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Itâs hard to give yourself over to anything when youâre not aware of an anything that youâd trust to manage you correctlyâor even just to understand where youâre coming from. Itâs especially hard when youâre supposed to give yourself over to an unknown: You canât question that unknown; you canât even learn about it by quietly observing it: because it wonât become real to you until youâve already given yourself over to it. All you have to go by, then, are your own and other peopleâs ideas. And many of these people may well be opposed to your way of life, your values, even your sense of humour or taste in art or music. Youâre asked to jump into a shark-infested ocean in the hope that thereâs a magical mermaid kingdom (never a democracy) waiting for you.
You may even be asked to start your relationship with Jesus with a lie: by pretending to believe what you donât. Even if I desperately wanted it all to be real, Iâm not sure I could just claim to believe it is. âI donât quite understand how your death could have been anything other than the spilling of innocent blood, but I believe you died for me⊠also, Iâm an atheist.ââthat doesnât work, does it? Doesnât God know our hearts and minds already: all our reasons for desiring him (or not), our hang-ups, our needs and what we believe our needs to be?
And why is it necessary to deliberately turn yourself over to Christianity, to a particular doctrine, rather than profess honest ignorance and seek, open-mindedly, whateverâs out thereâbe it compatible with an existing religion or not?
Oh, it might be an ingenious trick to weed out all the half-heartedâbut it might also be an admission that God has to be believed into existence, helped along in this case by the sheer scope and absoluteness of Christianity: from childhood on religious ideas seeped into your brain, attaching themselves to concepts like purpose, immortality, redemption, salvation, sin, and guilt. Given the superlative psychological heaviness of the subject matter, would it be especially surprising if it effected considerable changes in our lives even without there being a genuine deity at work behind it?
Toying with Christianity is not like speculating about Santa, Snow-White, Sauron, or other âminor deitiesâ thatâre, in the end, people, too. You havenât come to make them a nest at the roots of your understanding of (say) morality. Their judgment is not undisputable. Not even the devil, scary as he may be (if believed in), has this clout. The devil, we all know, isnât âright by definitionâ. Itâs not a sin to resist the devil.
As for other religions: Hinduism, Taoism, Islam, Wicca, Buddhism et al. may all encapsulate interesting philosophies or lessonâbut the âcapsulesâ themselves, the religions, havenât had the chance to penetrate and shape most receptive, growing western minds. Usually, their teachings had to pass through an at least adolescent layer of healthy skepticism.
When even poking tame, known-to-be-fictional dragons might well wake something (especially in excited/trancey/dreamy/otherwise altered states)⊠how much more careful would you then have to be with that which many people tell you is both very real and not-to-be-argued-with right every single time?
Uncertainty in the absence of direct experience is fertile ground for fundie-ism. Simply put, you run the risk of generating a spook within your mind, fed with preconceptions. I mightâfor exampleâconsciously disagree that punishment-after-death is righteous in and of itself. I might consciously think that understanding, forgiveness, prevention, reparation, rehabilitation, redemption are where itâs at. But can I be sure? Isnât it safer to assume the worst?
Shouldnât that which is there be there without me fleshing it out myself, without describing it in words Iâve learned but dislike?