This is the one hundred and fortieth installment in the Songs of Sacrilege series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a song that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please send me an email.
So I arrived, naked and cold
A welcomed change from the abeyance of a ghost town catacomb
No need for counsel I appreciate the time I’m not alone
(Why don’t you get my lawyer on the phone)
There were days these child eyes
Would overlook the ugliness and fantasize
I found my heart for the first time and I awakened in me
I left myself to navigate, and oh I felt control
(It seems these sheep have quite an appetite)
Who is the crowd that peers through the cage,
As we perform here upon the stage?
As the boy became a man
In came a calm sophistication I can hardly understand
So lost in ego, didn’t notice when the time had slipped away
(Yeah, everybody’s got a sob story)
Jesus Christ, was born to die
Leave it to man to levitate his own to idolize
We’re simply sociopaths with no communication baby
I see your angle but we differ from our points of view
(So tell me, what’s your cross to bear?)
Who is the crowd that peers through the cage,
As we perform here upon the stage?
Tell me a lie in a beautiful way
I believe in answers just not today
Hope my wheels don’t abandon me now,
Seeing that I’m out here alone
I’m running out of fight
And the wind speaks a comforting voice,
Guiding me to her arms
Mother, I’m alright
It took the birth of sin to snake-rattle the mind
Before a blow to the head by the gavel of time
To wake up
Won’t you wake up?
When did the walking apes decide that nuclear war
Was now the only solution for them keeping the score?
Just wake up
Can’t you wake up?
Who is the crowd that peers through the cage,
As we perform here upon the stage?
Tell me a lie in a beautiful way
I believe in answers just not today
I recently had the privilege of appearing via Skype on The Corpsepaint Show. Hosted by Satan, The Corpsepaint Show primarily covers the heavy metal music scene, so I can easily understand them wanting to interview a metalhead such as myself. (You should be laughing right now.)
I had a delightful time speaking with Satan. What follows is the audio of the interview. If you want to view the video, please go to The Corpsepaint Show’s website and click on the December 25, 2016 video.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
The cartoonists at the N.I.B. have published a tract titled Jack Chick: this Was Your Life. Chick died October 23, 2016. Chick drew and published tracts that were used by thousands of Evangelical churches in their evangelization efforts.
Now, let’s jump from my impressionable years to just a few years ago. I was touring the country in a show about the Scopes Monkey Trial. Ed Asner was playing William Jennings Bryan and I played Clarence Darrow.
This was not Inherent the Wind. This was the actual 1925 trial transcript arguing the teaching of evolution in the public schools—an argument, I’m sorry to say, that’s still raging today for all the wrong reasons.
We were on the college circuit, but performances were open to the general public. During our month of touring, we were picketed, yelled at, and booed—most of the time before the show even started. At one of the universities, I was finishing up a Q&A for a group of 100 or so students when the teacher said he’d seen the play the night before and highly recommended it.
Then, with a wink in my direction, he turned and asked the class, “With a show of hands, how many of you believe the earth was created on October 22, 4004 BC?” Seventy-five students raised their hands. I was stunned. Speechless. My head dropped as I silently bore witness to the death of knowledge, the death of curiosity—wiped out in an instant by some religious nonsense—yet these college students believed it. And they were secure in their belief, you could even say smug considering the enthusiasm with which their hands shot up into the air, affirming: “I believe.”
In the green room that evening I told the cast about my experience. There was a young theater “groupie” hanging around, and I asked her if she would have raised her hand like the others.
“Oh yes,” she said.
“Why? In light of everything we know today, why?”
“Because I believe God is my bus driver.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “I don’t know what that means.”
“That I can sit at the back of the bus and party-hearty because God is driving my bus. And if the Bible says 4004 BC, who am I to disagree?”
“4004 BC is not even in the Bible,” I said.
“Well… I don’t know. That’s what I believe.”
“But that doesn’t make sense, you idiot. Next, you’re going to tell me that you believe vaccines give you autism; or that Obama is a Muslim; or that not having healthcare makes you free; or that AIDS is a punishment for being gay; or that Sandy Hook was staged.”
