Way of the Mind

(warning: this is a long one)

One of the biggest problems with Christianity is the devout Christians’ desire to “save souls”.

While the Old Testament (OT)’s Judaism wasn’t concerned to the afterlife - indeed, I don’t remember a single mention of heaven or hell in the OT -, to Christianity (especially Paul’s - not necessarily Jesus’) it’s perhaps the most important thing. After all, as a lot of Christians believe, this earthly life is really just a “test”, and what matters is what happens after your body dies - either you are saved and go to heaven, or aren’t, and will burn in hell, while being tortured by Satan and all his demons, for eternity.

Indeed, Christianity tells us not to become too “attached” to this world. This life, according to devout Christians, doesn’t really matter. Happiness or sadness, joy or suffering, are irrelevant: life is just a binary test, to decide whether your soul is saved or not. (Here, there’s a division: some Christians, mostly Protestant, believe that we are saved by faith alone, while others (mostly the Catholics) believe it’s faith and good works as well.)

So, let’s say you’re one devout (one might say “fundamentalist”, but only the Muslims are such… right?) Christian. According to your most deeply held beliefs, the only thing that matters is whether your soul is saved or not. Since you believe in God with all your heart, go to church, do whatever your priest tells you to do, and so on, you can reasonably assume that you‘ll be saved. Right? Hmm, so you have just achieved your life’s goal - you’ll be saved when you die, go to heaven, and all that.

Since the rest of this life doesn’t really matter, you don’t particularly enjoy it, so you wish you could skip the rest of it and just go to heaven right now. Unfortunately, Christianity also says that suicide is a deadly sin. What to do, then?

One of the first things that come to mind is, of course, trying to save other souls than yours. It makes sense - God will certainly be pleased, since, after all, he is good and wants everyone to be saved, right?

Now, as I said, you believe that the only thing that matters is whether you’re saved or not. Therefore, to save someone, anything goes - this life is irrelevant, after all. That’s how you are able to justify anything. If you have to torture someone to death, but in their last breath, they “repent” and praise God, you will have done them a favor - what would it matter if they were able to live a long, pleasant life, if they’d go to hell in the end?

Anything becomes justified. Lying. Torture. The Inquisition. Murder. War. The Crusades. Amassing power - after all, the more powerful the Church is, the more people will convert and be saved. Even genocide - if a group of people are absolutely unrepentant, better to kill them all and stop them from corrupting more souls in the future.

You think all of this only happened centuries ago? Or that it was just the Catholic Church? Think again. Abortion clinics are still being bombed. Several countries are still ruled by a fanatical priest caste, where any “heresy” is punishable by death - not merely as a punishment, but also to prevent the “heretic” from “corrupting” others. Christians (and those from other religions, too) still harass, and sometimes murder, groups or members of groups they don’t like, since they are all damned anyway, and are preventing other people from being saved.

Also dangerous (maybe even more so) is the “war on thought” (which has several variants, such as the “war on reason”, the “war on science”, the “war on secularism”, and the “we’re being persecuted! we need more laws to protect our freedom of religion” war). It’s like this: if any thought, any line of thought, is likely to lead the thinker away from pure faith, and therefore away from salvation, then such kind of thought must be fought:

Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God

(2 Corinthians 10:5)

Remember, only salvation matters. Life doesn’t. The physical, “mundane” reality, doesn’t. If faith and reality diverge, then reality is “wrong”. If thinking can make one’s faith waver, then thought must be suppressed. If higher learning makes people doubt the existence of God, then higher learning must be prevented and demonized.

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