Watching David Attenborough shows hour after hour, getting really high. As I watch these wild animals going through their motions, I try to imagine what their inner lives might be like. A lemur eating a big, fat moth might feel an ecstasy like when I take a big bite of chocolate cake. A buck smashing his head against another's in a battle for females might feel the thrill of battle mixed with sexual lust. The band of howler monkeys singing their deafening chorus and performing outrageous threat displays against other bands might feel something like a mix of racial pride in their band and racial hatred toward all others.
(As I watch this particular frenzy, somewhat anthropomorphizing these crazed primates and thinking about how foolish they look, it occurs to me that there is one feeling that none of these animals would ever feel: shame. I wonder what it must be like to live a life driven by one's deepest passions, often most disagreeable passions such as hunger and fear, but never, ever to feel shame.)
The seal trying to escape the shark must feel a little bit of fear, but overall it must feel thrilled and and extremely, intensely focused. It cannot afford to feel panic. Panic causes emotional and creative shutdown. In a panic, one would immediately make mistakes or miss opportunities and be eaten right away. The only way to stay alive would be to really, really enjoy the experience at some level. Perhaps one would feel most alive when looking death right in the mouth like that.
I wonder about the pain a prey animal must feel. Some predators seem not to want the hassle of out-muscling their victims, and go for a quick kill. Many others rely on overpowering or tiring out their prey. When the end comes, it comes very slowly while the killers literally eat their prey alive. I wonder whether those dying animals feel pain. I think about the discomfort I feel when I try to hold my breath for a long time. I think about how long that discomfort would last if I were to deliberately strangle myself. I think about how long the dying wildebeest feels the lions tearing its muscles away from the bone. And I think about how it will feel to be in hell, unable to die.
I realize that it doesn't matter how long the pain lasts, and it doesn't matter whether the wildebeest can take the pain. It doesn't matter whether I can take the pain. The word unbearable is a terrible lie. It implies that suffering has a limit, though it has none. Suffering happens, no matter what. Whether it is more than I can take is fucking irrelevant. It can be more than I can take, it can be far, far more. That's a terrifying realization.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
The Parable of The Beggar and The Mansion
Once upon a midnight there was a starving, homeless man, stumbling along a dark alley in a terrible snowstorm. Ahead in the distance he saw a light. He thought that perhaps someone was still awake and could help him, maybe give him something from their garbage. He resolved to use his last strength to try to reach the house.
By the time the beggar reached the sidewalk that ran in front of the house, he realized that it was a mansion, with many of the windows alight and full of joyful revelers. By now he was hardly able to stand, but just then, a very happy, very healthy woman came bursting out of the front door and ran up to greet him as he stood there on the curb. "Listen to my excellent news!" she burbled. The beggar was miserably cold and hungry, and was a little shocked not to get even the slightest bit of recognition of his condition. But he hoped that in exchange for listening, she would grant him a request for some food, perhaps. "Ok, I'm listening," he croaked.
"You are a worthless piece of filth and so is everyone else on the planet. God is perfect, and he made you, but you're imperfect because God couldn't or wouldn't prevent a woman eating an apple several thousand years ago, although preventing it could have solved the whole problem. Instead, God has allowed billions of people, including yourself, to be born, knowing full well in advance that the vast, vast majority of you will be thrown into a lake of fire, where not only will you all burn and feel real agony, you absolutely cannot ever, ever die."
Horribly, she stretched out these last three words with obvious, sinister glee. The beggar was almost convinced that a sort of pornographic leer had crossed the woman's face at that moment. He was absolutely terrified of her. How can she possibly think that this is good news? he thought to himself. He considered trying to run away, but he was so weak from hunger that he could hardly stand. The woman went on while he swayed.
"But you can be saved from this fate. All you have to do is gonelsar fiofuma alkenred rouledwaisnber, and you will be saved. Never mind about those billions of others, your beloved children, parents, friends, strangers the world over; they'll still be in hell, but they chose to ignore the good news, so it was their own stupid fault! Are you ready?" She held out her hand to the man, as though she wanted him to take it.
"Really, could you just give me a bite of food? I'm really hungry."
The woman looked at him in bemusement for a moment, as if trying to guess whether he had just said something vulgar, or not vulgar but perhaps in a foreign language. She finally said, "Ok, if you're ever ready to gonelsar fiofuma alkenred rouledwaisnber, let me know and you can come inside and take a hot bath and put on some clean clothes! See you!"
