and alien this kind of love is. Like being loved by a psychopath.
agreed. she should love us a lot less and like us a little more
Awesome. This exactly ^^^.
With love like that, who needs hate?
When you begin to see it this way, the horribleness just screams at you: to think this God calls himself just! Probably has to call himself that because no one else would….
Too bad it can take such a long time to realize precisely that: for me it seeped in really slowly untill it had grown strong enough to break out as it were.
This makes me think of the King George songs from Hamilton. “I will kill your friends and family to remind you of my love!” Except, King George is supposed to be crazy…