Of course, I didn’t say any of this. I just looked on in despair and half-heartedly asked her if God required exact change to get on the bus. She didn’t get the joke.
“God is my bus driver” precludes any and all critical thinking. It exposes this young woman to a lifetime of nonsense both benign and dangerous. It typifies the mindset of a segment of our population who can’t tell the difference between truth and fiction because they’ve wasted their formative years focusing on whether Adam wore flip-flops or walked barefoot in the garden—with his dinosaur.
The willingness of these twenty-first-century college students to believe the calculations of a seventeenth-century prelate, in spite of indisputable evidence to the contrary, is astounding. And because they’ve gone down this path, these young people are entering a world woefully unprepared for the challenges they’ll encounter. They will look at a hillside and see, perhaps nothing—certainly not iron ore. In their youth, they’ve not been encouraged to understand the world they live in, but rather have been directed to explore an imaginary world. They will enter adulthood with neither the disposition nor the skill to untangle complex, earthly problems. Healthcare, global warming—too complicated. Same-sex marriage, bathrooms—perfect.
Evangelicals are fond of saying that the LORD is on their side. Culture warriors frequently invoke God being with them as proof that their causes are righteous and just. Christian politicians, when justifying their murderous, imperialistic wars, often suggest that God not only approves of their violence, but is also the mighty general that leads the troops into battle.
From February 23 to March 6, 1836, Mexican President General Antonio López de Santa Anna and his troops laid siege to the Alamo. On March 6th, Mexican troops overran the Alamo’s defenses, killing several hundred people in the process.
To the People of Texas & All Americans in the World:
Fellow citizens & compatriots—I am besieged, by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna—I have sustained a continual Bombardment & cannonade for 24 hours & have not lost a man. The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken—I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, & our flag still waves proudly from the walls. I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch—The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily & will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible & die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country—Victory or Death.
William Barret Travis
Lt. Col. comdt
P.S. The Lord is on our side—When the enemy appeared in sight we had not three bushels of corn—We have since found in deserted houses 80 or 90 bushels & got into the walls 20 or 30 head of Beeves.
Travis, like countless Christians before and after him, believed that the LORD was on his side. Despite overwhelming forces outside the Alamo gates, Travis believed God would send reinforcements and lead them to victory over the Mexicans. No reinforcements came, and Travis, along with most of the people behind the walls of the Alamo, died.
Twenty-five years later, the United States found itself embroiled in a violent, bloody civil war that resulted in 750,000 deaths. Both the North and the South claimed that God was on their side. The 20th century would find the United States embroiled in two world wars and major conflicts in Korea and Vietnam. Fueled by theocratic and nationalistic fervor, American political leaders believed that a victory over totalitarianism and communism was a triumph for Christianity. In other words, THE LORD IS ON OUR SIDE!
In the late 20th and 21st century, the United States found itself waging a crusade in the Middle East against Islāmic terrorists. President George W. Bush framed invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan as holy wars — good vs. evil. God is on our side, President Bush told the American people, repeating a time-worn cliché that has resulted in maiming and killing millions of people.
The 2016 presidential election invigorated the religious-right, resulting in the election of the most unqualified candidate in American history — Donald Trump. Eighty-two percent of white Evangelicals voted for a man who bragged about sexual assault and grabbing pussy. Believing that Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party were the personification of evil, Evangelicals stormed the throne room of heaven with their prayers and voted their “conscience.” Come January 20th, Evangelicals will cheer as God’s man becomes the forty-fifth president of the Christian United States of America. In unison they will cry, THE LORD IS ON OUR SIDE!
And when a modern-day battle of the Alamo, one fought with weapons that have the power to erase the human race, causes horrific bloodshed, will Evangelicals still cry, THE LORD IS ON OUR SIDE? When millions of people lose their health insurance, their good-paying jobs, and Social Security benefits are cut, will Evangelicals still think God is on their side?
