What Do You Do With a Chocolate Jesus? (36 page)

Of course, you might be tempted to credit that improved record to the mercifulness of the God-fearing nations involved. But that’s not what history tells us about God-fearing nations.

Most of the tribes confronted by the ancient Israelites aren’t around anymore because the Lord promised, chapter and verse, to wipe the earth clean of them. There’s a word for that. And if you believe the numbers in Scripture, the body count was a larger percentage of those populations than it is in today’s conflicts. In the early 1600s, Germany’s Thirty Years War sparked a clash between Catholics and Protestants, and claimed 15 to 30 percent of all those good Christians. As recently as the American Civil War, a period of deep religious revivalism, righteous fervor drove soldiers into battles that routinely produced 20 percent casualty rates.

Religiosity doesn’t prevent warfare; it makes it worse because it demonizes adversaries and rejects compromise. You don’t compromise with Evil; you leap into the fray, ready to die in a holy cause. Today, plenty of fiery fundamentalists have no problem employing war as a problem-solver if they believe the cause is just. How many born-again groups have you ever seen stage a protest
against
a war?

The leading cause of war is authoritarianism, not a lack of faith. And the cure is democracy, not religion, which
is
authoritarian. Democracies are least likely to start wars because the fighters can vote. It is regimes guided by some unquestioned “higher power,” be it God or the Great Leader, that cause most of the trouble.

Poverty and Wealth:
Jesus was forever telling people to give their stuff to the poor, but you’d never guess this from the attitude a lot of Bible-belters have towards welfare, foreign aid, unions, universal healthcare, or universal anything. They seem virulently capitalistic, those words in the Constitution about “promote the general welfare” apparently not a priority. Yeah, it’s good to be skeptical of the government’s ability to administer all this public assistance. But a lot of pious resistance to it isn’t so much about bureaucratic waste as it is the sense that, if you’re poor and destitute, it’s probably your own damned fault and it’s not up to me to bail you out. Look at your own bootstraps. Now pull.

Ironically, in quite a few religious circles, the enterprising quest for riches is among the highest virtues. Money is God’s reward and faith is a commodity for export. For a growing number of church-going patriots God works for a profit, so tax cuts become the eleventh commandment and wealth redistribution is the devil’s own work. Don’t sweat that “better to give than to receive” stuff.

Personal Responsibility:
People are people and, if they can dodge responsibility for their actions or leech off the public dole, they will. ‘Twas ever thus. Owning up to our failures has never been popular, and blaming someone else is standard human behavior. Ask anyone who got canned for incompetence or who lost an election why they got dumped. They never say, “Well, it’s because I’m a royal screw-up!”

Today, of course, we get the occasional “it’s never my fault” dingbat who embezzles funds, gets fired, blows the money in Atlantic City, and then wants his job back because his gambling addiction is a legally-protected handicap. But that’s usually lawyers at work, and there’s nothing new about stupid lawsuits.

Religion supposedly gets us to take personal responsibility for our failings, but is the clergy’s record on this actually better than anyone else’s? Think real hard. And half the time, when they
do
come clean, they end up as blubbering spectacles that liken themselves to fallen saints. Then they ask for donations.

As for faith teaching self-reliance over freeloading off the public, what do you call paying no taxes while benefiting from national defense, state highways, and local trash collection?

Patriotism:
Love of country is as powerful today as ever, even if we’re not all as loud about it as some would like. Back during the American Revolution, only a third of the colonists were even interested in independence and nobody saluted the flag. I’d guess those numbers have improved since then. The fact that a flag burning makes national headlines suggests how rare it is. And if folks who proudly display the Confederate flag still call themselves patriotic Americans, love of country can’t be in short supply.

Any nation that spends so much time reminding the world of how great it is doesn’t suffer from a lack of self-love. If you don’t think patriotism is alive and kicking, go to Paris and watch how Americans react when the locals start ragging on the homeland. Pass the Freedom Fries.

Is There Nothing Sacred?

Bottom line—if you take
everything
into account, the full range of human rights and moral concerns, we today are history’s highest achievers. That’s not to say we don’t fall seriously short of what we could be, and there’s still more than enough injustice and cruelty in this life. But considering where we’ve been over the past 100,000 years, or even 3,000 years, or even 300 years, we’re not doing too badly. Is there any other period of history in which you’d prefer to live out the rest of your life? Think about what you’d be giving up. For me, Novocain alone makes it worth living in the 21
^st
century. The free speech thing is nice, too.