"Wait, wait!" the beggar cried, but she had already run back inside. A moment later a very happy, very healthy man came out the front door and ran up to greet him. "Listen to my excellent news!" he burbled. The beggar involuntarily made a face of surprise and shock. Here was a second person, oblivious to his suffering, talking about good news. Before he could answer, the man began rattling off the same speech that the woman had pronounced. He repeated this "good news" word-for-word, leer-for-leer, until he got to, "But you can be saved from this fate. All you have to do is uyhogep inkejar vueyypoer jikerp, and you will be saved. Never mind about those billions of others, your beloved children, parents, friends, strangers the world over; they'll still be in hell, but they chose to ignore the good news, so it was their own stupid fault!. Are you ready?" He held out his hand to the beggar, as though he wanted him to take it.
"Look, I'm just cold and hungry. Is there anything you can do to help me? Please, I'm desperate."
The man looked at the beggar in bemusement for a moment, as if trying to guess whether the beggar had just said something vulgar, or not vulgar but perhaps in a foreign language. Finally he said, "Ok, if you're ever ready to uyhogep inkejar vueyypoer jikerp, let me know and you can come inside and eat hot food and drink warm drink until you burst! See you!"
He disappeared into the house just as the woman had. The beggar decided that he would not get any help from this household, so he turned away in despair, resigned to his fate. But then the door of the house opened, and a different woman came out to greet him, and for a reason the man could not explain to himself, he allowed himself to be sincerely hopeful in spite of his first two encounters. This new woman repeated the same horrifying speech that the first two had uttered, but when she got to the part about avoiding the torture and abandoning one's loved ones to their fate, she said, "All you have to do is noeiznen wulpkrukc uegfla gehtik jraghoifab, and you can come sit in front of a blazing fireplace and then sleep on a bed softer than you ever imagined."
At this point, something awakened in the man, a kind of outrage, a kind of indignation, and in spite of his weakness, a fire was kindled. Here he was, freezing and starving to death before the eyes of these young, virile people, and they were here mocking him and taunting him with tales of the wonderful life they were living, just yards away. He summoned up his strength and cursed. "Wait just a damned minute. You three are deliberately tormenting me! You each seem to be giving me a secret password for getting into the house, but your passwords are all different. I don't understand those words or what they mean. Why do I have to say those words? And since you all say different words, how can I trust any of you? Why did you have to come torment me with your weirdness, anyway? I just wanted some help!"
The woman was aghast. "How dare you, you filthy beggar? I came out here offering you something wonderful and you scorned me! Come back when you've learned some manners! And by the way, take a shower, cos you stink!" Then she kicked him, hard, near the bend of his knee, causing the man to fall into the icy water flowing into the storm drain. The starving man's life began to drain away, finally ending his agony. The last thing he ever saw was the trinity of his assailants through the front window of the mansion. They laughed uproariously at the ending of the story of his life being told by people who had no inkling that the end of his life indeed was the story they were telling.
I don't know. Sort of over the top at the end.
By the time the beggar reached the sidewalk that ran in front of the house, he realized that it was a mansion, with many of the windows alight and full of joyful revelers. By now he was hardly able to stand, but just then, a very happy, very healthy woman came bursting out of the front door and ran up to greet him as he stood there on the curb. "Listen to my excellent news!" she burbled. The beggar was miserably cold and hungry, and was a little shocked not to get even the slightest bit of recognition of his condition. But he hoped that in exchange for listening, she would grant him a request for some food, perhaps. "Ok, I'm listening," he croaked.
"You are a worthless piece of filth and so is everyone else on the planet. God is perfect, and he made you, but you're imperfect because God couldn't or wouldn't prevent a woman eating an apple several thousand years ago, although preventing it could have solved the whole problem. Instead, God has allowed billions of people, including yourself, to be born, knowing full well in advance that the vast, vast majority of you will be thrown into a lake of fire, where not only will you all burn and feel real agony, you absolutely cannot ever, ever die."
Horribly, she stretched out these last three words with obvious, sinister glee. The beggar was almost convinced that a sort of pornographic leer had crossed the woman's face at that moment. He was absolutely terrified of her. How can she possibly think that this is good news? he thought to himself. He considered trying to run away, but he was so weak from hunger that he could hardly stand. The woman went on while he swayed.
