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Fear, not faith
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The Internet, the media, and the blogosphere are buzzing with the story of Dr. George Tiller, the so-called abortion doctor who was shot dead in his own church. When I first heard the story I was profoundly troubled. I couldn’t do anything but sit there and watch. Wow! Is the word that kept running through my head. Wow!
This post is not going to be about Dr. Tiller, though I am deeply saddened and profoundly troubled by what happened. I don’t even know what I could say that would make a difference amid all the white noise currently buzzing around this event. So instead, I want to address the harsh reality that the Christian God is NOT a loving and compassionate God but is instead a petty, brutal, and vindictive God who is willing to walk into his own house and gun down another human being in cold blood.
One of the most popular Bible verses in Christianity is John 3:16: For God so loved the world that he gave is only begotten son that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. The irony of this particular verse is that God apparently didn’t mean it. While it’s true that he did kill his son, it had nothing to do with love. Which begs the question; “Why did Jesus die, what was the point?”
The real tenet behind Christianity is not love, but fear. We’ve got one shot at life, and after we die, we’re going to face the cosmic judge who is going to go over every detail of our lives and decide; either we get to go to Heaven, or we go to Hell. In Heaven we will live in eternal bliss and happiness, but in Hell we will burn in torment forever. This is what I would call torture… and unlike any other form of torture where the victim is eventually killed and therefore given peace, this torture is eternal and you will never find relief. Therefore, it is imperative that we do everything just right while we’re alive because eternity depends on it.
So why then, if I’m a Christian and I’m doing everything right, would I be compelled to walk into a church and gun down another human being simply because he disagreed with me? I believe that the answer to this is control. That’s an interesting aspect of fear… it has to control everything around it. When we feel afraid of something, we feel that we are threatened. Our way of life is threatened, our boundaries are threatened, our inner-peace is threatened, our reputation is threatened, our standard of living is threatened, our personal security is threatened, sometimes, our very lives are threatened. So to protect ourselves from that threat, we must eradicate that threat at whatever cost necessary, even if that means killing someone in a church.
So while rational people look on at an event like this in shock and horror, most of the people caught up in the fear are simply saying that the victim got what he deserved. This is fear, not love. Fear lashes out like a threatened animal. A threatened animal will attack anyone near it, even if that person is trying to help it. Unfortunately, this is the real precept behind Christianity and we just witnessed it working itself out yet again.
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