It is difficult to imagine a more malignant idea than the notion that people are born evil and malicious, and deserving of eternal torture in the fires of hell: Deserving of eternal torture--just for being born? Has there ever been a premise more odious, more repugnant, more inconceivable than this?
Supposedly, the only way around this, is to deny that which is best and greatest in your nature--the rationality of your mind, the empathy and compassion of your heart--and then embrace a God that behaves contrary to all the precepts of the best people, a God with equivalence to the worse tyrants and criminals that have ever crawled through the sewers of our imagination. Can there be a more perfidious idea in all of our history?
This idea has sapped the joy and vitality of millions of people for countless generations. It has made people hate themselves, despise their lives, and loath one another. It has caused neuroses and depression.
How apt the serpent metaphor! For the sake of this repugnant idea of sin, humankind have crawled on her belly--oozing slime, and feasting on filth and dung. What other idea has brought such shame and self-effacement in the history of homo sapiens?
Sin, a bedtime story? Sure it is; But a fairytale that has caused more nightmares for humankind than any big bad wolf could hope to do.
I seldom use the word in real life--only when in religious discussion. |
