A reflection about human nature in a Godless world.

[Abort!]

I hate so much about myself. I hate my body. I hate my mind. I hate how idiotic I can be. I hate how sensitive I am. I hate how convoluted and hypocritical I can be. I hate how selfish I am at times. I hate how it feels like I'll never be anything but a failure in the materialistic world. I hate how it feels like I'll never know what it's like to be seen as an equal to my peers. I hate how I feel like I'll always be beneath people in my current configuration.

I hate feeling like I never had any place here, and like I never will. I hate what we do to each other, how we treat eachother. I hate how transactional and self-centered we tend to be. I hate how unempathetic and simplistic we are. I'm especially disgusted with how we value all the wrong things while putting arbitrary traits that don't matter on pedestals. I can't stand how most of us seem to care only about material and surface-level bullshit at the end of the day.

I hate how I'm guilty of many of these things myself. I despise the defaults of human nature, and I loathe the defaults in my own nature. Are we just "spiritually bankrupt" as a society? Am I "spiritually bankrupt?" I can't even pretend to be a cut above anyone else at the end of the day.

The implications make me question many things about myself and human nature. Do many of us simply need belief in some higher purpose to offset the percieved wickedness of our nature? For all of it's problems and loopholes, religion at least tried to do that much for me. Now I'm just raw dogging it, and I don't know how I can possibly cope with the brutality of it all.

Religion, for all of its problems and errancies, seems like the only plausible counterbalance to this level of awareness that I can currently ascertain. I envy those who are able to have faith, right or wrong as their belief may be.

I'm just as trapped in the prison cell of the material world as anyone else. Despite my best efforts, I don't think I can get free of it. I don't feel built for that. I feel like I was given a rusty spoon while everyone else got proper shovels and spades. Then I'm told it's all my fault for not digging fast enough.

I feel like someone living inside an invisible electric fence: step out of bounds and pain follows. Of course, it's often blamed on me for how my nervous system was wired too. So I've hidden away in the corner for most of my life like some cornered animal...

All I know is that if a God exists, I don't want worship or excuses. I want unadulterated accountability from it. I want it to face the pain it permits, the way it has forced conscious creatures to. No conscious being deserves to be born into a world as disgusting and indifferent as this one is.

 

[ReimuIsTransAndSad]

All I know is that if a God exists, I don't want worship or excuses. I want unadulterated accountability from it. I want it to face the pain it permits, the way it has forced conscious creatures to. No conscious being deserves to be born into a world as disgusting and indifferent as this one is.

So, about that God we see in media/religion today...? The white guy with the big beard in draped robes? Yep. The modern God is primarily a eurocentric creation. Historically, religions were used by individuals to as identity markers. Were you a Muslim? Christian? Buddhist? It was the primary identifier of the time. You could convert and change your identity marker, etc. Anyone's free to correct me if I'm wrong, but recently (as in like 400 years recent) we shifted to identifying based on race and ethnicity (at least in the West). A Frenchman wouldn't say he was French back then (France didn't exist); he'd say he was a Christian 1000 years ago. Maybe he'd identify by his family too, but religion was the primary identity marker.

I forget if it's just the Torah or also Christianity but you're supposed to put God on trial (think the Book of Job as a main example).

You're supposed to challenge God. You are, by definition, allowed to hold God accountable. Anyone telling you otherwise is preaching bad theology. A lot of the issues today with religion are the result of good versus bad theology. The Bible can be used for good, it can be used for evil. The Bible is limited in its primary eurocentric worldview. Does the Bible mention the Native Americans of the Americas? Does it mention those living in East Asia? No. It doesn't

I'm agnostic. Not trying to preach anything, by the way. I just took a few classes on this subject matter. Not an expert by any means just my two cents on a topic I find interesting. You can twist the Bible from anywhere to being a hospital host to a foreigner to declaring an entire group of people uncivilized. Most of the time though, the Bible wants you to be a moral host.

Most common example of bad theology I can think of in this day and age is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. I have my notes around somewhere about it if anyone cares. Just know, that it's not because a bunch of gay people were in Sodom. Any religion can be twisted to dehumanize the other. Religion is a tool used to organize society. It can be used for good. It can be used for bad. Just like anything else in this world.

I would argue that modern American society and the West has insidiously twisted Christianity away from the nature of hospitality. During the civil rights movement, predominantly African American parishes in the U.S.A interpreted the Bible to mean something different (more of a liberation for peoples) than predominantly white churches in the U.S.A (and I don't even know if that difference between Black and white parishes was exclusive to the civil rights movement, so forgive me).

Point is we all interpret things differently. I've known Christians accepting of my identity and those that wanted nothing to do with me for it.

I guess my point of this post is, if God does exist, most of the mainstream religions on earth allow you to challenge God in some form of way. I'd like to hold God accountable too. I can't speak on animistic traditions, but I know that society (popular media/American politicians) has twisted the original meaning of the Bible to be something much more nefarious today.