John Draper's Blog: A Danger to God Himself, page 3

Does God speak through scripture? Yes and no

All religions have scripture, the word of God funneled through specific men. Which, when you think about it, it’s an admission that God doesn’t speak to the mass of us. That is, we yearn and yearn to hear what God wants from us—but He’s silent and invisible. He says nothing. So, desperate, we cast about for someone human to give us revelation—an Oracle.

Consider the early Christians. They had no scripture, as such, just stories passed around the campfire about Jesus, which was fine. Really, there was no need for parsing theological niceties. The world was about to end. Just make sure you’re wearing clean underwear.

But, as it turns out, the world didn’t end. Jesus didn’t return—which was an embarrassment, frankly. Once they explained this all away, the early Christians set about looking for scripture. They needed the silent God to speak.

What they had were letters Paul had written to various churches, letters that are full of contradictions and half-formed theology. So they called them scripture eventually. And then the gospels were written, all influenced by the theology of Paul and each composed by and for a different Jesus community. The most popular of these gospels became scripture. Survival of the Fittest.

Ergo scripture.

But we’re no better off than we were without scripture. It’s not like scripture really solves the whole problem of Knowing God’s Will. The Bible’s often vague and confusing. Want to start a fight? Go to your local bar, expound loudly about your assuredness of What Scripture Says and watch the fur fly.

But what makes us think that the God Who Hides would suddenly open Himself up to the various authors of scripture? If He could do that, why not just reveal revelation to everyone? Why the intermediary of scripture? Just talk to us. But He doesn’t. He hides.

Ergo scripture.

And it’s all about how to please God—not really stuff we need. If God can reveal Himself to men and women, why not reveal the cure for cancer? Lord, just reveal it to one scientist! Doesn’t haven’t to be everyone. Just one guy, like when you told Paul the secrets of the Godhead. Is it really that crucial that we have correct doctrine—that we have a correct understanding of God? Is God even understandable?

Why is that so important?

We just accept the fact that God has given us doctors and scientists to ferret out the mysteries of life and death, but correct doctrine, correct doctrine is so important that He’s going to circumvent all this and speak specifically to select men and women—mostly men—who will write down what they hear and hand it off to the rest of us hapless boobs. But, ironically, scripture doesn’t solve anything, as I’ve already said. People piss and fight over correct doctrine endlessly, each citing verses, often the very same verses.

So what’s my point? Go ahead and read your scripture. But pick and choose what you’ll attend to. Use your brain. Focus more on reason than revelation. All holy books are full of gems. But you’re just as likely to encounter profound truth over a beer with a buddy—or by reading The Brothers Karamazov. Or having really good sex. Or getting high—it will be legal everywhere pretty soon. (I recommend edibles) Truth is everywhere waiting to be discovered.

John Draper is the author of the novel A Danger to God Himself.

Jesus wasn’t as nice as people make him out to be

I have this friend, a gay man struggling to come to terms with the fundamentalist Baptist religion he was raised in. He insists that he is a Red-Letter Christian. His point is, he doesn’t buy any of harsh passages of the Bible—things like God commanding the Israelites to kill every Canaanite man, woman, child and animal. Just give me the pure words of Christ, he says, which in many Bibles are printed in red letters to make them stand out from the rest of the words. Hence Red-Letter Christian.

The logic is that Jesus was all about sweetness and light—tolerance. Wouldn’t hurt a fly. Truth is, Jesus was often a hard ass. Almost all of the references to hell in the Bible come from the mouth of Jesus. He was all about sending people to hell—separating the sheep from the goats.

And so extreme! He said that if you hate your brother it’s as good as killing him. He said that if you think lustful thoughts about a woman it’s as good as sleeping with her, doing all sorts of untoward things. Right after saying that, he said that if you masturbate, you’re better off chopping off your hand. (Don’t take my word for it. Read the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew chapters 5-7.) Yes, it was hyperbole on Jesus’ part, exaggeration to make a point. But the point he was making was puritanical. Face it: Jesus was a prude. He was just like all the other conservative first-century Jews. He was a product of his environment.

Intolerant at his core, too. Wait! says my gay friend and other liberal believers. Jesus always reached out to society’s castaways! True, Jesus consorted with all sorts of undesirables—but he always made sure they understood they needed to stop their wayward habits. “Go and sin no more,” he told the woman caught in adultery after saving her from a mob. His message: the End is nigh—really nigh—so start living according to the Torah. (“Be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him”—Luke 12:40.)