Strange as it sounds, our modern, worldly, indulgent, individualistic, secular humanist society is the most free, fair, humane, democratic, tolerant, and happiness-pursuing civilization that has ever existed. Nobody’s done it better; certainly not the societies where religion came first.

In advocating Christianity, Blaise Pascal famously wrote, “There is a God-shaped hole in the heart of every person…” Believers insist we were created with a need to seek out God. But get a grip. A healthy mind always wants something more and, if life doesn’t offer sufficient happiness, or security, or a cure for that mysterious rash, we’ll dream something up. If the crapshoot of evolution has produced what feels like a spiritual hole in our hearts, we’ll conjure up a plug for it. That’s not proof the universe was created by a drain stopper.

So, at the end of the day, is there
nothing
sacred? Is there no religious point of view that deserves to be unchallenged by critics, skeptics, or smartass writers? No sacrosanct beliefs? No divine authority to be the unmoving polar star by which we morally navigate through the centuries?

Well, what I’ve tried to demonstrate with this book is that falling back on the God answer always lands us in the same stew—exactly what do we mean when we say “God”? There’s no shortage of answers, and that’s the whole problem. God is as slippery and ever-changing a concept as any. Are we talking about the god of the Jews, the Catholics, Hindus, Taoists, or that UFO cult in New Mexico with the house that smells like a reptile cage? Even if we prefer the god of Jesus, which of the estimated 36,000 Christian sects now in existence is the real deal?

Everyone is certain
they
have the right answer and it’s always the other guys who are wrong. If everyone who cited God to make their point had the same concept in mind, we wouldn’t have so many religions. We wouldn’t spend centuries fretting over theories of salvation. And we wouldn’t bicker over what kind of stuff Jesus was made of. (Personally, I think it was chocolate. But was it milk chocolate or dark chocolate? Guess we’ll need a holy war to settle that one.)

Ultimately, the God answer isn’t the be-all, end-all solution it’s made out to be. It’s a comforting concept, but it’s not eternal truth. It’s only an opinion of eternal truth.

The Greek philosopher Protagoras said it best: “Man is the measure of all things.” If you think this is planting your flag in the shifting sands of human convention, then what
is
the measure of all things? God? Whose god? Define “God.” And around and around we go…

We can’t forget that all religious belief, no matter how popular or revered, originates with mere mortals. You may think of it as divine revelation from an infallible source, but the ideas still reach us through flesh-and-blood people; human mouths that speak or human hands that put quill to parchment. All we can do is judge what they say—which is what we’ve just done.

Spoken or written, sculpted or painted, televised or twittered, it doesn’t matter. Spiritual claims always come from a fellow traveler who is every bit as fallible as you. To hold any statement, story, or authority as beyond question is to accept someone else’s opinion without challenge, without thinking—and you don’t want to do that, do you? Thinking is a good thing. It’s what makes us human. It’s what keeps us free.

Is nothing sacred? No, nothing is. I thank heaven for that.

Also by Thomas Quinn

GOD: The Unauthorized Biography
(An Irreverent History of the Old Testament)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

No effort like this book takes place in a vacuum, and certain friends were critical in helping me pull this off.

First and foremost is Tom Kelly, who knows more of this stuff than I do, and who took the trouble to read my tome before anyone else. My endless conversations with him about all things religious would have put anyone else in a coma, and he was indispensible in catching mistakes and in helping me to clarify many murky points.

Helen Stringer, who I can never forgive for getting published before me, endured my rants over computer snafus and patiently guided me through the thickets of uncooperative technology. And she cooks, too.

A big thanks to Joyce Alexson, creator of the Joseph Campbell Roundtable, who provided me with a venue to field test a lot of this material, and who’s been a ceaseless cheerleader of my work.

A special thank-you goes to Pat Lach, who has always believed in me, as I believe in her, and whose background gave me the confidence to tackle a lot of touchy material.

My agent, Winifred Golden, enlightened me on the sobering realities of publishing. Carol Willette’s flawless eye caught and corrected my errors—something she’s been doing since the day we met. Alisa Curran has been my general counsel through writing projects long before this one. And Gilda Lugo has been my supportive B.F.F. for as long as I’ve known anyone.

While I know them only through their work, my appreciation also goes out to the brilliant P.J. O’Rourke and the fearless Bill Maher, who taught me what little I know about writing humor.

Finally, to those who were there when this incredible trek began: Laura Alexander Evanchik, whom I met in church and who stuck by me through the most turbulent months of my life. Happy seventeenth. To Rev. Brita Gill, who pulled me back from the precipice and showed me a better way. And lastly, to my old buddy Bill Gould, whose own search for truth unwittingly launched me on this journey so many years ago.

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