It's Really Important That We Ask the Question: Can God Be Evil?

Eleven days ago, Ireland voted to legalize gay marriage in a national referendum, despite religious conservatives strongly opposing it. At the same time, a national Pew poll indicates that only 70.6%--the lowest ever--of the United States considers themselves Christians. Another Pew article details how millennials are driving the expansion of 'Nones'. Yesterday, Caitlyn Jenner appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair, and most people are extremely happy for her.

The things that I have stated in previous articles are coming true: Christianity's political influence is rapidly decreasing. It's exposure and relevance in the greater culture is regarded as almost universally terrible. Both the Vox article about film, and the Week article about music, place the blame on an ossifying culture that no longer reaches an audience beyond the Christian demographic; no longer does Christian culture try to engage the secular culture in a meaningful way. No longer can Christian culture claim to represent American culture as a whole.

Ireland is probably the the most Christian (Catholic) country in the West, and the church--the cultural power structure--could not stem the tide of gay marriage--they had even less success than their counterparts in the United States, where gay marriage emerged victorious not by popular means, but through court cases on a state-by-state basis, with a Supreme Court case underway this season. Between the Pew poll and the Irish referendum, the signs could not be clearer: Christianity is swiftly losing the leverage it once enjoyed for so long. What happened?

A friend of mine posted an article in USA Today that claims that "fakers" aren't going to church anymore, and that Evangelical denominations are growing. There are two problems with this: The first is that numbers are numbers, and I would argue that there are still people who are "faking" it and identifying themselves as Christians despite possibly not actually being Christian--closeted LGBTQ teens living in oppressive households, those forced to attend conversion camps (there is a pending court case about those, too), etc. The second problem is that Evangelical denominations are exactly what Christianity needs less of; it is these sects--not the mainline Protestant denominations--that are the cause of Christianity's cultural malaise. A graph found in the Washington Post details the connection between support for evolution and climate change between Muslims, Jewish sects, Buddhists, Christian denominations and Catholics, and other religions. Conservative Christian groups such as Assembly of God, Southern Baptists, and many others (the light purple circles in the bottom left) rank particularly low on both of these issues, and we can safely infer that their views on other cultural issues (gay marriage, sex education, etc) are no different. Moving toward more conservative religious views will only accelerate Christianity's cultural isolation and decline.

Why are millennials leaving religion? We have two competing phenomena: On the one hand, we have a very clear message coming from the loudest voices in the room, voices which, for a long time, informed my view of religion as a whole. On the other hand, we have a group of people who had been oppressed by the first group, and, after a time, showed themselves to the public as completely normal, whose only goal was to be treated the same as everyone else. Following the success of this group, stories of others broadened the perception of similar groups, to the point that people congratulate Caitlyn Jenner for her debut in Vanity Fair.

The message of the first group was loud and clear. We had Jerry Falwell's infamous exchange after 9/11. We had the Westboro Baptist Church's "God Hates Fags!" We had DOMA. We have Indiana's RFRA law: Christian florists, bakers, and pizzaria owners all saying the same thing. We have a unanimous  message of exclusion--across all candidates--coming from a major political party in next year's election cycle. 

On the other side, we have seen youth homelessness and conversion therapy, which is now facing a possible ban in NJ and on the national stage, as the APA has since discredited it as a mode of therapy. Scott Lively, the architect of Uganda's law against homosexuality, now faces charges of crimes against humanity. The Pope, as progressive as he is (especially compared to the last one, which had a showdown over a US nun's views on sex), still doesn't like gay people. On top of all that, transsexuals and transgendered people such as Leelah Alcorn, take their own lives at an alarming rate because of Christian bigotry. 

Which group would you choose?

This is the choice made by millennials answering the Pew polls. As the Westboro Baptist Church, Jerry Falwell, and Scott Lively claimed that God can hate and judge people, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris were not making an original claim when they compared God to a celestial Stalin; they took the Christian Conservatives at their word and asked people to consider: Is the god represented by these religious figures worthy of worship? 

Think about that for a second. If it turned out that God (not that He really is) were the monster conjured in the minds of Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, how would humanity behave? 

This is what makes the story of Job so important, and the fact that the story's two most important lessons are completely lost when it became part of the Christian canon is at least partly responsible for its present predicament.

I have previously written about Job here and here. All of the points I made in those essays are relevant here, but there is one more thing I want to touch on, where contemporary Christianity--and, by extension, contemporary conservative Christianity--encounters a huge philosophical problem.

The story of Job has one final lesson to teach us: It is primarily about worshiping power. God tells Job that he should worship Him because He has killed a Leviathan, because He had tamed a Behemoth, and because He had created the world. "Look at how awesome and powerful I am! Bow down to me or I will smite you where I stand!"

Job says no, and in the end, God realizes that He had behaved badly and compensates Job 7x what he had lost. He is furious at Job's friends for defending Him! This is the message of Job. The central message for Christians in the Book of Job is that God should not be worshiped simply for His power. Worshiping God because he is powerful is worse than marrying someone simply because they are rich.

This is the trap that conservative Christianity has fallen into. There is an external standard of justice in Job's story, and he is a hero for holding God accountable to it. Is it right for God to hate people for who they are (leaving aside whether or not God actually feels this way)? Is it right for God to force people to hate themselves? Should human beings be morally accountable themselves for enforcing the will of an evil God? Can and when should God be feared and obeyed? Is there a difference? 