How much suffering, death, and loss must happen before Christians are willing to admit that, when it comes to the machinations of men, God is nowhere to be found. The only gods at work in the affairs of men are those who are very much earthly. If God is indeed on their side, then Christians have no response when secularists say that their God is a violent, bloodthirsty megalomaniac. If the Lord is on the United States’ side, then he is culpable for the worldwide slaughter of millions of men, women, children. He is responsible for the savagery of those who, with great fervor and pride, say THE LORD IS ON OUR SIDE! And when the last news reports Americans hear warn of incoming “enemy” nuclear warheads, just remember, THE LORD IS ON OUR SIDE!
This is the one hundred and forty-second installment in The Sounds of Fundamentalism series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a video clip that shows the crazy, cantankerous, or contradictory side of Evangelical Christianity, please send me an email with the name or link to the video. Please do not leave suggestions in the comment section. Let’s have some fun!
Today’s Sound of Fundamentalism is a video advertisement for the David Stanley Auto Group, located in Midwest City, Oklahoma.
Over the last few weeks, we’ve been discussing the differences between certain religious groups. People are asking, “How do you know what religion is right? [At least Idleman admits Evangelicalism is a religion.] Who are you to say what is right or wrong?” I’m no one—please don’t take my word for it—look to God’s Word for the truth. [Idleman then spends the rest of his post NOT proving which religion is right. Like most Evangelicals, Idleman thinks quoting the Bible is evidence or proof for his claims.]
The Romans road to salvation has been very helpful during these types of conversations. It uses verses from the book of Romans to explain not only why we need salvation but how a person is really saved. All paths do not lead to heaven. Jesus said, “Enter at the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who are going through it” (Matt. 7:13).
1. The first signpost on the Romans Road is Romans 3:23, “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” Romans 3:10 adds, “There is none righteous, no, not one; there is none who understands; there is none who seeks after God.” We all sin and fall short—no one is innocent. Humility recognizes that we are fallible human beings who have sinned against God. His Word is a lifeline to our soul, an anchor for our lives—not something to be debated, altered or misrepresented. We don’t change truth—truth changes us.
2. The next signpost deals with the consequences of sin. Romans 6:23a says, “For the wages of sin is death …” This verse is not popular in many churches, and it is not preached from many pulpits. Telling others the punishment for sin is eternal death (separation from God) is not pleasant, marketable or palatable, but it is powerful: “It is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes …” (Rom. 1:16).
“To convince the world of the truth of Christianity, it must first be convinced of sin. It is only sin that renders Christ intelligible” (Andrew Murray; 1828-1917). In other words, Christ’s shed blood on the cross only makes sense in light of the consequences of sin. “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (I Tim. 1:15), yet many do not want to mention sin, repentance or judgment because it is not popular or marketable. They fail to realize that the good news about Christ can only understood with the bad news as the backdrop.
Our culture’s false perception of God as a cosmic ball of love or a doting grandfather desperately needs to be challenged. Unfortunately, difficult truths are often compromised, watered-down or avoided altogether in the hope of “not offending.” As a result, the church is a mile wide but only an inch deep: judgment is never mentioned, repentance is never sought, sin is often excused and lives are not radically changed. This leaves people confused and deceived because they believe in a crossless Christianity that bears no resemblance to Jesus’ sobering call to repentance. When we fail to proclaim God’s word faithfully, we run the risk of “encouraging sin” and “perverting the words of the living God” (cf. Jeremiah 23).
….
3. The next signpost can be found in Romans 10:9, “If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” This is how people are truly saved, delivered and set free from the bondage of sin and death. Romans 10:13 adds, “For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
We hear a great deal about God’s judgment and what can keep us from heaven, and rightly so, because “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Prov. 1:7). But we also need to reflect on God’s goodness, love, mercy and grace. The important question to ask is: What is the condition of your heart—has true repentance and a belief in Christ as Lord and Savior taken place?