Truth was, Jesus was exclusive. He was focused solely on the welfare of the Jewish people, getting them out from under the thumb of the hated Romans. He ministered to gentiles—whom he considered to be “dogs”—only by virtue of happenstance or hesitantly.

Don’t take my word for it. Open your New Testament and read all the red letters. Come to the exercise with no preconceived notions of who Jesus is, to the extent that you can. See what you learn about Meek and Mild Jesus.

Try it right now.

So you had a spiritual experience

When I was researching my book A Danger to God Himself, I spent a lot of time at a website called Mormonthink.com. (The novel’s about a Mormon missionary who goes insane on his mission.) I probably read everything on the website at least three times. people who put this website together care deeply about the truth. It’s a goldmine.

There are many gems on this website. Here’s a particularly brilliant one:

The following nine quotes are each from an Atheist or Buddhist or Catholic or Hindu or Muslim or Mormon or New Ager or Protestant or Universal Unitarian. Try to guess which quote comes from which religion. The language is standardized (changes indicated by brackets), so that differences in terminology between religions will not tip you off (thus, mosque, temple and church all become a [church]; the Bible and all other religious texts become a [text] or [sacred text]).

Try to match these 9 religions to the following 9 quotes. The answer key is below:

Atheist

Buddhist

Catholic

Hindu

Islam

Mormon

New Age

Protestant

Universal Unitarian

“[Even as a child], without understanding much about the complex [doctrine] . . . he was attracted to [church]. There he often felt a strong feeling of peace flowing through his body.”
“I was praying . . . when I felt a burning shaft of . . . love come through my head and into my heart.”
“I truly wanted to know [the truth]. After a few weeks, I stumbled onto [texts] which . . . answered my questions in a way that I had not heard of before. I read everything . . .and I even tried the experiment of asking [God] for . . . his divine love. After about 6 weeks, I felt a burning in my chest and a sensation that was unlike anything I had ever felt. It was pure happiness and peace. I knew then that [God] had sent His love to me.”
“A feeling of peace and certitude would tell me when I had found the answers and often after people would help me by pointing in the right direction.”
“We gave up a lot of things. What did I get in return? I received a feeling of peace, hope and security. I no longer lay awake at night worrying. I stopped cussing. I became much more honest in all aspects of my life. [God] has changed my heart and my life. My husband’s heart is changing also. We pray all the time and really feel [God’s] presence in our marriage. My perspective has changed. My view of life has changed about what is truly important.”
“Every time I am there [at the church building], a feeling of peace overcomes me.”
“Every time I was with the [church members], I felt this warm feeling, a feeling of peace and for the first time in my life since my church-going days, I wanted to follow [God] . . . .”
“About 10 years ago, when Jenny and I decided to start a family, we began looking for a spiritual community for our kids. During my first service at [the church]. . . I was hooked. I recall the feeling of peace that I felt when I was attending [services].”

9.”I recently spent an afternoon on the northwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee, atop the mount where Jesus is believed to have preached his most famous sermon. . . . As I sat and gazed upon the surrounding hills gently sloping to an inland sea, a feeling of peace came over me. It soon grew to a blissful stillness that silenced my thoughts. In an instant, the sense of being a separate self—an ‘I’ or a ‘me’—vanished. . . . The experience lasted just a few moments, but returned many times as I gazed out over the land where Jesus is believed to have walked, gathered his apostles, and worked many of his miracles.”

Answers: 1. Hindu, 2. Catholic, 3. New Age, 4. Islam, 5. Protestant, 6. Buddhist, 7. Mormon, 8. Universal Unitarian, 9. Atheist.

What’s the point? The point is that most religious people think they have a direct line to God, unlike the people in all the other religions—however, the way they validate their religion is uniform across all religions. Anyone can have a “spiritual experience,” which doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t valid but rather that God is generous—or incautious. He lets people from any religion have a “spiritual experience.”

My Brain’s Story

As is often so with mental illness, mine erupted in my late teen years. It had been murmuring below the surface my whole life, I think, subversively, like a code message from the Underground. Then—kablamo! It detonated.

I remember the very day. It was spring. The birds were twittering and the sun was shining but I was oblivious. I had just been dumped and I was dumbfounded and morose. I went to class with a couple of my friends. (Accounting class. At the time, I was toying with the idea of being a business major. Me—a business major!) As class let out, The Dreadful Thought hit me—and wouldn’t let go. I mean, wouldn’t. Then that Dreadful Thought invited over his frat brothers, ill-bred fuckers, and they partied nonstop on my brainpan. (Down below, my reptilian brain kept banging a broomstick on the ceiling, to no avail.) I was too ashamed to admit my agony to anyone.