"But you can be saved from this fate. All you have to do is gonelsar fiofuma alkenred rouledwaisnber, and you will be saved. Never mind about those billions of others, your beloved children, parents, friends, strangers the world over; they'll still be in hell, but they chose to ignore the good news, so it was their own stupid fault! Are you ready?" She held out her hand to the man, as though she wanted him to take it.
"Really, could you just give me a bite of food? I'm really hungry."
The woman looked at him in bemusement for a moment, as if trying to guess whether he had just said something vulgar, or not vulgar but perhaps in a foreign language. She finally said, "Ok, if you're ever ready to gonelsar fiofuma alkenred rouledwaisnber, let me know and you can come inside and take a hot bath and put on some clean clothes! See you!"
"Wait, wait!" the beggar cried, but she had already run back inside. A moment later a very happy, very healthy man came out the front door and ran up to greet him. "Listen to my excellent news!" he burbled. The beggar involuntarily made a face of surprise and shock. Here was a second person, oblivious to his suffering, talking about good news. Before he could answer, the man began rattling off the same speech that the woman had pronounced. He repeated this "good news" word-for-word, leer-for-leer, until he got to, "But you can be saved from this fate. All you have to do is uyhogep inkejar vueyypoer jikerp, and you will be saved. Never mind about those billions of others, your beloved children, parents, friends, strangers the world over; they'll still be in hell, but they chose to ignore the good news, so it was their own stupid fault!. Are you ready?" He held out his hand to the beggar, as though he wanted him to take it.
"Look, I'm just cold and hungry. Is there anything you can do to help me? Please, I'm desperate."
The man looked at the beggar in bemusement for a moment, as if trying to guess whether the beggar had just said something vulgar, or not vulgar but perhaps in a foreign language. Finally he said, "Ok, if you're ever ready to uyhogep inkejar vueyypoer jikerp, let me know and you can come inside and eat hot food and drink warm drink until you burst! See you!"
He disappeared into the house just as the woman had. The beggar decided that he would not get any help from this household, so he turned away in despair, resigned to his fate. But then the door of the house opened, and a different woman came out to greet him, and for a reason the man could not explain to himself, he allowed himself to be sincerely hopeful in spite of his first two encounters. This new woman repeated the same horrifying speech that the first two had uttered, but when she got to the part about avoiding the torture and abandoning one's loved ones to their fate, she said, "All you have to do is noeiznen wulpkrukc uegfla gehtik jraghoifab, and you can come sit in front of a blazing fireplace and then sleep on a bed softer than you ever imagined."
At this point, something awakened in the man, a kind of outrage, a kind of indignation, and in spite of his weakness, a fire was kindled. Here he was, freezing and starving to death before the eyes of these young, virile people, and they were here mocking him and taunting him with tales of the wonderful life they were living, just yards away. He summoned up his strength and cursed. "Wait just a damned minute. You three are deliberately tormenting me! You each seem to be giving me a secret password for getting into the house, but your passwords are all different. I don't understand those words or what they mean. Why do I have to say those words? And since you all say different words, how can I trust any of you? Why did you have to come torment me with your weirdness, anyway? I just wanted some help!"
The woman was aghast. "How dare you, you filthy beggar? I came out here offering you something wonderful and you scorned me! Come back when you've learned some manners! And by the way, take a shower, cos you stink!" Then she kicked him, hard, near the bend of his knee, causing the man to fall into the icy water flowing into the storm drain. The starving man's life began to drain away, finally ending his agony. The last thing he ever saw was the trinity of his assailants through the front window of the mansion. They laughed uproariously at the ending of the story of his life being told by people who had no inkling that the end of his life indeed was the story they were telling.
I don't know. Sort of over the top at the end.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
What is all this about, really?
I've wondered lately whether it's possible that I no longer really fear hell, but that my mind is clinging to the fear for some unconscious reason. I woke up this morning no longer able to access that feeling of fear. At the same time, I didn't rush to hang myself, which I thought I would do if I could ever possibly get past the fear. Now I'm confused. I know that just a few days ago I had a very real and terrifying vision of dying, thinking that peace is finally here, and then waking up to flames. Now I can't retrieve that vision or the fear that went with it.
I know that I did spend at least ten years utterly terrified of going to hell. I remember working at the barbecue restaurant, putting extra wood into the fire pit, looking at the flames and feeling sick at the thought of being in there but unable to die. But what about now, after all these years of studying evolution, cosmology, biology, even studying Christianity from a skeptical point of view? Do I still really worry about it? What have I been doing these past two months? Looking for permission--from believers--to stop believing? Yes, that, but is that all?
