Christianity's Boxes of Theology

[Hierophant]

I was re-reading a message I sent to another user who was struggling with leaving Christianity. One of their hang-ups, i.e., maybe there is merit to Christianity, was that there are really reasonable, scientific, and presumably well-grounded people who are believers. Here is my response to our conversation - I thought it would resonate with some other members here:

 

Actually, I think that last email really helped me understand how you are seeing/understanding Christianity, and I get it. You are right, some (I say some, because some of them are absolutely loony) Christians are educated, well spoken, compassionate, apparently reasonable (...we'll get to this soon), yet somehow they hold to dogmas that seem to contradict all the aforementioned.

 

I am not sure if you ever spent a lot of time in apologetics, I am inclined to think you have, so I will not spend too much time on the baseline. First and foremost, you have to understand that at the most basic level, these individuals believe in God, Jesus, the Bible, dogma, etc. They believe for reasons they probably do not even know. Grew up with it, afraid of hell, who knows. Christianity is so ingrained in western culture that it is talked about as an assumed fact; children stories, the whole gambit. So at the end of the day, these guys believe Christianity is the best explanation for our reality.

 

Now, the only way to do that consistently is to have little boxes tucked away in the mind that hold to dogma depending on the circumstance. For example, most Christians would say abortion is wrong. "Who are you to kill a child, especially in the womb, that is just mean and grotesque." But, if you said something along the lines of God killing or authorizing the killing of children rampantly....the whole slew of how it is not the same is coming your way. So abortion/killing kids is wrong when we do it, but God gets a free pass, moreover, he is still good and loving. Somewhere in their mind, they draw this line that God must always be good, so even if he lets kids die or be miscarried, or be raped, tortured, whatever, well, he must have a good reason. No idea why it is good, but it is good because the Bible said God is good, my pastor said God is good, and well, it does not sound as if questioning God's goodness is even on the menu. So if God is good, yet bad things happen, he must have a good reason for that being so. That is it, the depth of the thinking stops there. It is as simple as God gets a free pass because the last thing I want to do is get his attention by pissing him off, and he starts killing my kids.

 

You could probably whittle this away and it comes down to, I am terrified of God and what he will do to me, so I stick blindly to faith. I would put money on the fact that most of these people believe in hell. Last thing they want to do is end up there themselves, so they toe the line....NO MATTER WHAT, to make sure they are not on the receiving end of Yahve's spear.

 

This game is a constant exercise in mental gymnastics. Jesus says love your neighbor and forgive your enemies but he threatens to scorch his enemies. Let's be frank, it's weird. You and I can think about this stuff, but for them, that is a mental "no no." Start entertaining thoughts like that, next thing you know, you are taking it in the backside from el Diablo.

 

They are able to rationalize the parts of the Bible we find to be grotesque by sweet talking themselves into seeing it as some kind of abstract instead of reality. For example, could you imagine the horror on play when the Hebrews were wiping out the Canaanites, maybe it was the Amorites, it does not matter.  Man, woman, child, baby, and everything else, put to the sword. I bet if I saw that in person, I would vomit on the spot; but yet, they tell themselves, "oh well, they deserved it," or something along those lines. Really what they do is domesticate the language and the absolute horror of it to make it more palatable. Somewhere in their head, there is this fissure of cognitive dissonance in play. For people like you and me, the cognitive dissonance becomes to much and we do let ourselves be honest about what we think and feel about this whole idea. A lot of people cannot or will not do that.

 

One of my grandmother's sisters is constantly put out bits of theology on social media. I cannot tell you how many times I have seen her contradict herself in theology with just these snippets, let alone anything well thought out. My point is, it proves that she has these little boxes of theology and apologetics packed and ready to go for the right circumstance. When it is done, it goes back to where it came from and definitely seal the lid on that one. Do not want it going around mixing up with the other boxes.

 

Speaking more directly to our Calvinist friends, that is exactly how they are able to maintain. Since they believe it, then they rationalize it in a way that helps them sleep at night....and they do not think about it outside of dogma. Jesus has every right to create stuff just to burn it because, "well Romans says who are we to question God." That's it, that is their answer. Followed by, "it'll make sense one day. God knows what he is doing." Brilliant.

 

Now, do not be mistaken, they will not let the same kind of apologetics be used by Muslims or Buddhist. Those guys get dismissed out of hand because Christians, "know the truth."

 

It is a big mess, and frankly there is no making any heads or tails out of it. You are being too rational about your view on Christianity, these guys are not playing that game. If they are rational in general, then what they do is to suspend rationalism any time it conflicts with dogma, then switch it back on whenever they are done not thinking too deeply about their Christian beliefs.

 

[TABA]

The human mind, for all its amazing qualities, is very good at compartmentalizing: applying different rules to different situations.  
 

I am an engineer who looks at things - in my work and in other areas - using a rational, logical approach.  When troubleshooting, I look to see if C could have been caused by B and whether B could have been caused by A.  If some connection doesn’t make logical sense, I set it aside and look for another explanation.  

 

But for most of my adult life I looked at Christianity using a different set of rules: I believed things that I wanted to be true, or because I liked other people who believed them, or because I’d been told them repeatedly.  It’s as if my mind was divided like watertight compartments in a ship.  But in my case there was always some leakage between the chambers and I would be troubled by problems with the concept of an all-powerful, loving God.   Eventually I reached a point where I started evaluating the God claims the same way I did non-religious concepts, or even the claims of non-Christian religions. At a certain point the evidence overwhelmed whatever emotional investment I had in Christianity and I turned my back and walked away.  Following my questions to their conclusion and rejecting the theology once and for all was like removing my mind from a vise-grip!
 

Rejecting religious dogma doesn’t mean we’re not still liable as human beings to make the same mistake in other areas: supporting one politician because he’s on “our” side of the aisle, in our tribe, even if we’d condemn a guy from the other tribe who did the same thing.  Or lazily supporting some position adopted by our party rather than thinking about the issue for ourselves.  
 

Thinking things through for ourselves isn’t the easy way, but it sure is rewarding when we know WHY we believe something . . . or don’t.