Being raised in my childhood as a Christian Calvinist and in a strict environment, my questioning of Christianity began early, but it soared after college and after my first marriage ended in a divorce. Even after my divorce, I continued to act like a Christian. However, as I grew, learned, and developed my critical thinking skills, my belief in the religious dogma that dominated my early years disappeared.
I turned. I became bitter when I thought about my early upbringing. The strict rules and prohibitions angered me. I felt that I missed a lot of social activities that would have developed8 my personality.
One thing didn’t change during these early years was that I still believed that there was an all-powerful deity that was loving, kind, and merciful. During those years, I taught a variety of subjects such as literature, and history, on all grade levels from elementary through college. This teaching and learning developed my critical thinking. In short, it changed me. I realized that my changed belief system developed a strong anti-authoritarian streak.
In recent years, these feelings have now strengthened. This is because of the practices done by leaders who claimed commitment to our country-wide values and to the behavior of others. Things like the rise of Christian Nationalism, the election of Trump and so on. My feelings became so strong that I even questioned the existence of God. How could a Being, believed merciful, kind and loving, allow the needless suffering I saw around me?
The support by hypocrites of Trump, such as mega preachers of Christianity, North Korean prison camps, and so on changed my thinking.
I concluded that either there was no God or God was not the kind, merciful Being we believed him to be. To have the ability to stop these injustices and do nothing is to comply with this evil. God must be evil, because he complied with evil by refusing to end it.
It is not only I who wonder about this, but the author of the Old Testament book of Job raises this very question. The Devil approaches God and makes a bet with him. If he can be allowed to tempt Job, a good and righteous man, into making Job curse God, than Satan wins the bet.
God agrees and Satan kills Job’s children, his cattle and his home and in the process gives Job the boils on his skin. Job’s three friends visit him and accuse Job of unfaithfulness. Otherwise “why would God punish him,” they ask. Job denies this and maintains his innocence. He has done nothing wrong.
He laments his suffering and finally God intervenes. God’s unexpected response is not to apologize or offer condolences, but gives a strong and forceful response. God pulls a power trip on Job, asking such things like were you there when I created the leviathan or the worlds? Who are you to question God? Job repents.But I believe Job had every reason to question God. In the end Job gets his land and cattle back and even a new family.
How could a new wife and kids could replace Job’s former family. How does a loving God allow the tossing away of other people’s lives and replaces them with new ones as if to say I will give you a new family. As if a new family could replace the loss of his old one. And all because of God’s bet with Satan!
We could dismiss this story as a one-off. Unfortunately, as I look through history I see inquisitions, wars, famines, floods, even God ordering it by commanding Israelites to slaughter men, women, servants, and even the animals of God’s enemies.
Daily, we learn over and over stories about the Gaza, Ukraine, much of it either condoned or instigated by the United States. All of which could be stopped if God weren’t so negligent. For me the final straw was not just the election of Trump, but his endorsement of him by many Christians.
Trump was the final straw, Trump, the embodiment of evil, endorsed and supported by Christians. In anger I left the tattered remains of my Christianity. Every day, the injustice inflicted on innocent people showed me that God by allowing such an loathsome man to destroy people’s lives and the country must be not good and just. The God we had believed in could have stopped this evil, but didn’t. Silence is complicity.
There are personal examples as well. My mother passed after a long pain-filled bout with cancer. “ “Why?” I ask. She believed in God even after Dad died. She was a devout Christian and tried her best to provide for my sisters and me. I could tell you stories about the people she helped. I am not speaking against death, rather I speak about the manner and process of dying.
My older sister died a few weeks ago of dementia and the her last couple of years were spent in a nursing home. Her husband had a stroke before her death; they were a good couple who played by the rules. They worked hard to raise their kids and paid their way. They paid their taxes and kept up with their bills. They attended church every week. Yet God allows things like this to happen.
My younger sister came down with MS. Her family also was a good Christian family.
Yet, people like Trump get their way. Trump is probably one of the most evil men after Hitler. It seems like he will live forever. Where is justice? Why are good people punished while evil people live forever?
I could make lists of good people who suffered unjustly. Not only my family but my friends, and other good people who suffered because evil outlives the good thanks to a negligent God.
Now the Christian will respond by saying that we all have free will and some will make bad choices. Yes, this is true , but no one thinks about the.victims of these people.
What about the six million killed by Hitler? What about the jumpers of 9/11? Where was their free will
What about innocent children killed by relentless bombing? What free will did they have? While everyone says even bad people like Hitler or Trump have free will, no one talks to about the free will of the victims of these madmen.
This is not to say that God III inflicts evil, but He/She allows it which is complicity. Complicity is the same as creating it To have the power to stop something bad and refusing to do it is the same as creating it.
I am at the age where participating in street marches and loud screaming against tyranny is getting harder and harder. But I can write and speak out.
I cannot rest until every child sleeps at night warm and snug with a full belly. I cannot rest until every homeless person has a roof over their head I cannot rest until all children learn under a good educational system. I cannot rest until every abuser of others and of animals is punished. In short, I cannot rest until sanity and restorative unjust comes to all of us.
In short, I cannot rest.
