The Problem With Christianity

The problem with Christianity, is that it falls at a place where our greatest desires intersect with our greatest fears.

It seeks to provide answers in a way that leads to the stifling of our questions.

It presumes that we can know God, while at the same time telling us that when we don’t understand we should just have faith.

The problem with Christianity, is that it tells us we are bad. Flawed. Depraved. But that God loves us anyway. And because He loves us, we should strive to be perfect. And then it tells us what perfect is.

Perfection is living life on the straight and narrow. It is loving our neighbour as ourself. It is following a long list of rules that are supposed to make us better–that are supposed to prove our love for God. And this is the key to redemption–giving up all the things that make us human, because life on earth is a blip on the radar but we will be rewarded in eternity.

The problem is, we don’t know what eternity is like. We don’t know what will happen there or how we will be suddenly changed into perfect beings who no longer have to suffer or struggle or strive. So we hang all of our actions and hopes on something we have never seen. Just like we have never seen God.

The problem with Christianity is that it gives so many people carte blanche to behave in ways that are reprehensible. It gives us the ability to ostracize entire populations of humans simply because they are in the minority and because there are some verses in a thick, old book that we can use to prove we are right. The problem with Christianity is that The Bible can be used to justify anything–things like slavery, war, cultural genocide, executions, homophobia, sexism, racism and exclusion of the disabled.

The Bible itself says that the power of life and death are in words,  and the The Bible is full of dangerous words. It tells us that someone who has sex before marriage is deserving of a violent death. That if we hear God tells us to kill someone, we should do it–even if that person is our own child. That certain people are second class citizens. And that if we don’t follow it to the letter, we could burn.

How can we possibly hope that those messages will not drown out what is supposed to be a central message of love, when it gives us so much ammunition for hate?

The problem with Christianity, is that the story of God is separated into two books. The New Testament seems to be about love and tolerance, about not prizing rules and religion above people. But the Old Testament is rife with stories about God himself commanding the brutal murder of sinners, refusing to accept worship from those with disabilities because they are “unclean”, and about the hundreds of things that we are forbidden to do if we want to be acceptable in the eyes of the Almighty.

How do we reconcile those two stories? How do we believe that a God who would have had us be stoned to death, or drowned in a flood, or turned into a pillar of salt for stepping out of line is the same God who would willingly come to Earth to show us how to love?

It doesn’t matter that the Old Testament laws only apply to those of a particular tribe in a particular time. A human is a human–if any of us had been born then and there, we would have had to live under a rule that I can only categorize as tyranny. It’s easy for modern day Christians to ignore the Old Testament and say that we are no longer subject to those standards, that now we have grace, but I’m not so sure. Because if God is God, He is the same one. The heart of Him is the same. The rules may have changed, but He hasn’t.

The problem with Christianity is that, for something that is supposed to help, it has caused so much hurt. Historically. Literally. Not just in the Bible, but in our recent past. People have been burned alive. Women have been subjugated. Nazis have blamed the Jews that killed Jesus and African-Americans have been sold like chattel. Children have been taught, to their very core, to feel shame. Men and women have lived with guilt for making decisions they thought were right for themselves. Loving couples have been denied the right to be recognized.

I have heard it said, time after time, that these atrocities were committed by people, not God–I get that. But there is a book that people are using to justify hate. And that is a problem.