The Ditch That Is A Wall

Faith. That is what it all comes down to.

In seminary, we learned about "the teleological gap." Or, as Kierkegaard called it, the "existential break." You know...that moat that surrounds the castle of ultimate knowledge. You can go so far, and further you cannot go. Christians have created a drawbridge, and they call it "faith." It is a long, long bridge. It requires turning off the critical faculty at a very early stage in the journey. How did we get here? God created. What is our purpose? God decides. How do you know? Faith.

For Christians, the existential break is a ditch that is a wall. Faith, the drawbridge that seems to so wonderfully cross the gap, is actually a delusion. It is, instead, a wall. It so thoroughly and completely stops the forward motion of learning, understanding, expanding and adapting that it is in essence a form of death.

The vast majority of Christians that I know, who are proudly walking across the drawbridge of faith, are also becoming closed-minded, literalist, and judgmental. They quickly skew to conservative; they believe that they have the corner on morality (an atheist or agnostic cannot be moral, can they?) and they gravitate towards David Chilton and theocracy...how else can we keep the favor of God on our country unless we establish a theocratic government?

Why? Because they have turned off their rational mind, and are now in the monstrous grip of "faith." For some, faith meant that they could pray and find a parking lot at the mall, or cause a bible to float in the air. Faith is delusional, by its very nature. I heard Christian apologists say "faith is knowing something that you cannot see." Delusional.

So, if you choose to "know something that you cannot see" - it leads to accepting that which you cannot know. And accepting that which you cannot know leads to vulnerability to manipulation and extremism. Note how easily Christians are conformists to Republican political agendas and television evangelist insanity (to the tune of over $10 billion given to TV evangelists in one year!). How they are manipulated by personalities, and turn off reasoning when it comes to the inconsistencies of their leaders.

Certainly, Christians are not the only ones who do this sort of thing...but then again, I have never heard a Republican say "The GOP is the way, the truth, the life...no one can have a relationship to God except through us." (Well, at least, not yet!). Christians claim to believe and embrace the most fundamental and necessary truth in the universe...believe in Jesus or go to hell for eternity, and miss out on God's purpose for your creation on earth. Their claim to ABSOLUTE TRUTH qualifies them for greater scrutiny and greater criticism. If you claim to have the ONE AND ONLY TRUTH about the spiritual world...then you better be able to stand the fire.

The very essence of Christianity demands FAITH...demands DELUSION.

Christians have crossed the ditch and have splattered themselves on a wall. Do we try and clean up the mess?