Why did I leave the church in the first place? I was about 25, I think, and I had always been ashamed to be a Christian. I had always felt that God's requirement on me was that I publicly and frequently humiliate myself by doing things like wearing religious T-shirts to work, taking my bible with me to work, making sure that everyone knew that I was a Christian. I was always quite ashamed of it, and the only time my shame was reduced was when I knew that everyone around me was also a Christian.
In 1991 I had a job that I liked, and I liked the people I worked with. They seemed like "cool" people, and I wanted them to accept me. I didn't feel like they accepted me as a Christian. That's really what it all came down to: I left the church because I wanted my co-workers to accept me. Their approval seemed more valuable to me than the approval of my brethren, and even more valuable than the approval of God. Why would I do that, knowing that hell would be my reward? Actually, now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure that I was never confident that I'd avoid hell. If my memory serves me at all, I was simply hoping that God would save me, but never sure of it. I was a Christian based only on a very shaky hope; I had convinced myself at age 13 that I would go to hell, and I spent my entire career as a Christian trying vainly to convince myself otherwise.
After I left the church, I started dating Diana. I worried a lot about God's opinion on our sex life, given that we weren't married. I remember trying to talk myself out of worrying about it, trying to justify it somehow, telling myself that surely God wouldn't mind me having sex with my girlfriend. But I was never convinced. While we were still dating, out on a camping trip once, some Mormon missionaries approached us, and before they could say much, I said, "There is no god." I didn't believe it. I just wanted to say it. I wonder how much of my railing against God is simply me rebelling against Edd, against the time that he spanked me because I had told my older sister that I didn't care what Edd's rules were.
Since then I've read so many scientific and skeptical books, and they all ring quite true to me, yet somehow the arguments against the existence of God and the veracity of the bible just don't seem to work. I'm sitting here reading "The God Delusion" again, and finding that while the arguments make logical sense, they don't settle anything for me. For some reason, I have a Murphy's Law attitude about it all. I can remember in gym class once, when we were supposed to jump on a trampoline. I opted out of the activity because my mother had always told us kids not to jump on trampolines due to them being very dangerous. I argued with myself briefly, saying that she would never know, but then I had a vision of her showing up at school by coincidence, or just finding out through the grapevine (or directly from me, due to my own guilty conscience) that I had done it. That feeling is very similar to the hellfire vision I had a couple of days ago.
Is it possible that my fear of hell is totally a manifestation of childhood fears concerning getting into trouble? The fear that I'm screwed no matter what, because in the house run by Edd I was always screwed no matter what?
I know that I did spend at least ten years utterly terrified of going to hell. I remember working at the barbecue restaurant, putting extra wood into the fire pit, looking at the flames and feeling sick at the thought of being in there but unable to die. But what about now, after all these years of studying evolution, cosmology, biology, even studying Christianity from a skeptical point of view? Do I still really worry about it? What have I been doing these past two months? Looking for permission--from believers--to stop believing? Yes, that, but is that all?
Why did I leave the church in the first place? I was about 25, I think, and I had always been ashamed to be a Christian. I had always felt that God's requirement on me was that I publicly and frequently humiliate myself by doing things like wearing religious T-shirts to work, taking my bible with me to work, making sure that everyone knew that I was a Christian. I was always quite ashamed of it, and the only time my shame was reduced was when I knew that everyone around me was also a Christian.
In 1991 I had a job that I liked, and I liked the people I worked with. They seemed like "cool" people, and I wanted them to accept me. I didn't feel like they accepted me as a Christian. That's really what it all came down to: I left the church because I wanted my co-workers to accept me. Their approval seemed more valuable to me than the approval of my brethren, and even more valuable than the approval of God. Why would I do that, knowing that hell would be my reward? Actually, now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure that I was never confident that I'd avoid hell. If my memory serves me at all, I was simply hoping that God would save me, but never sure of it. I was a Christian based only on a very shaky hope; I had convinced myself at age 13 that I would go to hell, and I spent my entire career as a Christian trying vainly to convince myself otherwise.
After I left the church, I started dating Diana. I worried a lot about God's opinion on our sex life, given that we weren't married. I remember trying to talk myself out of worrying about it, trying to justify it somehow, telling myself that surely God wouldn't mind me having sex with my girlfriend. But I was never convinced. While we were still dating, out on a camping trip once, some Mormon missionaries approached us, and before they could say much, I said, "There is no god." I didn't believe it. I just wanted to say it. I wonder how much of my railing against God is simply me rebelling against Edd, against the time that he spanked me because I had told my older sister that I didn't care what Edd's rules were.
