The God Paradox

[The Curmudgeon]

Man oh man, the recent Fortress threads have been pretty heavy and serious lately. Sign o' the times, I guess.

This isn't as serious as the thread might suggest, though. Just a thought that's been bugging me lately, and the more I see on TV the more I'm reminded of it.

So I'm (re)watching the Soprano's, (seriously one of the best shows ever made, but you probably already know that), and the characters are so deeply religious and God-fearing..yet they break pretty much every code laid out in the Bible. Likewise, when anyone in music mentions guys like Tupac or Notorious B.I.G, they will doubtlessly look to the sky as if they're Heaven. I think P Diddy has been doing it so much it's turned into a nervous tic. But, again, if we are to believe in such a thing as the Bible, guys like Tony Soprano (fictional, but there are no doubt guys like him in real life) and Biggie (cartoon lifestyle notwithstanding) aren't going anywhere NEAR Heaven.

So it's this odd paradox that's getting on my nerves lately, this double standard of what God is, and what part of "belief" people choose to settle on. Yeah, a guy who screwed everything that moved and (according to him) was a stone cold gangster is going to be up in Heaven, but forget all that other stuff that actually means getting into Heaven. Selective belief is such a weird concept.

I don't exactly BELIEVE in God, I'd love to believe there's something after this life, but if I DID believe that when we die we rise up to sit with a big bearded man in the clouds, I'd be kinda willing to do what that book where he's the central figure tells me to do. ISIS may be fucking lunatics, but at least they follow (a skewed logic version) what their book tells them to do. You believe in God but you do everything this God tells you NOT to do, but still expect to get a pass anyway? How does that work?

[trashcanman]

People like to believe that they can do whatever they want and be forgiven. I asked somebody about this once and they said they planned to do whatever the fuck they wanted and then repent on their deathbed. Seriously. You're going to put one over on an omnipotent being on some silly technicality you came up with yourself? Good luck with that. I saw an article a while back about how "authentic Christians" don't exist in American culture and I've been saying this for years. Blessed are the meek, love thy neighbor as you love thyself, turn the other cheek, let he who is without sin cast the first stone, feeding the multitudes (a socialist parable if ever there was one), healing the sick, accepting prostitutes and social outcasts, kicking capitalists out of the temple, willfully giving his very life to save the people who were killing him; does any of this sound like modern American values to you? Fuck no. Not a word in the gospels about homosexuality, but they'll sure as hell dedicate their lives to hating them before they consider a single word of the man who their supposed beliefs are named after. That's not Christianity, that's just being an asshole.

[Ben]

The short answer to your question, Curmudgeon, is "Protestantism." Protestants have always embraced the idea that people are only saved by God's saving grace, which can't be earned. So, essentially, no matter what good or bad thing you do, your only chance at heaven is hoping God has mercy on you when you die.

Then you've got the idiotic, ultra-Protestant Evangelical crowd who are responsible for the vast majority of anti-gay hatred, among other things, and generally contradict themselves with every breath they take. (Probably the people you're talking about, eh?). They usually steal all the headlines in America because they piss so many people off.

I'm a Catholic myself. Despite the numerous black marks on the Church's record over the years, I still identify as a member in large part because the theology behind it is sound. None of that "do whatever you want and still be saved!" shit. Catholicism definitely isn't afraid to damn anyone for their misbehavior; I mean, Pope Francis is supposed to be this big time progressive Catholic and he still excommunicated the mafia a year ago (revoking their salvation for all time, essentially). But like you're saying, what the religion teaches and what its members do are two entirely different things.

[trashcanman]

Yeah, aside from some Old Testament insanity and brief bits of AD ramblings from the disciples who did nothing but contradict Christ when he lived and scrambled to get their own pieces of the church's pie after his death, the philosophies present in the Bible are pretty goddamn rock solid. But it's people's nature to make every single thing about themselves -and, by extension diminish everyone that isn't themselves- and religion is a perfect tool for cherrypicking excuses to look down on other people.

So, Ben, isn't the whole thing about confessions basically "do whatever you want and still be saved"? Beyond excommunication (which is largely a political publicity stunt, the way it looks to me...as if a person gets to tell God what to do and who to send to Hell) can't you always earn forgiveness based on how many times you say Hail Mary or whatever? Sorry if I'm wrong as I'm not personally familiar with too much Catholic doctrine, but I am pretty familiar with the history of the church, which is full of adopted pagan rituals and symbolism along with insane levels of the kind of oppression and violence Christ incessantly preached against. Fact is, whenever you let other people (read as: any church) dictate what you believe, you aren't going to end up anywhere near what Jesus taught.