Jesus healed my brokenness and restored my life, and He can do the same for you. If you take only one thing from this article, I hope it is this: There is a deep longing inside all of us that cannot be satisfied until we recognize our need for a Savior, repent of our sin and turn to Him. Though the road ahead may be uncertain at times, the solid ground beneath will never shift. It’s not about religion but a relationship—it’s all about Who you know.
Leave it to Fundamentalist Franklin Graham to use several of the recent celebrity deaths as evangelistic props for warning sinners of the certainty of death and eternal torture in hell by God if they fail to make a decision for Christ. You might be the nicest person in the world, but without Jesus you are headed for hell when you die. But, you can be a pussy-grabbing, misogynistic billionaire and still make it to heaven IF you pray the sinner’s prayer and really, really, really mean it. (Graham will be one of five clergymen at Donald Trump’s coronation.)
Since Graham does not mention whether any of these celebrities knew Jesus in the saving sort of way, I suspect he has doubts about their eternal destiny. George Michael was gay, so it is certain — according to Graham’s theology — that he went to hell when he died. Carrie Fisher described herself as an agnostic, so she’s in hell too. Richard Adams? His books have allusions to animal deities and false Gods, so it is doubtful he escaped the flames of hell. Graham loves to profit from the salvation of others. If he thought that Michael, Fisher, or Adams were believers, he most certainly would have used their faith to further his agenda. That he didn’t suggests that Graham thinks they are in hell.
Imagine if everyone goes to heaven after they die. Without hell, Graham’s coffers run dry. Threatening and scaring “sinners” with hell — putting the fear of God into people — is the fuel that fires the Evangelical machine. Without fear the Evangelical church would cease to exist. Franklin Graham and his fellow fearmongers are parasites that suck the love, decency, and kindness out of people, turning them into judges of their fellow humans.
Graham’s Facebook post has been shared almost 80,000 times. Scores of Evangelicals commenters have voiced their approval of Graham’s post, taking the opportunity to let Franklin know that these celebrities might be roasting in hell, but they are on their way to heaven thanks to wonderful grace of the Evangelical God.
Letters From the Earth was written by Mark Twain. Published posthumously, Twain details eleven letters written by Satan to the archangels Gabriel and Michael. These letters provide deep insight into Twain’s view of Christianity. Atheists and secularists will find much to like in Letters From the Earth, whereas Christians will likely be offended. Enjoy!
Letter Eleven
Human history in all ages is red with blood, and bitter with hate, and stained with cruelties; but not since Biblical times have these features been without a limit of some kind. Even the Church, which is credited with having spilt more innocent blood, since the beginning of its supremacy, than all the political wars put together have spilt, has observed a limit. A sort of limit. But you notice that when the Lord God of Heaven and Earth, adored Father of Man, goes to war, there is no limit. He is totally without mercy — he, who is called the Fountain of Mercy. He slays, slays, slays! All the men, all the beasts, all the boys, all the babies; also all the women and all the girls, except those that have not been deflowered.
He makes no distinction between innocent and guilty. The babies were innocent, the beasts were innocent, many of the men, many of the women, many of the boys, many of the girls were innocent, yet they had to suffer with the guilty. What the insane Father required was blood and misery; he was indifferent as to who furnished it.
The heaviest punishment of all was meted out to persons who could not by any possibility have deserved so horrible a fate — the 32,000 virgins. Their naked privacies were probed, to make sure that they still possessed the hymen unruptured; after this humiliation they were sent away from the land that had been their home, to be sold into slavery; the worst of slaveries and the shamefulest, the slavery of prostitution; bed- slavery, to excite lust, and satisfy it with their bodies; slavery to any buyer, be he gentleman or be he a coarse and filthy ruffian.
It was the Father that inflicted this ferocious and undeserved punishment upon those bereaved and friendless virgins, whose parents and kindred he had slaughtered before their eyes. And were they praying to him for pity and rescue, meantime? Without a doubt of it.