Since then I've read so many scientific and skeptical books, and they all ring quite true to me, yet somehow the arguments against the existence of God and the veracity of the bible just don't seem to work. I'm sitting here reading "The God Delusion" again, and finding that while the arguments make logical sense, they don't settle anything for me. For some reason, I have a Murphy's Law attitude about it all. I can remember in gym class once, when we were supposed to jump on a trampoline. I opted out of the activity because my mother had always told us kids not to jump on trampolines due to them being very dangerous. I argued with myself briefly, saying that she would never know, but then I had a vision of her showing up at school by coincidence, or just finding out through the grapevine (or directly from me, due to my own guilty conscience) that I had done it. That feeling is very similar to the hellfire vision I had a couple of days ago.
Is it possible that my fear of hell is totally a manifestation of childhood fears concerning getting into trouble? The fear that I'm screwed no matter what, because in the house run by Edd I was always screwed no matter what?
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Broken, the series
Another one of those moments where I realize just how broken I am, and have been for so long.
I haven't thought about this in a long time, and I've never really looked at it or articulated it. Lately I've spent a lot of time going back to that fateful day when I was 13, when Edd told me that hell is a place of eternal agony. I've been recounting the experience to myself and thinking about how it, among many other disasters, has affected my thinking, my entire way of being, for 30 years.
When Edd told me about hell, I was absolutely terrified--I had always assumed that I'd go to hell, because heaven is only for good people, and I certainly didn't think of myself as good enough. But my hell was a little kid's hell: you live an orphan's life in a poorly lit underground cavern, you don't get dessert, you have to wear a devil suit, and you have to pray before you go to bed (good kids don't have to pray). That was my childish view of hell, and it didn't seem like such a bad place, so I never thought about it. Until Edd redefined it for me: flames, agony, no dying allowed, for all eternity. That scared the shit out of me.
The first thing I remember doing is running, in terror, to find a bible. I did happen to have one, I think given to me at a church where I had gone to Sunday school with a friend years before. I hoped that I could read something there that would teach me how to stay out of hell. I skipped the Old Testament, because, well, it's old, and therefore probably of no value, right? Sadly, the first book of the New Testament is Matthew, and that book served only to intensify my agony, especially the verses of Matthew 5:20-30:
Verse 20: For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.
Who the hell were the scribes and Pharisees? I had no idea. I ran in desperation to my mother to find out who these people were, and how righteous they were, and how I could be more righteous than they. My mother's response was, "Robbie, I don't know." I interpreted this to mean that the answer is unknowable, because they were ancient people and their ancient wisdom is now lost. My conclusion was that I probably could never know how to be more righteous. Fucked.
Verse 22: ...whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.
I called my younger sisters fool all the time. Fucked.
Verse 28: ...whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.
I didn't know what adultery was, but I could tell from the context that it was bad. I certainly did know what lust was. By this time I was adolescent, hormonal, and extremely horny, and of course had received no moral guidance whatsoever, except Edd's "guidance" about how to please a woman sexually and how women are useful as sex objects and nothing else. So I'd committed quite a bit of adultery in my heart by this time, whatever it was. I had to look up the word in the dictionary to discover that I'd already committed adultery with my mother and my oldest sister. Jesus never said anything about how you might be excused if you did it at your parents' bidding and were only ten years old. Fucked.
Verses 29-30, the coup de grace: And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.
This one was devastating, and it ruined my life for many, many years. I spent a long time trying to imagine some way of chopping off my hands. I knew that it would be unbearably painful, and I knew that I would not be able to live a normal life without hands, but I didn't want to go to hell. I even worked on the logistics of it: I could chop off one hand with an axe, but then how would I chop off the other hand? I decided that I needed to get a long sword or a big meat cleaver and set it up on a stand of some kind, and then slam my wrists down on the blade simultaneously in order to sever both hands at once. But of course, just before that, I had to gouge out both my eyes.
I knew that I would never have the courage to do these things to myself. Fucked.
