Taking It the Wrong Way

IT WAS IN ONE OF THOSE feel good Facebook posts, a cartoon. A little boy sits sullenly, a ministerial adult asks him what's the matter. "Its good Friday, says the child, but what's good about it? This is the day they hung Jesus on a wooden cross". Adult asks:" Would you think its good if someone else forgave you your sins, and paid for them, instead of you? Would that make you feel good?" The child enthusiastically answers "yes!", and all is well. The child feels good. I commented that it would make me feel irresponsible and cowardly. I never heard back from anybody, so I assume that my remark was either dismissed by the Christian community, some of whom doubtless saw it as some kind of psychotic, demonic drivel, or deemed it unworthy of correction. I feel exactly the same way the child felt, before he was given the usual brainwashing by the well intentioned adult. Exactly what is so good about torturing a beautiful person to death? For all appearances, for all demonstrable causality, it happened for the usual reasons: petty human jealousy, vindictiveness, fear, and viciousness. Only later, much later, did the newly organized religion choose to believe that the crucifixion of Christ has anything to do with atonement for the sins of those who accept him as lord and savior, salvation for the believers. Only later, much later. Nobody who actually knew the man thought of him as anything other than a human being, a very wonderful one. The dogma came later, much later. I refuse to believe that I live in a universe in which every mistake I make, for which I demonstrably pay in this life by experiencing its consequences, must be paid for again. The universe may be uncaring, but it is not vicious and vindictive. The universe is cause, and effect. Any supreme omniscient cosmic creator who would require, let alone permit the slow torturing to death of the most enlightened person who ever lived as payment for my sins, then invite me to accept this diabolical scheme under penalty of eternal damnation and personal suffering, I want no part of, and I refuse to accept as real, as anything other than a twisted product of the darkest corner of the fertile human mind. I am a self proclaimed coward. I often find it amazing the sheer number of things which frighten me and from which I run, cowardly. Chief among them are human beings. I avoid people like the plague. People are vicious, deadly, cruel, and deceptive, as history, and present day reality clearly show. That they invent, spread, and maintain such a wicked, diabolical system of thought and institution, and somehow find a way to think of it not only as good, but as the most wonderful institution on earth, I find astonishing. Throughout history the Christian religion has endorsed and practiced torture and murder of non believers, it has endorsed and defended enslavement of human beings, quite properly, by using the bible, which accepts and condones slavery, it has sanctioned the suppression and virtual enslavement of women, and it has persecuted homosexuals and transgenders, as it does today. And I, more than anybody else, am well aware of my personal shortcomings, my own petty viciousness and fear, my own sins. And, yes, I am a coward. But, for heaven's sake, if someone has to pay for my mistakes, all over again, after I have already paid by experiencing the consequences of my actions, well, then, let it be me. Let me be the one crucified, by this vengeful, petty, cruel, psychotic Old Testament deity, not the beautiful Jesus, who did nothing wrong. To be sure, Jesus said some things which leave me scratching my head, with which I strongly disagree. To me, he Wasn't perfect. Then too, he probably never said that those who curse the father and the mother must be given the death (Mathew 15:4). But he was a far better person than I, and he was murdered by human spite and fear, not for me. I can hear them now, as I always have; I am taking it the wrong way, I do not understand, I do not understand that I have Been offered the greatest of God's gifts, and that the sacrifice Jesus made for me was beautiful. But I know cold blooded murder when I see it, and I don't think it is I who is taking it the wrong way, but rather, a couple billion other very imperfect people.