These virgins were “spoil” plunder, booty. He claimed his share and got it. What use had he for virgins? Examine his later history and you will know.
His priests got a share of the virgins, too. What use could priests make of virgins? The private history of the Roman Catholic confessional can answer that question for you. The confessional’s chief amusement has been seduction — in all the ages of the Church. Père Hyacinth testifies that of a hundred priests confessed by him, ninety- nine had used the confessional effectively for the seduction of married women and young girls. One priest confessed that of nine hundred girls and women whom he had served as father and confessor in his time, none had escaped his lecherous embrace but he elderly and the homely. The official list of questions which the priest is required to ask will overmasteringly excite any woman who is not a paralytic.
There is nothing in either savage or civilized history that is more utterly complete, more remorselessly sweeping than the Father of Mercy’s campaign among the Midianites. The official report does not furnish the incidents, episodes, and minor details, it deals only in information in masses: all the virgins, all the men, all the babies, all “creatures that breathe,” all houses, all cities; it gives you just one vast picture, spread abroad here and there and yonder, as far as eye can reach, of charred ruin and storm- swept desolation; your imagination adds a brooding stillness, an awful hush — the hush of death. But of course there were incidents. Where shall we get them?
Out of history of yesterday’s date. Out of history made by the red Indian of America. He has duplicated God’s work, and done it in the very spirit of God. In 1862 the Indians in Minnesota, having been deeply wronged and treacherously treated by the government of the United States, rose against the white settlers and massacred them; massacred all they could lay their hands upon, sparing neither age nor sex. Consider this incident:
Twelve Indians broke into a farmhouse at daybreak and captured the family. It consisted of the farmer and his wife and four daughters, the youngest aged fourteen and the eldest eighteen. They crucified the parents; that is to say, they stood them stark naked against the wall of the living room and nailed their hands to the wall. Then they stripped the daughters bare, stretched them upon the floor in front of their parents, and repeatedly ravished them. Finally they crucified the girls against the wall opposite this parents, and cut off their noses and their breasts. They also — but I will not go into that. There is a limit. There are indignities so atrocious that the pen cannot write them. One member of that poor crucified family — the father — was still alive when help came two days later.
Now you have one incident of the Minnesota massacre. I could give you fifty. They would cover all the different kinds of cruelty the brutal human talent has ever invented.
And now you know, by these sure indications, what happened under the personal direction of the Father of Mercies in his Midianite campaign. The Minnesota campaign was merely a duplicate of the Midianite raid. Nothing happened in the one that didn’t happen in the other.
No, that is not strictly true. The Indian was more merciful than was the Father of Mercies. He sold no virgins into slavery to minister to the lusts of the murderers of their kindred while their sad lives might last; he raped them, then charitably made their subsequent sufferings brief, ending them with the precious gift of death. He burned some of the houses, but not all of them. He carried out innocent dumb brutes, but he took the lives of none.
Would you expect this same conscienceless God, this moral bankrupt, to become a teacher of morals; of gentleness; of meekness; of righteousness; of purity? It looks impossible, extravagant; but listen to him. These are his own words:
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.
Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.
The mouth that uttered these immense sarcasms, these giant hypocrisies, is the very same that ordered the wholesale massacre of the Midianitish men and babies and cattle; the wholesale destruction of house and city; the wholesale banishment of the virgins into a filthy and unspeakable slavery. This is the same person who brought upon the Midianites the fiendish cruelties which were repeated by the red Indians, detail by detail, in Minnesota eighteen centuries later. The Midianite episode filled him with joy. So did the Minnesota one, or he would have prevented it.
The Beatitudes and the quoted chapters from Numbers and Deuteronomy ought always to be read from the pulpit together; then the congregation would get an all- round view of Our Father in Heaven. Yet not in a single instance have I ever known a clergyman to do this.
You can read the entire text of Letters From the Earthhere.
Letters From the Earth was written by Mark Twain. Published posthumously, Twain details eleven letters written by Satan to the archangels Gabriel and Michael. These letters provide deep insight into Twain’s view of Christianity. Atheists and secularists will find much to like in Letters From the Earth, whereas Christians will likely be offended. Enjoy!
