Too Often, Religion Sacrifices Ethics on the Altar of Dogma

THE NEWS: Pagans have taken to bickering over whether Imbolc or Candlemas is the proper name for the Feb. 2 celebration, some invoking Gerald Gardner's use of Candlemas and others preferring Imbolc as a term not used in Christian churches.

THE PROVOCATION: Does it really matter? This entire debate seems so superfluous and silly that it's really not worthy of a comment.

So why choose this particular issue as the subject of The Provocation's first entry of 2012?

Well, I'm really not. Actually, it's just a jumping-off point to discuss a larger issue that's been nagging at me lately: the role of religion in my life ... which it turns out is pretty damned small. And the aforementioned debate is a big reason why. Religion seems to be an excuse to argue about silly things - and avoid the important stuff. It's the same sort of activity elected politicians waste the bulk of their time doing. The attitude is simple: "We can't solve the big problems, so we'll ignore them and focus on our petty differences instead."

This is what religion does. Most religions agree on the important stuff - love your neighbor, respect your parents, don't kill people, don't rip them off and don't prevaricate. But members of each religion want to feel "special" or "chosen" or "holier than thou." So they argue about inane and superfluous folderol instead. They focus on dogma and forget what's really important. They bicker about issues like what to call feast days. They grouse about whether listening to the Beatles (or KISS or Lady Gaga) constitutes a mortal "sin." They debate which sexual positions are proper, which meats are kosher and whether or not we should be allowed to drink caffeinated soda.

For a long time, I deluded myself in thinking that Pagans were better than all this. They'd been persecuted for so long, I reasoned, they would realize what's really important: things like human rights, the environment, social and individual justice. Haven't we just come out of a season in which Pagans are annually lambasted for not embracing the Christian term for a particular Saint Nickified holiday? And here they are arguing among themselves over what to call Feb. 2.

Well, I hereby plead guilty as charged of naïveté in the first degree. It's not the first time, and it certainly won't be the last. I should have known better. Christians themselves were persecuted severely (though intermittently) over the first three centuries of the common era, only to spread their own brand of persecution once they drank from the well of power and corruption. And these are people who purport to value love, charity, etc. above all else. The idea that Pagans would behave any better if the ball were suddenly thrust into their court is nothing less than foolhardy.

Which brings me to the premise of this post. It's quite simple, really. When it comes right down to it, dogmatic religion isn't important. Philosophy is.

And it might surprise many of my friends and readers to find that I have exactly one philosophical problem with Christianity: its assertion that man is separated from the divine. The doctrine in question is, of course, original sin. It asserts that all humans are born in a state of isolation from the divine (supposedly because the Christian god can't stomach being around anything that's less than perfect). This concept is absurd on several levels, not the least of which that it's internally inconsistent. Here's just a sampling:

1. The idea that an all-powerful god can't do something is an oxymoron.
2. The Judeo-Christian scripture plainly states that the sins of the fathers will not be visited upon the sons, and presumably this must also include the "sin of Adam." (Ezekiel 18:20)
3. The concept offends the very definition of justice. No court in America would force a child to do prison time for a parent's armed robbery. Are U.S. courts - which, I should point out, are eminently fallible and often corrupt - really better suited to dispensing justice than an omniscient god? If one believes in original sin, the answer must be an unqualified "yes"!
4. It condemns humans who die in infancy to an eternity of hellfire, because they haven't accepted the "remedy" of "salvation." This particular corollary of the doctrine is inescapable. Yet it has made so many Christians squirm over the centuries that they've come up with any number of work-arounds to avoid it: by conducting baptisms for the dead or consigning unbaptized infants to a place called limbo ... from the Latin word limbus, meaning "on the edge" (of hell!).

The idea that all humans are born as woebegone sinners hardly seems attractive on any level. So why, it must be asked, is it such a central and tenacious element of Christian dogma?

To answer this question, I need only return to my original premise: Religious people need something to make them feel special or chosen ... somehow "better than" everyone else. Ever wonder why so many American Christians touted race-based slavery as biblical? You have your answer: Both slavery and their perverse brand of Christianity made them feel special. Indeed, two more compatible doctrines would be hard to find.

