XENITH

“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

– 1st Corinthians 1:18

[[What if?]]

The great wheel of God rolls on.  It is a steamroller, trampling mercilessly all whom it catches in its path: mercy, grace, judgement and damnation, all these are handed out irrefusably and almost arbitrarily by the hideous, malfunctioning mechanics of the deity.  God has no hand on earth but those of His followers, and they are often less-than-willing glove puppets in the grand show-schemes of the heavenly powers.  Power there is, however: not only the mystic and miraculous that flows fitfully and disruptively from the hidden kingdoms but very human powers; apologetics and counter-rationalism, fanaticism and the dark and twisted psychology of heaven and hell, so fearfully angry and so bitterly afraid.  In the endless scrambling for grace and security we see the spirit of God hovering over the edge of the pit: it has the power to influence, either to pull a person back or to push them over.  It’s motives, however, are less than clear.

And in the earthly citadels of God, the earthly angels: the great unconscious psychological witch-doctors of the age.  It is a powerful irony: in this era of skepticism, smug serenity in our disbelief, we are somehow certain that we have escaped the supernatural forces that govern our lives.  We are wrong.  It is still the old gods, the priests to the old fears that haunt our thoughts in the dark, introspective hours.  From where else would come the rampant racism, homophobia, sexism?  That religious laws underpin all our own is not excuse enough: unbeknownst to most, the guilt-grace dichotomy chips away at the confidence of society, bewildering humanity with the ghost of its corrosive morality, pitting loathing against desire and self against self.  The unwitting hypocrisy of those who criticise fundamentalist Islamic states is painful to behold: at least such evil is open in its manipulation, honest in its desire to control; the creeping, insidious hold that the constant barrage of disguised theology exerts over much of western society is far, far more dangerous.  Its priests and crusaders are not only the televangelists and stadium preachers, the worship leaders and the street corner bible bashers but the right-wing politicians, the conservative media, the charitable organisations.  Old Christianity is like a gas, pervading the social atmosphere and warping out ability to see right from wrong.  For example: if a person gives to charity, they are a better person.  Why?  Is it anything more than Christian guilt-based ethical perversion to ask for two dollars, two pounds a month to ’save a child’s life?’  What a wonderful self-affirming lie it makes!  To give two dollars a month is all very well, but let us not somehow believe it says anything about ourselves: if we give two dollars a month we do not in any way step in to save a child’s life - we step in to give away two dollars.  To imagine any one of these givers choosing the life of such a child over their own life is almost amusing.  Give to charity as you will, but don’t imagine it makes you any more heroic, or any more ‘Christian.’

So how as Christianity asserted this hold over people?  By appealing to people, as people, for and about people.  Christianity’s greatest reversal of Hellenistic culture (instead of merely stealing from it, as per usual) was to discard the ‘prosopon’, to take away the masks that people change from day to day, situation to situation and give value to the man behind the mask, the woman behind the veil.  And when a person has value in and of themselves, when a person has worth simply by the fact of their existence, the next step is fear of being denied that value.  From here the first step of Human Rights theory quickly becomes overblown politics correctness; the first step of Equal Rights quickly becomes a cringing apologetic positive discrimination; the first step of tolerance quickly becomes acceptance of and licence for open stupidity in all parts of society.  It is one of the most brilliant, intelligent and soul-destroying gifts humanity has ever been given: the unchangeable, immutable measure of oneself; the eternal candle burning fitfully at the bottom of our darkest pit of personality.  Christianity has set the person apart from the action and - above all - set the person apart from the role.  It is a gift of great worthlessness that we have been taught to cherish so highly: we love because God first loved us, and are loved not for what we do but for what we are, and we are so afraid of losing that innate sense of self-worth that we will do anything, appease or kill anyone, to keep it.  “I disagree with what you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it”: why on earth would we do that?  Since when is being able to talk more important than having something worth saying?  Since when is the layman on a level with the expert, the man on the street as qualified as the university graduate?

And thus, Christian ethics keep us mired in a web of fear, appeasement and violence.  The wheel of God grinds on, keeping us cruelly reliant on it for our sense of self.  Gone is the value of a person for what they do, gone is the judgement and the hierarchy of society based on capability, gone is the ability to call someone ‘wrong’ because they are wrong, the capacity to diminish a person’s position simply because it is incorrect.  Instead it is replaced by absolute equality, inalienable: what a horrific idea.  To imagine everyone equal - whether in the eyes of God or in the eyes of humanity - is to imagine a world of stagnation, frustration, illogic and incapacity: the ideal postmodern existence.  For while people may see postmodernism as one more step taken away from the old, whitebearded God, in reality it has only shrouded Him in one more layer of philosophical disguise.  While He may be clothed in the language of universalism and freedom of choice, still at our core we fear the arbitrary judgement of that fearsome father-figure.

So here is the terrible irony of religion, accompanied by the fearsome societal hypocrisy is gives birth to: in our skewed view of the base equal identity of all we find the birthplace of racial hatred, sexual discrimination, homophobia and so much more; in our fear of losing it, we find the origin of society’s disintegration, loss of cohesion and identity, lack of strength both personal and corporate, toleration of absurdities and atrocities - it is the death of the hero and the genius and the creator, for all of these things wither and die in a society that emphasises equality over ability, limits exploitation at the ultimate price of any kind of progress.  Equality, even God’s equality, will strangle society to death.

The great wheel of God rolls on, applauded by those who refuse to see the bodies of the last great people of the age crushed beneath it.  Those who stand tallest are always the first to die: may the steamroller God of the edge have mercy on their souls.