Letter Six
On the third day [of Noah’s Flood], about noon, it was found that a fly had been left behind. The return voyage turned out to be long and difficult, on account of the lack of chart and compass, and because of the changed aspects of all coasts, the steadily rising water having submerged some of the lower landmarks and given to higher ones an unfamiliar look; but after sixteen days of earnest and faithful seeking, the fly was found at last, and received on board with hymns of praise and gratitude, the Family standing meanwhile uncovered, our of reverence for its divine origin. It was weary and worn, and had suffered somewhat from the weather, but was otherwise in good estate. Men and their families had died of hunger on barren mountain tops, but it had not lacked for food, the multitudinous corpses furnishing it in rank and rotten richness. Thus was the sacred bird providentially preserved.
Providentially. That is the word. For the fly had not been left behind by accident. No, the hand of Providence was in it. There are no accidents. All things that happen, happen for a purpose. They are foreseen from the beginning of time, they are ordained from the beginning of time. From the dawn of Creation the Lord had foreseen that Noah, being alarmed and confused by the invasion of the prodigious brevet fossils, would prematurely fly to sea unprovided with a certain invaluable disease. He would have all the other diseases, and could distribute them among the new races of men as they appeared in the world, but he would lack one of the very best — typhoid fever; a malady which, when the circumstances are especially favorable, is able to utterly wreck a patient without killing him; for it can restore him to his feet with a long life in him, and yet deaf, dumb, blind, crippled, and idiotic. The housefly is its main disseminator, and is more competent and more calamitously effective than all the other distributors of the dreaded scourge put together. And so, by foreordination from the beginning of time, this fly was left behind to seek out a typhoid corpse and feed upon its corruptions and gaum its legs with germs and transmit them to the re- peopled world for permanent business. From that one housefly, in the ages that have since elapsed, billions of sickbeds have been stocked, billions of wrecked bodies sent tottering about the earth, and billions of cemeteries recruited with the dead.
It is most difficult to understand the disposition of the Bible God, it is such a confusion of contradictions; of watery instabilities and iron firmness; of goody- goody abstract morals made out of words, and concreted hell- born ones made out of acts; of fleeting kindness repented of in permanent malignities.
However, when after much puzzling you get at the key to his disposition, you do at last arrive at a sort of understanding of it. With a most quaint and juvenile and astonishing frankness he has furnished that key himself. It is jealousy!
I expect that to take your breath away. You are aware — for I have already told you in an earlier letter — that among human beings jealousy ranks distinctly as a weakness; a trade- mark of small minds; a property of all small minds, yet a property which even the smallest is ashamed of; and when accused of its possession will lyingly deny it and resent the accusation as an insult.
Jealousy. Do not forget it, keep it in mind. It is the key. With it you will come to partly understand God as we go along; without it nobody can understand him. As I have said, he has openly held up this treasonous key himself, for all to see. He says, naïvely, outspokenly, and without suggestion of embarrassment: “I the Lord thy God am a jealous God.”
You see, it is only another way of saying, “I the Lord thy God am a small God; a small God, and fretful about small things.”
He was giving a warning: he could not bear the thought of any other God getting some of the Sunday compliments of this comical little human race — he wanted all of them for himself. He valued them. To him they were riches; just as tin money is to a Zulu.
But wait — I am not fair; I am misrepresenting him; prejudice is beguiling me into saying what is not true. He did not say he wanted all of the adulations; he said nothing about not being willing to share them with his fellow gods; what he said was, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”
It is a quite different thing, and puts him in a much better light — I confess it. There was an abundance of gods, the woods were full of them, as the saying is, and all he demanded was that he should be ranked as high as the others — not above any of them, but not below any of them. He was willing that they should fertilize earthly virgins, but not on any better terms than he could have for himself in his turn. He wanted to be held their equal. This he insisted upon, in the clearest language: he would have no other gods before him. They could march abreast with him, but none of them could head the procession, and he did not claim the right to head it himself.