Shortly thereafter, I converted to Christianity. It brought me a sense of purpose, a kind of peace, I guess, in the middle of the shitstorm—shit flying everywhere like a riot in a monkeyhouse.

Two years after college and minutes before my wedding ceremony, I was in a back room in the church, pacing back and forth and pounding my head to straighten out my racing dread. I thought: “OK, I’m getting married. I’ve got to get rid of this.”

On my honeymoon, I spiraled further downward. I was immobilized by my pain. I became suicidal. My new bride desperately searched the Yellow Pages of Kona, Hawaii, looking for help as I moaned on the hotel-room couch.

The nearby Foursquare pastor arrived, counseled me and prayed for the two of us to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit. I rose out of my suicidal stupor, but I was nowhere near healed, just circling the drain more slowly.

For the next five years, my wife and I sought out all manner of Christian counselors for help. However, no one could stop my leaden depression and/or my racing thoughts. Eventually, my mental state became a topic of discussion in my extended family. My mom insisted that there must be some medicine that could help me. I wasn’t convinced. Only crazy people took medicine for their brains, after all. She set up three meetings with psychiatrists in one day in Seattle. Each of them, they performed a cursory exam on me and concluded that what I needed was more psychotherapy.

Yeah, right. I needed more psychotherapy like a needed a hole in the head.

It wasn’t until a Jewish psychiatrist in Bellingham, Washington, suggested I consult with a peer of his at the nearby University of British Columbia that the doors of healing opened. The Canadian psychiatrist interviewed me for about 15 minutes and said, clinically yet kindly, “Well, it’s clear you have Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.”

He prescribed a medicine that quickly took away all my depression and agonizing thoughts. Simple as that. The drug was available only in Canada. It hadn’t been approved by the FDA. I had to make regular trips to White Rock, British Columbia, to buy my medicine and then smuggle it back over the American border, thereby registering my brief career as an outlaw.

All told, I was ragingly mentally ill for 10 years. Ten fucking years.  It was no frolic in the cherry blossoms, believe you me.

So what can I redeem from this awful experience? I must have learned something.

I did.

I’ve learned that we’re machines made of meat. Every infirmity that befalls us is physiological at its core. From our neck down, this is self-evident to us. Our arteries clog, our heart misfires. Spoiled oysters induce vomiting. The maddening sing-song of cause and effect in the material world.

 

We think it’s all different, though, from the neck up. That’s where you live—your soul. Maybe, but I’ve come to see that we are as happy to the extent our neurotransmitters are at optimal levels. I’m not saying talk therapy or faith healing doesn’t work. What I’m saying is when they do work, it’s not magic. Something physiological happens.

 

All I know is that I was prayed for by dozens of sincere, godly believers. I regularly pleaded with God to take away my pain and to show me if there was any way I was blocking my healing. Perhaps some secret sin was staunching the flow of His miracle power.

But all I had to do was take a little pill, and all my problems were solved. Do I believe God still performs miracles? Maybe. Who’s to say? But, in my case, He worked through secular medicine—or did He? Who’s to say?

It breaks my heart when I see so many religious people living in shame with their mental problems—and a ton of them do, quietly desperate. They have no problem taking medication for any problem from their neck down. The neck up, though. That isn’t physiology. It’s psychology—or spirituality. So we have hands laid on us. Prayers are murmured.

My advice: Don’t count on God to come through for you and fix your “soul.” See your doctor.

Welcome to my Blog

I’m newly agnostic. I lost my religion while writing my first novel, A Danger to God Himself. It’s about a Mormon missionary who goes insane on his mission—schizophrenia.  I started the novel seven years ago with the intent of skewering Mormonism through it. Best laid plans. The book does skewer religious certainty, but in the process of writing it, my religious certainty suffered a protracted, though not entirely unpleasant, death.

So it goes, as Vonnegut says.

It was actually kind of liberating.

Here’s the short version.

I wanted to be an author since I was 9. (Even then, the idea of saying, “Why, I’m an author!” to someone at a cocktail party was intoxicating, as if I knew what happened at cocktail parties.) But life got in the way. Mental illness. First newspaper job out of college. Marriage. Mental illness. Getting married and raising a family. Divorce.  Mental illness. My fifth decade arrived, my kids were heading off to college and finally I had enough time to devote to my fiction career.

