The religion that cried wolf

 

Pretty much everyone in the Western world knows the story of the boy who cried wolf, and the lesson: If you lie often enough, no one will believe you even when you start telling the truth.

 

And that was my experience with Evangelical Christianity, and then with theism. I kept trying to give the lying little bastard the benefit of the doubt, and he kept lying his ass off and laughing about it, until I finally just threw my hands in the air and decided that nothing he has to say can ever be believed. So going forward, even if he does manage to say something true, I won’t be listening.

 

First, I started to notice the lies that people on the fringe of the fringe of Christianity were selling: Listening to music that isn’t about Jesus opens you up to demon possession. Playing RPGs opens you up to demon possession. The Rapture is gonna happen on this specific date. Even other Evangelicals were willing to point to that stuff and call bullshit, so I figured “Okay, it’s not ALL Evangelicals who are lying, just the few crazies in the movement”.

But then I started to notice the other lies that pretty much all Evangelicals insisted were true: God miraculously heals the sick if you pray hard enough. Gay people are all pedophiles waiting for an opportunity. Every woman who has an abortion is a depraved and evil murderess. Science is lying to you about evolution, but this guy who made up the idea of an antediluvian Firmament that caused Noah’s flood is basing his story on observable evidence. It gradually became impossible to believe those things when I saw hundreds of prayers for the sick go unanswered, met gay people who were more moral and better Christians than any Evangelical I’d ever met, met women who’d had abortions and had absolutely ethical reasons for doing so, and met even Evangelical scientists who admitted that evolution was the true explanation for the origin of life on Earth.

So then I figured that, okay, EVANGELICAL Christianity is lying to me, but CHRISTIANITY is telling the truth, and it’s just gotten twisted by the fundamentalist mindset. Take Christianity as a moral guide rather than as literally true in every jot and tittle, and you’ll find that even where it isn’t factual it’s still true. Like the story of the boy who cried wolf, in fact – Aesop wasn’t giving us a newspaper report of an incident he’d observed on a farm near Athens, he was giving us a story that illustrates a truth about the importance of being truthful. If you look at the Bible that way, surely, it’s true.

But then even the most basic stuff in the Bible proved to be untrue. Ideas like, there is a good and loving god who looks out for us (which my experience disproved), the Christian god will give rest to those who trust in him (which my wife’s insomnia disproved), humans are fundamentally broken in ways that only can be fixed by faith in Jesus (disproved by the fact that faith in Jesus not only doesn’t stop people from being evil, it can actually make people more likely to support evil - the Holocaust could never have happened without the strong anti-Semitic strain in European Christianity, for example). And of course, the idea that a good god is guiding the church as a whole via the holy spirit falls apart with one look at the current things Evangelical Christians insist upon as moral imperatives - such as voting for the world’s most immoral person, refusing to wear a mask or get vaccinated during a deadly pandemic, fighting tooth and nail against the rights of LGBTQ people to exist, etc. No way that a good god just lets bad things be done in his name and does nothing to stop it.

Over and over and over again, this religion was crying wolf.

I'd managed, for decades, to fall again and again into the "no true Scotsman" fallacy: If THIS variation on religion isn't telling the truth, then it's no true religion. Until FINALLY, I realized the problem: No religion is true. There is, in this case, no true Scotsman.

So even if Christians, and other theists, and their imaginary friend, ever finally decide to stop lying their asses off: I for one will be skeptical of whatever they have to say.

When they say that we should love each other, they’re saying something true, but they’re lying when they say that their god follows that principle. When they say that the strong should take care of the weak, they’re saying something true, but they’re lying when they say that their god follows that principle. When they say that self-sacrificial love is the height of morality, they’re saying something true, but they’re lying when they say that their god follows that principle (though the Jesus portrayed in their book does, their god does not). When they say that it’s easier to do moral things in a community that reinforces morality, they’re saying something true, but they’re lying when they say that churches in general create such communities. Hell, when they say something as basic and obvious as “Thou shalt not kill”, they’re saying something true, but they’re lying when they say that their god follows that principle.

Their own holy book shows countless examples of their god and his followers (even the ones held up as examples of being the most devout) failing to follow the commands he imposed on his people. And yet: the book, the god portrayed in it, and its followers claim that following this book is the way to morality.

Liar, liar, pants on fire. 

There’s no wolf, and never has been. 

And if someday there is, YOU DESERVE TO BE EATEN.