The Painful Truth About The Worldwide Church of God
 Angry With God?
By Russell

There are few taboos left in our western society anymore, and the ones that are there are slowly but surely falling by the wayside and opening themselves up to logical discourse. Of course, there are exceptions to this, but in general this is the way our society is heading...

There is however one taboo that appears to still be pretty much unbreakable. Even to those of us who have eschewed our religious roots, it is much more acceptable to deny god than to be angry with it. To deny god is simply to accept our fate, to be angry with it is to tempt it.

I am here to break that taboo. I am angry with god. Or, more accurately, if there is a god, I feel justified and completely reasoned in being very upset to angry with that entity. Mine is a righteous anger, however, fueled by the tendency of this god to hold itself aloof and refuse to talk to people who do not bow down prostrate before it.

Why am I angry? Let me list my reasons. All of these reasons suppose that there is a god, an assertion that I am not comfortable making in any but a hypothetical manner.

1.) We are supposed to be god's creations, however, he has imbued us with something that we like to call "free will". This free will is something that is supposed to be very precious to this entity. We have the free will to make our own decisions and choices.

However, this god has given us this ability, and then turned around and told us that if we do not make the decisions that it has told us are proper and correct, that it will turn away from us and eventually torment or destroy us.

If we, as humans, were to treat our children like this, we would at the very least raise some very dysfunctional children, and at the very most, have them taken away from us. Even our "inferior" human moral sense dictates this to be the case. Why should a god not be held to the same standards, or even higher?

If this god accepts us for who we are, we should not have to do anything, including accepting the sacrifice of itself, which should cover us whether or not we accept it. If it does not, then the gift of free will is for naught. Either way, this god has some serious explaining to do.

2.) Upon creation, god was supposed to have granted us with the choice between good and evil. Or more accurately, it was supposed to have granted our forbearers this choice. Not only did it subject these people to a situation that they were not only ill-equipped to handle, it subjected them to a situation that was probably impossible for them to handle. It set our forbearers up for failure, and then took this failure and put it on the heads of every single human from then on, whether or not they had personally made the "bad" decision.

Either the myth is false, or god is a cruel entity who has preordained our own destruction, necessitating it to save us from ourselves.

3.) Upon making this choice, god waited a while, and decided that the whole world was evil. So then it decided to find nine righteous people, (I think that's the number), and save then, and kill, outright, hundreds of millions more in one of the most horrible ways possible. It was within the power of this god to simply strike everyone down quickly and painlessly, but no, it had to teach us a lesson we'd never forget. And then, to add insult to injury, after it was done, in the nature of most abusers, it felt regret, and put up a rainbow to promise it wouldn't do it again. That's right, kill almost everyone and everything on the planet, and then feel remorse afterwards. How many abusive fathers or husbands have you heard this pattern in? Sound familiar?

And we're supposed to WORSHIP that?

4.) So, moving on, this god was supposed to have chosen a small tribe of people to be its "bride". This was a group of people who were base and animalistic, just like every other tribe on the planet, but somehow it chose "this" group of people. It then went off and instructed its "bride" to take over as much land as possible and kill everyone and everything on it. Rape, pillage, and plunder. Killing thousands to millions of people brutally.

I guess the lesson here is that if you are god's chosen people you can do whatever you want, and if you're not it doesn't matter what you do, you'll still get killed?

I'm sure there were plenty of Canaanites and Hittites and *ites that were pretty good people, as people of that day went. Indiscriminate.

5.) And then we go to Sodom and Gomorrah. It's pretty well known these days that homosexuality isn't a choice, and most people who are homosexuals would prefer not to be if they had the choice. Whether it is a birth aberration, is immaterial. Even "we" know enough to be tolerant and loving towards these people. But instead, this god decided that because of these people's "wickedness", they were to be killed, again in a horrible manner. Even god couldn't find one good person in those cities. Why? Wasn't it looking hard enough? Or perhaps it didn't *want* to? Oh, and of course Lot's wife, whom he'd already decided was good enough to escape with lot, but in a fit of curiosity or whatever, she decided to look back, and got turned into a pillar of salt. How difficult is it not to look back at something spectacular like the fall of an entire city? Yet another case of god asking the impossible, and again without even giving a decent reason why, that would have at least given her incentive. Yet another case of god faulting someone for being human and doling out the harshest punishment possible.

6.) And of course Job. We all know that story, don't we? God has something to prove to Satan, so he decides that Satan can do anything it wants to Job, but don't kill him. Torment him all it wants.. So finally Job breaks and god faults him for it, but then in its infinite mercy it forgives Job. Job didn't bring this upon himself, he lost everything, and yet god still faults him for it? What kind of god is this, anyway? I suppose god would have faulted Job if he'd killed himself, too?

7.) So fast forward a couple of thousand years. God decides it's finally time to forgive everyone. So, in its inscrutable wisdom, it turns part of itself into a human, sends it to earth, doles out some admittedly insightful bits of wisdom (possibly the only good thing god has ever done), and then kills itself. That is supposed to be a sacrifice for all of our sins, right? And then it resurrects itself and flies up into the sky. And out of that comes a church. Fine and good. A church that preaches forgiveness for all, even if the fact that we need forgiveness in the first place, can't be a bad thing, right? Except that church, which is supposedly headed up by god itself, twists and turns even that simple thing around so that it becomes an instrument of oppression. A state which is allowed to continue for years upon years upon years.

8.) Now, if someone goes around spreading lies about us behind our backs, our first recourse is to state, as publicly as possible, that this person doesn't speak for us and we don't stand for that, right? Well, if all this stuff is not true, if the bible and the ministers and the priests and everyone who claims to speak for god while sapping people dry of their money, or everyone who claims to speak for god, ruining lives and families and causing death and suffering and destruction are not speaking for god, then why isn't god thundering from the mountaintops that these people do not speak for it? I would think that, at least, god would owe us that much. At least tell us in no uncertain terms what it's nature is so we could make an informed choice as to whether to accept or reject it.

9.) Also, god seems to have this really narcissistic desire to be worshipped. It seems to be very insecure, always needing it to be told by creatures inferior to itself that it is so wonderful and great. In fact, this worship seems to be a precondition of this god accepting us. I think this is some kind of extreme codependence. Why should we worship something that demands our worship? I think god would be much more worthy of our worship if it told us not to.

Right now I reject god.

I reject god because the behaviors outlined above are patently inexcusable.

I reject god because god has supposedly given me the free will to decide for myself, and I decide that eternal destruction without this kind of god is infinitely better than eternal life with such insanity.

I reject god because I think any *real* god would respect my convictions much more than it would respect blind obedience.

I reject god because I will not place myself under such capriciousness.

I reject god because the god that I have been taught and the god that I have describe above, the god of the bible, is capricious and by any definition of the word, mentally ill and deranged.

Of course, if the real god is not at all like this I would like to know. And then the real god has quite a bit of explaining to do. If the real god is not like this, I would like to know why the real god has not spoken up and told us that everything we were taught is wrong, that it isn't like that. I would like god to explain to me, as a fellow conscious being, why it has chosen to allow this stuff to go on. I am willing to listen. but it had better have a damn good reason, if it values me at all.

So, yes I am angry with god. But god has a chance to redeem itself. All it has to do is prove to me that it isn't so, and explain to me why it has allowed this to go on for so long. I'm willing to listen.

I suspect god and I will not have this conversation any time soon.

--Russell

 


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