I have been interrogated quite often about why it is that I do not follow religion, specifically Abrahamic ones. I was raised Catholic, and promptly lost my faith as soon as I learned to question the basis of it. This is my response to Christianity, which is admittedly over-poetic and perhaps even somewhat irrational. However, I firmly hold these beliefs as true and therefore am not ashamed and am not concerned with whether or not they make the reader uncomfortable or offended.
- C.A.S.
I.
Christianity is full of pitfalls. It is what we may call the religion of the anti-human. Ignoring such obvious mistakes such as disagreement on the authority of the Bible, we must look more towards the ideological problems of Christianity.
The problem lies not within the fact that the religion and its leaders are hypocritical, but within the fact that the religion preaches values which are sick and dehumanizing. The very basis of Christianity lies within an ethos of self-hatred and repulsion of the body. The physical world is an evil entity which is damned by its very nature, and the individual must do everything within his grasp to deny himself of the pleasures and the desires of the body. In this sense, passion is subdued. This may seem quite naturally good, but we must remember that nowhere in Christianity is intellectualism; too much intelligence might cause the sheep to lose faith.
II.
Christianity as the source of ugliness—in that it promotes spiritual self-disgust. Man is measured against an invisible perfection hidden in the clouds, condemned to guess blindly at correct action. The problem of this view is that it spreads throughout culture. All men become convinced of their ugliness. Is not the disease of culture a low self-esteem? The sin is not the sickness. The sin is imagination, the imagination of spiritual detachment. “Nowhere does religion and morality come into contact with reality.”
Man is an entity which is completely driven by conscience. The conscience being the judgmental element of consciousness, man is culturally taught to have an attitude towards life. The Christian “lifestyle” is a bad attitude, if there ever was one. An attitude of hatred of the self and hatred of man. How does man live when he cannot even look at himself in the mirror without vomiting?
III.
Christian love is an abomination of the word itself. Love is not a moral judgment, nor an ethos; it is the very center of our ability to live. A man can be said to be in hell, as Dostoevsky says, without an ability to love. The Christian vision of love distorts the idea into an ethical value. The priest says “love thy neighbor as thyself,” or “love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy mind and all thy soul.” The Christian thinks he loves because it is right. But the man who knows better knows that love is inseparable from his being. By and through love, he exists.
Christian love is filled with cheap pity and sentimental emptiness. Man understands love, though he might be able to express it directly. His capacity for uniqueness allows him to show love in ways that are unique to his individual self.
IV.
Man is not ugly. His mind is inherently sublime and beautiful, and so is everything about him. Man is not perfect, obviously. Yet it is man’s imperfection, his flaws, which make him beautiful. Man’s beauty is not determined by Form, or by some idea. Man is born with the capacity to know the charm of beauty and the overwhelming sensations of sublimity.
Christianity attempts to devalue the beauty of man, insisting that any beauty we know comes from God, the Invisible Father. All aesthetic feelings come from a place outside of us (Plato would say Forms). However, man’s ability to create beautiful things surely proves this wrong, as the mind is the origin of the beautiful things which have been created.
V.
I have a tendency to take a Feuerbachian view of God. God, in the Christian sense, is an idea. He is the result of man’s projection of his own powers into something outside himself. We let ourselves “flow out into God,” as Nietzsche so beautifully stated it. Our own powers of love, thought and to act are thus attributed to an entity outside of ourselves.
Man is focused on himself as his own object of thought. He unconsciously thinks of everything in terms of himself. He thus takes the limits of the senses to be the only means of interpreting the information passing through them. Therefore, man naturally thinks of God in human terms. This is nothing new, especially when you consider the anthropomorphism of the Greek and Roman gods. This only furthers the point that there is some element of man’s creativity in the image of God. We have made him into crotchety old man hiding behind the sheets of the heavens, peering down into our rooms, watching every slight movement we make. He thinks, feels and understands just like a man does, and he is offended just as easily. God is out for revenge, as is any man with the ability to feel wounded in his honor.
It would seem that God is so intent on revenge, that he can only be appeased by the ultimate vengeance upon mankind: the perfect human being, Christ, tortured and killed like an animal, for the sin of all of mankind. Christ died for something we didn’t ask for.
VI.
So what is to be done then? The Christian era is long over, though the psychological damage caused by it is far from healed. Somehow, we must reawaken ourselves to the understanding that we, mankind, have nothing to fear about ourselves. When we look in the mirror, we must not fear the gaze of our own eyes. We must not hide ourselves from each other. We must walk out the door, screaming with joy. We must love ourselves and love each other; not because it is right, but because it is a part of who are to do so. We must overcome this fear and loathing of the self, because there is nothing to be afraid of.
“Have I been understood?—Dionysus versus the Crucified.” - Friedrich Nietzsche, "Ecce Homo"