The Jewish tradition allows people to look up to the sky and exclaim, "God, what the hell did you do that for!?" They had a relationship with God that was more than Command-Obey. "Noah, people are being evil. I'm gonna hit the restart button and flood the planet. You better build a boat so your family and the animals can survive when it's over." "Hey Noah, I don't think that was a good idea. Whaddya say I don't do that ever again?" "I created the Earth, but you guys are My People. I will protect you as long as you follow these rules."  "God! Why are you tormenting me!?"

Conservative Christians worship God for His power. The Christian tradition, by omitting the important lesson in Job that God and Humanity are held to what could be the same standard of justice, have no way to decide whether what their God is telling them is actually good. When individuals claim that God told them to commit murder, we still hold them to a standard of justice. Why is their bigotry any different? Because it's wrapped in faith?

Would God tell people that he hates certain groups within the population? Imagine if He told Fred Phelps that He hated the Dutch. "God Hates the Netherlands!" Wouldn't that be ridiculous? (I'm sure Harold Camping, were he still alive, could find an instance of God hating the Dutch somewhere in the Bible.) 

So if conservative Christians love God for his power, how is His power to be dispensed? This is where everyone runs into trouble. Why is God's wrath always directed toward people who are different, people who seem to 'represent' a 'threat' to the believer's 'beliefs'? First, God told Columbus's crew that the Native Americans were the cursed descendants of Ham. Then He told the Southerners and those in the slave trade that Africans were going to have a better life under Christendom. Later, He told white men that women belonged in the kitchen and were only good for popping out babies. After that, He recognized homosexuality, Dungeons and Dragons, and heavy metal music as the biggest threats to His Kingdom. Only one of these last three is still actively combated.

But wait! He also spoke to the Africans, and gave them a message of hope, and inspired them to rise up against the white men and assert their freedom! Who is right? How are we going to decide whose God is the True God? 

For that matter, why aren't child homelessness, disease, hunger, and rampant warfare, among myriad other issues, higher on God's agenda, than what people are doing in their bedrooms, or which team won the Super Bowl, or when the hell am I going to win the lottery?

God is powerful, that much we know. But because there is no frame of reference for the conservative Christians--their holy book is nothing but a long list of one-liners--God has no pattern, He has no stated interest. He proceeds from moment to moment on a whim. This is why they worship His power: When the Maelstrom comes, they hope to be spared. Everyone else, in their eyes, is literally going to Hell. 

Hell and the Apocalypse. Two favorite topics of conservative Christianity. Both of these concepts were invented by Christianity, the Jews had no concept of the afterlife, and they were hoping to be saved in reality from desolation and extermination after leaving Israel. The predictions made by their prophets were real, Earthly desires, rather than some ethereal wish. What happens when we take the lesson from Job, and apply it to these two concepts? Is it right that God should condemn swaths of people to Hell? Is it right that He should violate the terms of His covenant with Noah  and murder 9 billion people in a Biblical inferno? Who determines how we are saved from such a fate--Hell or the Apocalypse? Why should God ever want to build a Hell, and who should want Him to end all life on the planet?

It makes no sense for God to do these things. Even if God were indeed evil, I highly doubt that He could inflict as much damage as we are inflicting on ourselves already, especially given God's vast timescale. We could all be dead before God decides to act. Our sun is going to die in five billion years, which is about the same length of time that it took us to get here, and if He could wait that long, then there's no reason to stop now. Beyond the eventual demise of our sun, God would also have climate change and possibly even nuclear warfare to look forward to, which would mean that we would die that much faster.

Imagine that God did kill 99% of the Earth's population, and left only those who believed in Him. What kind of lives would they lead? What would they do with themselves, when there is no one else to be better than, to oppress? What if God said, after everyone else is dead: "Alright, guys! You made it! Let's PAAAAR-TAAAYYYY!" Would they truly be able to dance upon the dead, to look up at God, after all the horror, and say that He did the right thing? Is this God deserving of worship?

Thankfully, God cannot end the world, because He promised Noah that He wouldn't. If you were to read closely what He says to Noah and later to Job, He betrays just a hint of regret over His actions, and is very unlikely to do those things a second time. God is many things, but He is not one to repeat His mistakes. 

And yet, for many, this is exactly what they want God to do, and don't give a thought to fates of those who are damned in this scenario. Again, this displays the chronic inability to recognize an external standard of justice, and, at bottom, represents the grossest power fantasy.

Considering everything I have said up to now, conservative Christianity has been unmasked as nothing more than that power fantasy. God telling them who to hate, who can be enslaved, the existence of Hell as a weapon against others, and the Apocalypse as the ultimate revenge. God, to them, is nothing more than an Avatar of Hate, His immense power is for them to use at their discretion. 

Who decided that gays were a threat? Who decided that Africans could be enslaved? Who decided that women should obey men? Who benefits?

Without the capacity to judge God's actions as right or wrong, without the context of Job's story, Christianity runs the risk of being the tool of the conservatives, who will follow wherever God leads, Heaven for them, and Hell on Earth for the rest of us.

This is how Christianity fades. To reiterate: They have the message, and they have the volume. It isn't the atheists who did it; it's not me, nor Richard Dawkins et al, nor the Homosexual Agenda, nor Marilyn Manson or Gary Gygax. 

It was a deafening, constant message of hate and revenge. It was the Christians who used religion to oppress others that precipitated this decline. They had the media outreach, and, for a very long while, they have had the nation's attention. They used their positions of power to oppress. Their words reached millions, people listened to them, and now it's time to pay up. There is no one else to blame.