The book began, I guess, when I started inviting the Mormon missionaries into my home.  At the time, I was wondering what my first novel would be about. (First question from people at the cocktail party: “What’s your book about?”) I was struck by the comical incongruity of it all: These 19-year-old kids so sure they held the secret to life in their meathooks. The absurd certainty of their testimonies. They didn’t believe in the Truth. They knew it. (A Mormon will liken it to a “burning in my bosom.”)

Then I started studying Mormonism (and schizophrenia, by the way). To a Christian like myself, it was outlandish. Kolob?! Magic underwear? Golden Plates carried off to the Celestial Kingdom and thereby unavailable for third-party inspection—how convenient.

How can anyone believe this bullshit?

So the book would be all about why people believe screwy things—and it didn’t get much screwier than Mormonism. The Garden of Eden in Missouri, of all places.

As part of my research, I continued to invite the missionaries in—and this time actually got to know them. They were good kids, really—misinformed but well-meaning. I attended a Mormon church undercover. Good people there, too, fervent about serving God.

I’d read the Mormon apologists’ defenses of Mormon and they were so . . . tortured. One example out of hundreds: The Book of Mormon claims there were horses in pre-Columbia America, which clearly wasn’t the case. Realizing this, Mormon apologists explain that Joseph Smith just translated the word as horses for convenience’s sake. Actually, they were tapirs. Tapirs. Can’t you just see the army riding out to battle on its host of tapirs?

It was fun to make fun of Mormonism.

Yes, they were good people. But good people who have been deceived are pitiable—dupes. And dupes who shove their religion—their rightness—in your face are, well, assholes.

But a nagging thought would needle me: Doesn’t this sound an awful lot like Evangelical apologists explaining away the inconsistencies in the gospels? How many woman were at the tomb?

Why do I scoff at the Mormon apologists yet give the Christian apologists a pass?

Hmmm.

During all this, I continued to attend my charismatic Protestant church—and thereby was the burr squeezed between my ass cheeks. It became unavoidably obvious that the only difference between these Mormons and my fellow Christians—the only difference—was the words we used to explain God (as if God could be explained). They both loved God, Mormons and Christians. Both wanted to live like Christ, passionately. The only difference was the dogma. Words.

In the end, I saw that my religion was the same as the missionaries’: Love God with your whole heart and try really, really hard to be a good person.  Really hard—fast, pray, study, confess. There’s the rub. I wasn’t any more Christlike than the Mormons I would mingle with. I loved God. So did they. I loved the Savior. So did they.  We both failed miserably, despite my belief that I had the power of the Holy Spirit working on behalf of my sanctification—and their belief they bore the power of the Holy Melchizedek Priesthood. (I worked on the book for seven years, and I still have to look up the spelling of Melchizedek every time.)

I mean, it makes sense: The correct religion should empower its adherents to abide by the dictums of said religion, shouldn’t it? The correct religion would work as advertised. It would do the trick.

But none of them do—or, better said, they all work about the same: fair to middlin’.

But we insist our words are the correct words.

Finally, I had to admit: I only believed my dogma because someone had told me to believe it. I didn’t deduce it. Not that my dogma is untrue—necessarily. It might be true. Who’s to say?

That’s the point. Dogma can’t be deduced. It must be revealed—then your faith is in the trustworthiness of the source: the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the daily horoscope, your hairdresser.  What happens is that the believer has some sort of experience related to what he or she has learned. They are cut to the quick. “God just touched my heart when I heard that sermon/read that book/listened to that song/prayed that prayer.”

It’s a mirage, certainty. Experience counts for nothing—or, better said, when everybody’s having essentially identical subjective spiritual experiences, who’s to say which is the True Experience? You say, “I heard God speak to my heart”? So did I—or at least I used to.

Is there One True Religion? I suppose it’s possible.  But how will you prove it’s your religion? Bottom line: It’s your subjective experience that validates your religion—your burning in your bosom. I mean, walk on water or something and then we’ll talk. Until then, keep your certainty to yourself. If your religion gives you peace and purpose—hot dog. If it makes you feel like shit, think about finding a new religion—or no religion.

Anyway, welcome to my blog. This is where I’ll revel in my uncertainty. Stuff like the preceding. It’s actually kind of liberating. Lash your sacred cow up to the hitching post now and then and sit a spell. Maybe we’ll learn something, you and me. Of course, you’re free to disagree. Just don’t put me down, please, for creating beyond your mind.