Also, I had some pretty weird ideas about love by this time. I believed that I was required to love god, and I believed that my unwillingness to mutilate myself in this way was proof that I did not love god properly, a manifestation of deep cowardice, an indicator of what a contemptible, unworthy creature I am. I spent a long time looking around at other people in outrage, wondering how they could get through life knowing that they had to cut off their hands and gouge out their eyes. I'm not sure why it never occurred to me to ask anyone about it, except maybe that my mother's answer to my first question filled me with despair over being able to get an answer. Not only that, but I was a very neglected, very alone kid: no one had ever told me about the thousands of years of interpretation and tradition surrounding the bible. At the time I gave the bible the same weight as a technical manual.
I carried this horrid fear with me for many years. Before long I learned that I could make money by working. I decided that I just needed to get a good job so I could make a lot of money and eventually hire a surgeon to perform this terrible operation on me. Years later I heard, through bible study probably (I don't remember exactly), that you're not supposed to take the bible literally. This did not really help me at all, because I never have been able to figure out people's rationale for deciding when the bible is literal and when it's figurative. Everything I've ever heard about making this distinction sounds like self-serving, cowardly, intellectual maneuvering.
Now that I sit here thinking about all these things, it occurs to me that perhaps my persistent fear of going to hell is rooted in these verses about gouging and amputating. Maybe I never could believe any of the other things I read in the bible, and never could believe any of the interpretations I heard from other people. Maybe I just "knew" in my heart that if I didn't love god enough to mutilate myself, he would never have me.
Now I have to wonder: what effect would these thoughts have on a 13-year-old boy who has just discovered the intense pleasures of lust and masturbation? I can see only the most obvious effects so far: what it made me think, how it made me behave relative to "sin": I prayed constantly for strength to resist touching myself. Naturally it hardly ever worked, except for a very difficult period of about three months where I really did abstain. This was a result of thinking that I could sort of bully myself into behaving: I prayed to god, "Help me not to masturbate any more, and if I do, then just throw me into hell." For some reason I believed that god would heed this prayer. When I finally gave up three months later, I knew that my fate was sealed.
What I am only just now beginning to see is that it made me a very strange person in some ways that might seem unrelated. For example, being chronically pissed off at everyone else for showing no sign of the terror that I felt. How could they get through their lives? How could they even get themselves out of bed? What would be the point, if, having hands and eyes, they were going to hell? Being so tormented as a teenager made me a little bit nuts, I think.
I haven't thought about this in a long time, and I've never really looked at it or articulated it. Lately I've spent a lot of time going back to that fateful day when I was 13, when Edd told me that hell is a place of eternal agony. I've been recounting the experience to myself and thinking about how it, among many other disasters, has affected my thinking, my entire way of being, for 30 years.
When Edd told me about hell, I was absolutely terrified--I had always assumed that I'd go to hell, because heaven is only for good people, and I certainly didn't think of myself as good enough. But my hell was a little kid's hell: you live an orphan's life in a poorly lit underground cavern, you don't get dessert, you have to wear a devil suit, and you have to pray before you go to bed (good kids don't have to pray). That was my childish view of hell, and it didn't seem like such a bad place, so I never thought about it. Until Edd redefined it for me: flames, agony, no dying allowed, for all eternity. That scared the shit out of me.
The first thing I remember doing is running, in terror, to find a bible. I did happen to have one, I think given to me at a church where I had gone to Sunday school with a friend years before. I hoped that I could read something there that would teach me how to stay out of hell. I skipped the Old Testament, because, well, it's old, and therefore probably of no value, right? Sadly, the first book of the New Testament is Matthew, and that book served only to intensify my agony, especially the verses of Matthew 5:20-30:
Verse 20: For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.
Who the hell were the scribes and Pharisees? I had no idea. I ran in desperation to my mother to find out who these people were, and how righteous they were, and how I could be more righteous than they. My mother's response was, "Robbie, I don't know." I interpreted this to mean that the answer is unknowable, because they were ancient people and their ancient wisdom is now lost. My conclusion was that I probably could never know how to be more righteous. Fucked.
Verse 22: ...whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.
I called my younger sisters fool all the time. Fucked.
Verse 28: ...whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.
I didn't know what adultery was, but I could tell from the context that it was bad. I certainly did know what lust was. By this time I was adolescent, hormonal, and extremely horny, and of course had received no moral guidance whatsoever, except Edd's "guidance" about how to please a woman sexually and how women are useful as sex objects and nothing else. So I'd committed quite a bit of adultery in my heart by this time, whatever it was. I had to look up the word in the dictionary to discover that I'd already committed adultery with my mother and my oldest sister. Jesus never said anything about how you might be excused if you did it at your parents' bidding and were only ten years old. Fucked.
