The Angry Jesus

After a hospital procedure, I was required to stay overnight, lying on my back the whole night. I couldn’t sleep, so I wrote and rewrote this blog post in my head until 5:30 a.m., when a woman came to draw blood.

Because I could write nothing down, I found myself repeating the same list, so I started to organize my thoughts into six key points. Here they are:

1. Even though certain people call themselves “evangelical,” I call them fundamentalists. They read the Bible literally. They believe, or pretend to, that every fact in it is true, even if it contradicts itself. According to them, God wrote it, and it’s not up for discussion.
2. All religions have a control component. To be in their group, you have to believe this and that. My own Episcopal church does this with creeds and canon law.
3. Religious leaders are seen as authority figures with a direct connection to their god. This misunderstanding gives religious leaders a great deal of power, which they often abuse.
4. Religious systems demand total obedience. Consequently, followers have to do exactly as they are told, or else it’s bye-bye. This makes religions into cults. Christian Nationalism (which is neither) is a cult claiming that its god’s word supersedes our Constitution. One result of that mentality is the January 6, 2021, insurrection, led by Donald Trump.
5. The modus operandi of fundamentalist religions is to instill fear or a sense of being persecuted, prosecuted, mistreated, and misunderstood. This tactic is deliberate and uses what is called the victim mentality, resulting in anger and aggression. Sometimes, these fears can be real, but most of the time, they’re imagined or manufactured.
6. To make certain that the victim mentality is kept alive, their leadership picks causes that are not that important in the larger picture. Take abortion: it affects only a quarter of 1 percent (0.0025 percent) of our population, but fundamentalist agitators keep pushing the abortion topic, making certain that abortion remains a huge problem. For instance, they claim an embryo is a human being, knowing that such a statement will cause huge conflicts.

I have always felt that if anti-abortionists actually cared about those embryos, they would make certain that our country had the greatest pre- or postnatal care programs. In reality, the United States ranks near the bottom of such care.

Another example of this focus on topics that don’t affect the majority of the population is the rights of transgender people. Making up 0.0031 percent of our population, they seem to be fundamentalists’ major target these days.

As soon as I came home, I wrote down all the topics their angry Jesus was against. Here’s what I came up with:

Me (I’m awful in every way); Muslims, (they’re all terrorists); atheists and agnostics; other religions; anyone in the LGBTQIA+ community; science and scientists; medical professionals (unless they join the cult and spew their misinformation); Democrats; all media (except Fox); liberals; librarians; drag queens; democracy (they want a theocracy); the rights of women; our Constitution; diversity, equity, and inclusion; the climate crisis; government (especially at the national level); Social Security; Medicare; gun control; migrants (unless they work for them); the sick, elderly, and poor; compromise; judicial reform; election results (if they don’t win); universal healthcare; the elimination of the death penalty; prison rehabilitation; peace; and don’t forget their favorite, abortions.

I suspect you can add a few more.

My Jesus isn’t angry at or against any of the above. Everyone is welcome (even Trump).

I keep asking, Why would anyone ever want to join this hostile, negative, arrogant, and misdirected group? I can come up with two reasons: (1) some (or many?) folks love to be victims, (2) most cult members don’t know they are in a cult, and (3) religion can be dangerous.

What do you think?

PeaceLoveJoyHopeKindness

Bil

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P.S. People often ask me provocative questions about current events, both religious and secular. I have found that some of these questions are being asked universally. I’ll be periodically alternating regular articles with one of those questions and my answer. I invite you to send me your question to bilaulenbach@yahoo.com.

Photo by Colin Lloyd on Unsplash