American and European slaveholders believed they were superior to slaves because of their race. Ancient Hebrews believed they were "better than" the Canaanites because of their ethnic and cultural heritage. (Hitler's Nazis, in a cruel and bitter irony, believed much the same thing.) In Christianity, superiority is based on something called salvation, which is conferred on some - and by implication withheld from others - by something called divine grace. This is the candy with which Christians lure potential converts, and it explains the necessity for such a loathsome dogma as original sin.

The simple truth is this: Without original sin and eternal damnation, there's no flipside to make Christianity attractive. There's simply no need for salvation. Without original sin, Christianity is reduced to "just another" ethical system that has a whole lot in common with any number of other philosophies. 

What makes it superior? Not the ethics it shares with so many other faiths. No, its selling point is the ticket to heaven (or, more precisely, its "get out of hell free" card) one receives upon entrance into this elite fraternity. 

The power mongers who fashioned this system clearly saw the repercussions of a system that promoted humanity's oneness with the divine: There would be no incentive to follow any particular system. If things weren't broken, no priests would be needed to fix them ... at the price of a few indulgences, sexual favors, tithes - not to mention a whole lot of guilt and angst. Without hell and original sin, the power mongers themselves would be obsolete.

Unfortunately, Christianity - like so many other religions - has sold its soul to feel holier than thou. To be "special." By embracing the dogma of original sin, it has in ways already mentioned abdicated any moral authority it drew from the words of Jesus other early teachers. The doctrine blows a hole in all sorts of widely recognized ethical standards - personal responsibility, fairness, justice, etc. Not to mention the fact that it undermines the very concept of an all-knowing, all-powerful god.

Martin Luther and other Protestant reformers clearly saw the abuses of such power mongers - the robed Vaticanites who called the shots in the Catholic hierarchy. And they reacted by instituting what they called the "priesthood of all believers." The problem is, they didn't go far enough. They removed the abusers, but they failed to eradicate the disease that promoted the abuse in the first place - the doctrine of original sin, which was adopted for the very purpose of bolstering priestly authority. They not only left it in place, they affirmed it wholeheartedly. And because they did so, it was only a matter of time before another class of pseudo-priests (evangelical pastors, televangelists, etc.) moved into the vacuum to take their place.

If this is how Christianity behaves when it puts self-interest above ethics, it should serve as a warning about what happens to any religion when it places its own sense of distinct identity ahead of the ethics it purports to hold. When it puts dogma ahead of philosophy. When it puts a priesthood's idea of the divine ahead of its ethical standards, the system in question becomes a hypocritical laughingstock. Look at the Pharisees. Jesus did. But the Christian church cares more about the dogma of Jesus' death and resurrection than it does about his ethical teachings.

Ironically, the dying and rising god predates Christianity and is firmly rooted in Paganism. So it would seem the Christian church is more interested in promoting Pagan concepts than in adhering to its own self-professed ethics! This, too, should be a warning to Pagan practitioners who think they're somehow "better" than Christians, as well as to Christians who think they're "holier" than Pagans. 

Pantheists such as myself see anthropomorphic gods and priests as unnecessary middlemen (and women) who have appointed themselves to bridge a chasm between humanity and the divine - a chasm that is either of their own making or doesn't exist at all. I don't need a priest's approval to feel special, and I don't need visions from some god to feel inspired by the awesome divine nature that is, in words attributed to Jesus, "within us and all around us" (Gospel of Thomas). I wouldn't trust a priest of Odin any more than a priest of Yahweh or Jesus; and I wouldn't put any greater trust in a priestess of Isis or Brigid. 

The gods that are "out there" gave us so-called gifts of human and animal sacrifice; guilt and shame; false promises of heaven at the cost of our generous donations; persecution, slavery and condemnation for those who aren't somehow chosen or special. The divine that emanates from inside us offers peace, acceptance, love without price, contentment without guilt or shame. It's the inner light, the holy spirit, the eternal now ... whatever you want to call it. The gods "out there" (or their self-appointed priestly representatives) can't control it, so they seek to manipulate it while they hide behind a curtain in their emerald cities. 

It's all a massive con game designed to make us pay for something that's already ours as active participants in this great divine reality that some people know as God. We pay with tithes, with our property and sometimes with our lives. 

Worst of all, we pay with our dignity. And that's a price far too high for me.