A nice change from the usual religious hate e-mail I get

Normally I receive religious e-mail that threatens me with all sorts of horrible punishments for not believing in god or Jesus.  Or, they are extremely condescending sales pitches for a religion, and appear disguised as motivational prose or clever anecdotes, usually accompanied by breathtaking pictures. Yes, you’ve seen them too!

The threatening and pseudo-motivational ones are invariably from Christians, even Muslims, but the e-mails from Hindu’s are revoltingly superstitious in nature and suggest that your luck will take a turn for the worse, if you either don’t do something such as pray or fast; or more absurdly, refuse to forward the mail to x-number of persons within a certain time period. For some reason I don’t receive any religious e-mails from Jews or Buddhists (to their credit); perhaps because the former are part of an exclusive club, and the latter are not really religious.

I was therefore pleasantly surprized, when I received the following piece of poetry which is clearly from a Christian source, but which does not threaten or insult my atheist status. As a matter of fact, it seems to chide Christians, but could apply equally well to persons of all religions; even atheists. ***Note: I personally don’t think it’s the best poem in the world; it’s just titled that way in the e-mail***

Best Poem in the World

                           I was shocked, confused, bewildered
                           As I entered Heaven’s door,
                          Not by the beauty of it all,
                          Nor the lights or its decor.

                         But it was the folks in Heaven
                         Who made me sputter and gasp–
                      The thieves, the liars, the sinners,
                          The alcoholics and the trash.

                     There stood the kid from seventh grade
                        Who swiped my lunch money twice.
                         Next to him was my old neighbor
                          Who never said anything nice.

                           Herb, who I always thought
                            Was rotting away in hell,
                        Was sitting pretty on cloud nine,
                            Looking incredibly well.

                        I nudged Jesus, ‘What’s the deal?
                         I would love to hear Your take.
                      How’d all these sinners get up here?
                           God must’ve made a mistake.

                          ‘And why’s everyone so quiet,
                          So sombre – give me a clue.’
                 ‘Hush, child,’ He said, ‘they’re all in shock.
                      No one thought they’d be seeing you.’

                                   JUDGE NOT.

          Remember…Just going to church doesn’t make you a Christian
             any more than standing in your garage makes you a car .

                           Every saint has a PAST….
                           Every sinner has a FUTURE!

 And, while the conclusion is “cute,” I prefer to think of myself as neither a saint nor sinner, but just a human being; and more importantly, I care not for the past nor the future, but the present, which I have control over.

Why do so many religious people hate themselves so much?

Judging by some of the comments on my blog posts, I have  to conclude that many religious folks practise a form of self-loathing that could only be inspired by scripture, and reinforced through frequent worship sessions, by the clergy or other religious instructors. The proclivity to undermine ones personal self through various forms of self-denial, self-hatred, self-loathing, penance etc. seems to be very evident among Christians, but is by all accounts, absolutely intrinsic to Islam. Although not so openly evident in other religions, it is surely practiced to some degree.

Take this recent comment on my post Viva la Vida – What does it all mean?, “None of us deserve God, yet He gives us that opportunity, none of us deserve life, yet He gives us life and a chance to seek Him and become One with Him. Chris Jesus died for us; God became what we are that we might be what He is.” Why would a normal, sane and rational person believe that he does not deserve life? It could be expected of a person with psychological problems to have such insecurities, but what triggers such atypical thoughts in a normal, healthy person?

Here again, a commentator on my post The More You Learn, The More You Realize How Little You Know, maintains that you don’t know what’s best for you, only god does: “He IS the Creator after all. He knows what’s good for you. and you’re only ONE out of how many people on this planet??” Unless someone is deliberately taught this piece of imprudence,” how would that person come to believe such an absolute which is impossible to verify or prove, with or without science?

And on a blog I posted, Hate Not the Believer, where I made reference to a Melbourne cleric who advocates that beating your wife is acceptable, the same (female) Muslim commentator had this to say: “and in terms of the whole wife/husband..woman/man thing..there’s always a reason in Islam. cause we don’t see Islam as a religion…rather, it is the way of life” Is it normal for a women to allow herself to be beaten, because an archaic text in a religious book condones paternalistic thuggery? What sinister force compels a women to deny herself any self-respect, by accepting that there is always a reason for her being mistreated and maligned?

Time and time again you will hear clerics screaming from the pulpits (and now from every kind of media imaginable) that man is a worthless sinner. Man is damned and can only obtain “salvation” if he accepts the “word of god” and “gives his life” to one “creator” or the other. Some religions (one in particular) even go so far as to proclaim that only total and unrelenting “submission to god” is a pre-requisite for a “life in heaven,” whatever that is. And the key to making people believe such nonsense is in creating a terrifying fear of the unknown; the unknowable, unprovable, irrational, mother-of-all-fears, HELL. Other religions may not have the concept of HELL, which is probably why self-hatred is not that evident there. Such is the work of clerics; to perpetuate and maintain the fear of a punishment after death. For without this fear, people would have no need to hate themselves so much while they are alive.

Perhaps Ayaan Hirsi Ali was referring to secular Europe when she wrote so eloquently in her book Infidel, “Life is better in Europe than it is in the Muslim world because human relations are better, and one reason human relations are better is that in the West, life on earth is valued in the here and now, and individuals enjoy rights and freedoms that are recognized and protected by the state. To accept subordination and abuse because Allah willed it – that, for me would be self-hatred.”