This ones not for Everyone

For the last couple of weeks Ive been struggling with the fact that something I did has resulted in a man going to prison for six years. Also I'm feeling pretty pissed off with everything, and I was thinking about how religion has so much to do with whats so wrong in the world, that Ive decided to write about one of my Topics for the Future - "Being a Jesus Freak".I was amazed to read what Wikipedia had to say on the subject:

"Jesus freak, while initially a pejorative term for those involved in the Jesus movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, was quickly embraced by them and soon broadened to describe a Christian subculture throughout the hippie and back-to-the-land movements that focused on universal love and pacifism, and relished the radical nature of Jesus' message. "

I was amazed because that seemed like quite an accurate summing up of what being a Jesus Freak was all about for me and my friends back then. Particularly the bit about the radical nature of Jesus message, something I took so seriously that I renounced all my worldly ambitions and left school and home on a search for the Truth, a search for God and the Ultimate meaning of existence.

My mother described one of my mentors at the time as "the man who destroyed my son" but at that stage the story was only just beginning. The thing that got me through and stopped me from being destroyed was that more than anything I really wanted to find out "the Truth" about everything. Thats why in the end, though my journey took me deep into fundamentalist christianity, and along some embarrassing detours, in the end I came out the other side, having learned a lot, but most importantly that "The Truth" was definitely not anywhere in that direction. I think its important that I was a radical christian not a moderate one, because , to use a yachting analogy I took my religion out into the deep sea and gave it a thorough testing, whereas the moderates paddle around in the shallows where faith never gets properly tested, and the cracks and faults never get a chance to leak. So I still have a kind of respect for Fundamentalists of any kind because they at least have the courage of their convictions and are prepared to let the radical beliefs of their religion correspond to radical action in their lives. In that, they have integrity.

The problem is that all religious explanations fail, especially once they moving away from a vague sort of mystical view about the human spirit and start filling in details like which kind of animal you can eat and what should be done with the foreskin or facial hair, or womens clothing. The crazy thing is that every religion, every variety and subset and sect of every religion proudly declares that everyone elses silly rules are all wrong but their ones are right. Dont drink that tea! Cover your face! No Blood transfusion! All these ridiculous stories, apalling rules and silly rituals make religion look as if its really about people - and particularly men - controlling other people - particularly women - but also gays and everyone else who's not in the In Crowd- and the reason it looks like that is because thats exactly what it is. No sensible Creator would be bothered with all that nonsense. Or ask us to believe it as a sign of devotion to "It"


So believers lose my respect however in their abandonement of that greater search for Truth, preferring dogma and blind allegiance to one narrow explanation of reality over the continuing quest for knowledge. These are people who are not interested in the Truth but in being right. And they'll argue and even fight and kill to prove it. Hence the mess the world is in today. And its not just war, its the whole failure of much of humankind to turn away from blind faith and look for a greater vision, maybe one with fewer answers but at least more compassion and tolerance and understanding.

But back to the man I sent to Prison for six years. The ironic connection between him and being a jesus freak, is that one of the Big Problems I eventually could not reconcile with christian religion was the problem of sufferring, the Problem of Pain as the CS Lewis' book that I read called it. I'm afraid the scenario I often saw in my mind was an innocent child being abused,raped or sodomised behind closed doors and happening right now - yes actually right now at this very moment as you are reading this, there are countless hundreds, maybe thousands of little girls and boys being abused in this way, raped and abused - and the Christian God supposedly all knowing and powerful watching this horror and doing nothing. I always said that if it was in my power to do something I would, I could not stand by like the christian God who acording to christian apologists is making a stand on some principle of individual liberty and the price of free will and doing nothing - if I had the power I would stop it.



The thing is about a year ago I did exactly that to a man on a Sydney street. He was exposing himself and physically sexually molesting a 5 year old girl and I leaped out of the car and stopped him. I took his wallet off him and dragged him down to a house and called the Police. And he's been behind bars ever since, and was sentenced last month to 6 years. And while Ive been thinking about this whole tragic scenario it occurred to me that the christian god didnt just abandon the little girl - he abandoned that poor damaged abuser, probably also a victim himself. And I also wondered why anyone can believe that god chose not to create a world where such things never happened , where sexual urges were not so violent and difficult to control or subject to corruption, a world where innocent children at least were safe from this ghastly fault in the human makeup. Its not that impossible to imagine we could have been made a little differently- after all humans dont have the ability to hear sounds that dogs can hear, so if hearing could be different why not sexuality? Given the world that we have, one wonders how it can be that people believe not only that the christian god chose to create it that way, but that god is a good one.


So what are the answers? I'm still looking and wondering...