The Lord Had Mercy

A gunman walked into a nursing home in North Carolina and began shooting the residents and employees. Eight people were shot dead and three others were wounded. One man, whose legless wife was a resident in the home, reported that the gunman had held a gun to her head but hadn’t shot her. The man didn’t know why his wife was spared, but said: “The Lord had mercy.” The Lord had mercy?

I suppose that I should have smiled at the simplicity of this man’s beliefs. He probably thinks that the Lord God stepped in, and, for some reason, saved the life of his wife. It is the kind of thing that is said by people all the time. They believe that God does act selectively to help some people while allowing others to suffer and die. They do not know why God acts in this way, but accept it as part of the mystery of God.

Perhaps I should not be upset at such thinking, but I am profoundly upset and angered by such raw stupidity. The millions of people who think this way are not willing to use their brains to consider the meaning of what they are saying. It is as if they have decided that it is perfectly appropriate to abandon rational thinking. It is okay to think that a loving and omnipotent God, who does step-in and do things to help people, would allow eight people and their families to suffer unimaginable horror and grief, while deliberately saving one or two others.

One hears of this kind of idiocy all the time. I have heard it from people who have just experienced a devastating tornado that wiped-out the homes of hundreds of people and killed many. They will report that although the tornado killed people, destroyed half of the homes in the town, and leveled all of the local churches, it left a statue of the Blessed Virgin still standing and unharmed. Surely this was the work of God! If I could, I would shout at these people at the top of my lungs: “You morons, you nitwits! God just destroyed your town and killed many people! And you say he spared some dumb statute?”

Most people do not stop to think of the obvious fact that if their God really existed, he would have to be a homicidal maniac. Aside from the fact that he stands by while millions of people suffer horribly from all kinds of diseases and injuries, he kills everybody! We must attribute all death to God. According to their beliefs, God made us and created everything in the universe. They believe that God designed us, so they must, of necessity, believe that God designed us to die. No only do we die, but most of us die in great pain and sorrow. We leave behind family and friends suffering from terrible grief. Is this the will of God? Is it his will that we not only die, but that we suffer when we die and that this causes mental suffering by all of the people close to us?

Are we supposed to believe that this homicidal manic, God, loves us? Are we supposed to believe that when prayed to, he steps in and sometimes, though rarely, spares a person’s life or cures someone's illness? Even though he designed us so that we would all die, he decided to bring Lazarus back to life. Is there anything but utter stupidity to that belief?

Some people believe in a place called Purgatory. They believe that God subjects humans who have sinned to a place similar to Hell where they have to stay for a long period of time before being admitted to Heaven. I have heard various descriptions of Purgatory, but the nuns used to tell us it was just like Hell with fire and pain. Now that I look back, I realize that such teaching was the most amazingly absurd thing the nuns ever taught us—and they taught a lot of incredibly stupid things. They would tell us how God loved us, but in the next breath they would describe how we were all sinners and that none of us would make it to Heaven without spending some time in Purgatory. The time periods in Purgatory were described as thousands, even millions of years. Indulgences by the Pope could reduce that time, and sometimes the period of time attached to indulgences would be set out. E.g. reading the Bible with proper devotion would save you x days in Purgatory.

Most Christians and many people of other faiths believe that there is a place called Hell where the worst sinners go upon death. Hell is described as eternal fire which burns the soul with great pain, but does not consume it. People who go to Hell suffer eternal pain. It is surely the most ridiculous teaching of the Christian faith. While it is true that there are evil people whom we would like to see in Hell, there is certainly nothing that we could do on Earth to merit this kind of eternal punishment. Moreover, according to the Catholic Church, anybody who dies with a “mortal sin” on his soul goes to Hell. Thus, it is not only Hitler, Himmler, Stalin, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, serial murderers, and child molester/murderers who would go to Hell. Billions of other people would go there for more common offenses. We were taught in school that many things were mortal sins, including masturbation, adultery, fornication, missing Sunday mass, sodomy, homosexuality, idolatry, atheism, blasphemy, lying, abortion, drug and alcohol abuse, divorce, incest, theft, lust, envy, doubt of one’s faith, heresy, despair, and many others. I despair at the monumental ignorance reflected in such idiocy.

Would an infinitely loving God create man in such a way as to make him subject to every temptation, weak to every vice, grasping for power and money? Bertrand Russell said: “If I were going to beget a child knowing that the child was going to be a homicidal maniac, I should be responsible for his crimes.” Baron D’Holbach questioned whether there was not gross injustice in the thought that God makes man the way he is, and then punishes him for being that way. “Farfetched and endless torments are the justice of a merciful and compassionate God, reserved for fragile beings, for transitory offenses, for false reasonings, for involuntary errors, for necessary passions, which depend on the temperament this God has given him.”

The language used by modern religions to describe God is meaningless. They describe God as “loving.” They even describe God as “Infinitely loving,” whatever that means. Televangelists assure us that God loves us. They say “Jesus loves you!” God’s love for mankind is supposedly found in the bloody sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. But what do they mean by the word “love?” We know what the love a mother has for her child means. A loving mother would never allow her child to be tortured to death without trying to do something to stop it. A mother who stood by and did nothing to stop her child from being tortured to death would not be called “loving.” Yet the word “love” as applied to God apparently does not have the same meaning! When applied to God it means an omnipotent being who does not raise a finger to stop the torture and suffering of millions of children every year. It means a being who allows children to be born with horrible genetic diseases, to suffer starvation, to be abused by parents and others, to be afflicted by natural disasters such as tsunamis, and to grow up in a world full of poverty, disease, hunger, and war.

Religion has a language of its own. That language is totally different from the accepted language of the world. It ignores the logic of human language, and imposes its own set of values. Thus, in human life, a God who would have to be considered a homicidal maniac is called the essence of love. He is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin. God is just and righteous.”

I submit that all we have is our human brains. All we are capable of knowing is what our rational powers tell us. Our rational powers tell us that the actions and inactions of this mythical being called God are the works of a homicidal maniac, not a loving savior. It is time the world woke-up to the fact that there is no God.