Photo: MichaelBueker

“If you are gonna dine with them cannibals, sooner or later, darling, you’re gonna get eaten,” ~ Cannibal Hymn

I have heard people of the Christian faith use the term, “God’s grace covers all sin” in order to justify what cannot be justified. That’s all well and good but I do not believe that the God I respect likes being someone’s excuse for poor behavior. Indeed God may understand human failings, but does anyone believe its okay to speak for Him in the cloak of poor thinking and prejudice? Can we not see that if we use God as an excuse to harm others through words or actions we are turning Him into a tool?

Christians often refer to “God’s word” as “The Sword of the Spirit.” They say that God uses his word to strengthen them in “battle.” Many critics of religion believe that this kind of thinking is dangerous. They have several old testament scriptures to back up these fears. Genesis 6:8  says, “God brought the Great Flood upon humanity as a judgment for sin.”

In Numbers, Exodus and Joel the faithful are told “God exercised judgment by orchestrating plagues, sending hordes of locusts, and releasing swarms of snakes.” Let us not forget Sodom and Gomorrah in which God told Abraham and Lot that he had “destroyed the cities because of their sin.” Apparently, God has punished the world with “empty stomachs in every city and lack of bread in every town.” He has “withheld rain from mankind before the harvest,” “struck gardens and vineyards with blight and mildew” (Amos 4:6-7,9).

Is it any wonder so many fear the religious zealots of the world? They use the Bible as ammunition against those who do not believe as they believe. No matter how much it is claimed that God is the inspiration behind every word of the Bible, man has used God to hate his enemy and rejoice in their pain. I would include authors of the books of the bible in that list of men.

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How many times have people hidden behind God for a specific agenda? Hmm, let me count the ways for you. The LGBTQ community has been blamed so many times for natural disasters its hard to keep count.

The other day, while I was researching for this article, I came across a clip for a Christian show in which the two people were commenting on natural disasters. The man on the show said, “We are now seeing natural disasters of biblical proportions because sin has reached biblical proportions” while the female claimed that “Christians are not subject to natural disasters and can, in fact, take authority over the weather if they know what to do.”

This scares me for so many reasons. First of all, it places Christians above humanity in general and when you place yourself above humanity you lose your ability to show compassion. The Dalai Lama tells us “The whole purpose of religion is to facilitate love and compassion, patience, tolerance, humility, forgiveness.” It is not to be used to keep us separate.

Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham, recently warned that “America has turned its back on God by re-electing President Obama.” He went on to declare that “God will judge this nation for doing so by bringing America to its knees through a massive economic collapse in order to wake people up and turn them back to Him.” That’s pure and simple sour grapes talking. It’s unfair to use God as your weapon to punish those who did not vote as you wished them to. Why not work with them, be the change you want to see, instead of the obstacle to it?

Just today, a relative was hiding her egocentric thinking behind God. She was using the excuse that God led her to cut another relative from her life because the other relative was a “sinner.” The reason she gave was, “God doesn’t want anyone in our lives who leads us from the flock.”

When you use God to be mean to a sister or a brother, or to step over and “cast out the sinners” from your life, shame on you.

Don’t try to hide behind God to fool the world, and please don’t hide behind the world when you are trying to fool God. God and the world are simply not big enough to hide your foolishness. The God I honor would not choose to be your battle ax or your fool.

In the end, it’s just spiritual cannibalism. It eats at the soul of the world, all these verbal weapons of mass destruction in the guise of God. The soul is the very essence of our being. Through it comes our innate knowledge, and our conscience. It is forward moving. The soul does not take us back.

The thirst for power and corruptible thinking takes us back. And, if you don’t think its possible to go back remember the Dark Ages. They followed the time of the advanced civilizations of Rome and Greece. “If you are gonna dine with them cannibals, sooner or later, darling, you’re gonna get eaten,” (Cannibal Hymn).

 

Linda Pecone has been a freelance writer for 15 years. She lives in a small town in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado with her husband and have written for our small town paper on and off over the years. She has also raised three children in my little town, which are her greatest joys. She majored in English studies in college because reading and writing have been her passion since she learned to do them both.

 

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Editor: Sarah Winner

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