[Ben]

Regarding confession, I'd say "not really." The idea behind confession isn't that if you merely show up you're forgiven. People only go when they're forced (Catholic school students) or when they genuinely feel bad about what they've done, in which case the idea is to seek forgiveness which in turn will make us not want to do whatever it is we're confessing quite so much. I suppose someone could do whatever they want and make it to weekly confession to wipe the slate clean, but that's just as absurd as excommunication. As if God is fooled, right? I can also speak from experience (years ago, when I was a Catholic school student myself) that they don't just let you vaguely say "I'm sorry for everything" and get out of there. I got fucking grilled when I tried that in 8th grade, man.

No doubt the human element is what mucks everything up. It's mildly amazing to me how much sense the Catechism of the Catholic Church makes and how concisely it sums up what the church stands for... and then you look at the history of the church and you just have to scratch your head at all the different points it went entirely off the rails. Still, the alternative to organized religion is no path to Jesus. I'm not sure how many non-denominational folks you've encountered (or New Age Christians, for that matter), but it's all part of the "anything goes because God will always forgive me" approach. That whole crowd also holds up the Bible and says that anyone can read it and get something meaningful out of it without any guidance from "professionals" (priest/pastor/whatever), and that's why a lot of the New Age loons do stuff like talk to pet psychics about why their dogs and cats are fighting (true story- my aunt did it) or consult other mediums who claim to be in touch with the spirit world. The only choices available are "too many rules" and "no rules at all."

[trashcanman]

Yeah, but given the inherent chaos of this existence, I trend toward anarchism on that scale. My beliefs don't align with any churches that I'm aware of, but then again, I can run circles around the "professionals" because I have solid reading comprehension and abstract reasoning skills that border on autistic. Obviously, that's not for everyone. You aren't wrong about the new age looney tunes, but the same people put into a Catholic mold are the ones who scratched up the touch screens at the casino I worked at by rubbing crucifixes all over the machines while howling prayers at them. Crazy is just crazy.

But yeah, I do think organized religion serves a vital social function in giving people who are too dumb to know or care about the difference between right and wrong a reason to not act on their baser instincts. It's sad that it's not good enough to say "thou shall not kill", and have them understand without adding "or you'll go to Hell for FOREVEEEERRRRRR!!!!". Unfortunately, a lot of them twist that into an excuse to feel superior to everyone else and rationalize their own sins while spending all of their time and energy looking for them in others or posting about how righteous they are on Facebook, which bring me back to the original point that if everyone just read at least the Gospels they'd know not to worry about the specks in their brothers' eyes and that praying in public is not about your faith, it's about you wanting other people to SEE your faith, which is hypocritical. Anyways, good stuff, guys.

[Ben]

I'm not really aware of what the Christian demographic looks like in California. Don't you just have a bunch of chill Mexican Catholics and "peace and love" weirdos?

[trashcanman]

Not so much where I live. CenCal is a bit of a conservative Republican stronghold because we're mostly farmers here. We are the illegal immigrant capital of the country, though. Like, white people are literally a minority here, and mostly Protestants in my experience, although that can mean just about anything. It's a wide array of beliefs, some less practical than others. If we've got a substantial Catholic population here, they're pretty quiet about it. I've only been to one Catholic funeral and it was like Eyes Wide Shut without the boobs. Overall, I'd say we have a lot more angry Westboro types here than peace and love weirdos. That's more of a San Francisco thing and even that's probably an outdated stereotype given my experiences in that city.

[Ben]

Shoot, I never would have figured California for that kind of demographic. I've only been out there once (San Diego), but I wasn't there long enough to get a good feel for the culture. Other than, you know, noticing that people smoke joints right out on the sidewalk like it's no big deal. That shit don't fly where I'm from.

[trashcanman]

Well, there are obviously a lot of Catholics around, but they aren't obnoxious like the Mormons and some Protestant denominations can be. I was exaggerating a little bit about the Westboro thing, but they're definitely around. I spent 8 years in a Christian school where we literally had a class on how rock music is devil music. This is literally what we were taught:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKIQ7T-t_V4&list=PL0D3A7F2B64A5096E

Then we had to write an essay about how we'll never listen to evil rock music. I guess I've failed that class. If I remember right they told us that metal bands literally sacrificed people to Satan onstage and Thriller was proof that Michael Jackson was a Satanist. Also, if you play Another One Bites the Dust backwards it tells you to smoke marijuana. I kind of wonder how much music these people listened to backwards to find this stuff.