Verses 29-30, the coup de grace: And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.
This one was devastating, and it ruined my life for many, many years. I spent a long time trying to imagine some way of chopping off my hands. I knew that it would be unbearably painful, and I knew that I would not be able to live a normal life without hands, but I didn't want to go to hell. I even worked on the logistics of it: I could chop off one hand with an axe, but then how would I chop off the other hand? I decided that I needed to get a long sword or a big meat cleaver and set it up on a stand of some kind, and then slam my wrists down on the blade simultaneously in order to sever both hands at once. But of course, just before that, I had to gouge out both my eyes.
I knew that I would never have the courage to do these things to myself. Fucked.
Also, I had some pretty weird ideas about love by this time. I believed that I was required to love god, and I believed that my unwillingness to mutilate myself in this way was proof that I did not love god properly, a manifestation of deep cowardice, an indicator of what a contemptible, unworthy creature I am. I spent a long time looking around at other people in outrage, wondering how they could get through life knowing that they had to cut off their hands and gouge out their eyes. I'm not sure why it never occurred to me to ask anyone about it, except maybe that my mother's answer to my first question filled me with despair over being able to get an answer. Not only that, but I was a very neglected, very alone kid: no one had ever told me about the thousands of years of interpretation and tradition surrounding the bible. At the time I gave the bible the same weight as a technical manual.
I carried this horrid fear with me for many years. Before long I learned that I could make money by working. I decided that I just needed to get a good job so I could make a lot of money and eventually hire a surgeon to perform this terrible operation on me. Years later I heard, through bible study probably (I don't remember exactly), that you're not supposed to take the bible literally. This did not really help me at all, because I never have been able to figure out people's rationale for deciding when the bible is literal and when it's figurative. Everything I've ever heard about making this distinction sounds like self-serving, cowardly, intellectual maneuvering.
Now that I sit here thinking about all these things, it occurs to me that perhaps my persistent fear of going to hell is rooted in these verses about gouging and amputating. Maybe I never could believe any of the other things I read in the bible, and never could believe any of the interpretations I heard from other people. Maybe I just "knew" in my heart that if I didn't love god enough to mutilate myself, he would never have me.
Now I have to wonder: what effect would these thoughts have on a 13-year-old boy who has just discovered the intense pleasures of lust and masturbation? I can see only the most obvious effects so far: what it made me think, how it made me behave relative to "sin": I prayed constantly for strength to resist touching myself. Naturally it hardly ever worked, except for a very difficult period of about three months where I really did abstain. This was a result of thinking that I could sort of bully myself into behaving: I prayed to god, "Help me not to masturbate any more, and if I do, then just throw me into hell." For some reason I believed that god would heed this prayer. When I finally gave up three months later, I knew that my fate was sealed.
What I am only just now beginning to see is that it made me a very strange person in some ways that might seem unrelated. For example, being chronically pissed off at everyone else for showing no sign of the terror that I felt. How could they get through their lives? How could they even get themselves out of bed? What would be the point, if, having hands and eyes, they were going to hell? Being so tormented as a teenager made me a little bit nuts, I think.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Punishment is a malfunction
This is my mantra for the day. I'm acutely aware of the fear of hell at the moment, because of the mini-vision I had a few hours ago. I was just sitting here trying to think of a way to talk to myself about it, and out popped the idea that love and hell can't coexist. I started with a thought about how god can't exist, because a real god who is loving would not put people into hell. That's a good one, but it's a little tired; I've heard it before and it has never managed to move me, perhaps simply because it was given to me by someone else rather than being my own.
I have recently discovered some new clarity on Yahweh's brand of morality. I find that the concepts of sin, evil, punishment, virtue, etc. (the morality accepted not only by Christians but by most people throughout time, from what I can tell) are totally repugnant to me. I realize now that when a parent punishes a child beyond what is helpful to the child, or in a way that harms the child, the parent is failing miserably in his duty. Thus, a punishing god is a malfunctioning god, not worthy of any praise whatsoever. That alone gets me only so far as to say that Yahweh is a terrible deity. But I look at the bible, the only source of "information" we have about Yahweh, and see that he claims to be loving and merciful. That makes him a liar at best, more likely a psychopath.
The good part here is that I see that such a god must be an invention of tormented, malfunctioning humans. No way would a being that far above us have such sick concepts rolling around in its head. Well, I was more confident of this when I first started writing this entry. Damn, it slipped away again.
