Proselytizers
Bright and early Saturday morning, about 0900, I got a knock at the apartment door. I immediately assumed it was someone wanting to see my still-sleeping roommate since I never get visitors, but I got the door anyway.
Standing there in the cool autumn morning air were two well-dressed gentlemen, asking me about my religious affiliation. Now, anyone will tell you that I’m not a very religious person. I haven’t attended any organized services in something like 15 years, and I can’t say I have any real preference for a given religion. I have been experimenting with a random conglomeration of religions, but haven’t yet settled into anything I really like.
We’ll leave aside the subtle inaccuracies they tried to peddle, leaving the basic gist of their proselytizing was the idea of a “One True Religion”. Maybe it’s my own hubris, but I find it the epitome of self-importance to claim that your way is the only true way. How can they claim any more insight into a document that has been translated and interpreted more than any other book? Honestly, the Bible as a book has been around for over two thousand years, and everyone who has ever laid hands on one has their own take on it. Given the countless ways a given copy might have been lost in the thousands of years since it was first written. When you take into account the random changes that were indubitably introduced during the 1400 years of hand copying, how can anyone claim that theirs is the “correct” way?
But more than that, the thing that I find most incongruous, is that so many of these “one true religion” advocates claim that any non-adherents are doomed to an eternity of damnation. Their religion claims that God is a benevolent, forgiving, and understanding deity. That He will overlook small flaws in character, and will only damn those who stray radically from His path. The idea that such a God would damn a significant fraction (and we’re talking 90%+ of the world population) of His children seems ludicrous.
Imagine a father who raises a child for twenty years. He loves this child with all their heart, and rightly so. He watches as the child makes mistakes, and tries his best to guide them to a good and righteous life. Then, when the child finally grows to an age where she is capable of independent thought, the father demands that the child follow rigidly in his footsteps or forever lose his love. It would be like my father disowning me because I didn’t join the Air Force and become a doctor. It just doesn’t work that way.
Now, that’s not to say that you can do whatever you please and God will forgive you. Of course, I guarantee my father would disown me if I started doing drugs, went on a burglary spree, and started killing people at random. He’d probably disown me at even one of those occurrences. But the thought that he’d disown me because I chose to become a computer programmer instead of a doctor? Or that God might condemn me to hell because I don’t follow your particular interpretation of His will?
Ultimately, the idea that man can claim perfect understanding of God’s will strikes me as hubris. I’ll stick to my own hodge-podge of religious beliefs in search of my own enlightenment.