Do you think he was able to stick to that upright and creditable position? No. He could keep to a bad resolution forever, but he couldn’t keep to a good one a month. By and by he threw aside and calmly claimed to be the only God in the entire universe.
As I was saying, jealousy is the key; all through his history it is present and prominent. It is the blood and bone of his disposition, it is the basis of his character. How small a thing can wreck his composure and disorder his judgement if it touches the raw of his jealousy! And nothing warms up this trait so quickly and so surely and so exaggeratedly as a suspicion that some competition with the god- Trust is impending. The fear that if Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge they would “be as gods” so fired his jealousy that his reason was affected, and he could not treat those poor creatures either fairly or charitably, or even refrain from dealing cruelly and criminally with their blameless posterity.
To this day his reason has never recovered from that shock; a wild nightmare of vengefulness has possessed him ever since, and he has almost bankrupted his native ingenuities in inventing pains and miseries and humiliations and heartbreaks wherewith to embitter the brief lives of Adam’s descendants. Think of the diseases he has contrived for them! They are multitudinous; no book can name them all. And each one is a trap, set for an innocent victim.
The human being is a machine. An automatic machine. It is composed of thousands of complex and delicate mechanisms, which perform their functions harmoniously and perfectly, in accordance with laws devised for their governance, and over which the man himself has no authority, no mastership, no control. For each one of these thousands of mechanisms the Creator has planned an enemy, whose office is to harass it, pester it, persecute it, damage it, afflict it with pains, and miseries, and ultimate destruction. Not one has been overlooked.
From cradle to grave these enemies are always at work; they know no rest, night or day. They are an army: an organized army; a besieging army; an assaulting army; an army that is alert, watchful, eager, merciless; an army that never relents, never grants a truce.
It moves by squad, by company, by battalion, by regiment, by brigade, by division, by army corps; upon occasion it masses its parts and moves upon mankind with its whole strength. It is the Creator’s Grand Army, and he is the Commander- in- Chief. Along its battlefront its grisly banners wave their legends in the face of the sun: Disaster, Disease, and the rest.
Disease! That is the main force, the diligent force, the devastating force! It attacks the infant the moment it is born; it furnishes it one malady after another: croup, measles, mumps, bowel troubles, teething pains, scarlet fever, and other childhood specialties. It chases the child into youth and furnishes it some specialties for that time of life. It chases the youth into maturity, maturity into age, age into the grave.
With these facts before you will you now try to guess man’s chiefest pet name for this ferocious Commander- in- Chief? I will save you the trouble — but you must not laugh. It is Our Father in Heaven!
It is curious — the way the human mind works. The Christian begins with this straight proposition, this definite proposition, this inflexible and uncompromising proposition: God is all- knowing, and all- powerful.
This being the case, nothing can happen without his knowing beforehand that it is going to happen; nothing happens without his permission; nothing can happen that he chooses to prevent.
That is definite enough, isn’t it? It makes the Creator distinctly responsible for everything that happens, doesn’t it?
The Christian concedes it in that italicized sentence. Concedes it with feeling, with enthusiasm.
Then, having thus made the Creator responsible for all those pains and diseases and miseries above enumerated, and which he could have prevented, the gifted Christian blandly calls him Our Father!
It is as I tell you. He equips the Creator with every trait that goes to the making of a fiend, and then arrives at the conclusion that a fiend and a father are the same thing! Yet he would deny that a malevolent lunatic and a Sunday school superintendent are essentially the same. What do you think of the human mind? I mean, in case you think there is a human mind.
You can read the entire text of Letters From the Earthhere.
Evangelicals are fond of saying that the LORD is on their side. Culture warriors frequently invoke God being with them as proof that their causes are righteous and just. Christian politicians, when justifying their murderous, imperialistic wars, often suggest that God not only approves of their violence, but is also the mighty general that leads the troops into battle.