I have recently discovered some new clarity on Yahweh's brand of morality. I find that the concepts of sin, evil, punishment, virtue, etc. (the morality accepted not only by Christians but by most people throughout time, from what I can tell) are totally repugnant to me. I realize now that when a parent punishes a child beyond what is helpful to the child, or in a way that harms the child, the parent is failing miserably in his duty. Thus, a punishing god is a malfunctioning god, not worthy of any praise whatsoever. That alone gets me only so far as to say that Yahweh is a terrible deity. But I look at the bible, the only source of "information" we have about Yahweh, and see that he claims to be loving and merciful. That makes him a liar at best, more likely a psychopath.
The good part here is that I see that such a god must be an invention of tormented, malfunctioning humans. No way would a being that far above us have such sick concepts rolling around in its head. Well, I was more confident of this when I first started writing this entry. Damn, it slipped away again.
Three small steps forward, one big step back
Yesterday I realized that the book of Revelation in the bible seems like mostly bullshit to me. This didn't hit me quite as powerfully as the creation myth realization. I think that I still fear that there may be some little truth to Revelation. Not sure yet. That's my third step forward so far.
Unfortunately, I took a big step backward today. I sat and tried to imagine a universe in which the end of my life really means the utter end for me: oblivion, not hell. I visualized dying, the feeling of going to sleep, and then nothing. But then, against my will, the vision continued: I suddenly wake up, and for just a brief moment, it's peaceful, bright, a kind of nondescript whiteness. But then the flames start. That's the most powerful vision of hell I've had in a long time. I worry that either I'll always fear hell, or worse, I'll get over the fear of hell and then find myself there anyway after my death. Curse you, Edd Poindexter.
Unfortunately, I took a big step backward today. I sat and tried to imagine a universe in which the end of my life really means the utter end for me: oblivion, not hell. I visualized dying, the feeling of going to sleep, and then nothing. But then, against my will, the vision continued: I suddenly wake up, and for just a brief moment, it's peaceful, bright, a kind of nondescript whiteness. But then the flames start. That's the most powerful vision of hell I've had in a long time. I worry that either I'll always fear hell, or worse, I'll get over the fear of hell and then find myself there anyway after my death. Curse you, Edd Poindexter.
Broken
I have only recently begun to get a really good look at just how broken I am. I think that I still don't see it completely. Perhaps it will take a while, or perhaps I'll never see it fully. Every once in a while, I'll compare myself, my way of thinking, my way of being, to that of others. Instead of the old thought that I'm pretty much like everyone else, or that maybe I'm just a different kind of thinker, it now appears to me that I am so utterly broken that I can't even come close to having anything in common with most other people.
A brief review of Rebecca Goldstein's new book, 36 Arguments for the Existence of God, has this to say:
...the cosmic reason for my personal existence...is ultimately just a contingency of the universe...most human beings will never accept this, and so they will turn from reason to religion.
This jumped out at me as one of those surprising new indicators of my brokenness. I have never cared much about the cosmic reason for my existence. I can't imagine needing to turn to religion for that. I suppose that many atheists would say the same thing, but I sense that they would have at least sought a reason, and then decided that no reason is necessary. I have never sought a reason for my existence. I'm not sure that I've ever cared why I'm here. The only reason I ever cared about religion was because Edd told me when I was 13 that I'd burn in hell forever. If it hadn't been for that, I would never have cared about Jesus.
I sense that I am far more disconnected from "normal" people than I've ever realized. I have a feeling that this is going to be a long road of unpleasant discovery.
A brief review of Rebecca Goldstein's new book, 36 Arguments for the Existence of God, has this to say:
...the cosmic reason for my personal existence...is ultimately just a contingency of the universe...most human beings will never accept this, and so they will turn from reason to religion.
This jumped out at me as one of those surprising new indicators of my brokenness. I have never cared much about the cosmic reason for my existence. I can't imagine needing to turn to religion for that. I suppose that many atheists would say the same thing, but I sense that they would have at least sought a reason, and then decided that no reason is necessary. I have never sought a reason for my existence. I'm not sure that I've ever cared why I'm here. The only reason I ever cared about religion was because Edd told me when I was 13 that I'd burn in hell forever. If it hadn't been for that, I would never have cared about Jesus.
I sense that I am far more disconnected from "normal" people than I've ever realized. I have a feeling that this is going to be a long road of unpleasant discovery.
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