Say that you grow up in a Christian household where you are told that man should look after God’s world as its caretaker and its steward and that man should treat life as sacred. At the same time, you learn that 70% of evangelical Christians do not believe that man is causing any environmental degradation and you perceive that devout Christians are the folks most likely to infect their neighbors with the Covid-19 virus, thereby causing the death of some number of them.
What are you to think?
Why this disconnect between what believers say God wants them to do and what they actually do? The only explanation that makes sense is that believers do not really believe. They do not really believe that there is a God who demands that they protect the environment. They do not really believe that there is a God who prohibits them from killing.
But how can that be? How can a mind be constructed in such a way that it absolutely does not believe what it claims to absolutely believe?
To argue that so-called believers are hypocritical doesn’t begin to do justice to this super-strange state of affairs. Yes, they are hypocrites. But the idea of hypocrisy suggests a slyness and a deviousness that doesn’t really capture what must be going on in the mind of a believer. On the one hand, the believer looks to actually believe that there is an all-knowing, all-loving, infallible God. On the other hand, the believer looks to actually believe that God is okay with him littering and being violent towards his wife. This is different from hypocrisy.
It is also different from stupidity. The many studies that appear to show that non-believers are on average slightly more intelligent than believers are not conclusive and not impressive. There are plenty of brilliant Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and so on who can do physics at a high level, who also claim to believe in God (or reincarnation, nirvana, etc.), and who also manifest a clear and total lack of integrity in their professed belief. This isn’t about intelligence or solely about intelligence. It must be about something else.
The answer has two parts. First, a belief in God actually has no content. It is not like a belief in the sweetness of sugar or the hardness of concrete. It is a firm but completely empty belief. But, then, what is a believer believing? Here is the second part. Think of a box with no content that is also mirrored, so that, while totally empty, it nevertheless appears full: of the observer’s wishes, desires, opinions, prejudices, hatred, etc., all mirrored back to the observer. This is how religion works.
Religion is an empty, mirrored box that reflects back the viewer’s narcissism and wishful thinking. It is completely empty but feels full. What a wonderful box!
If the believer is a racist, as so many believers are, the box is full of a white God who hates black people. If the believer is a misogynist, as so many believers are, the box is full of mighty punishment for the women who have abortions and zero punishment for the men who demand those abortions. What an excellent box!
All beliefs in God are exactly the same: totally empty of content and totally full of the personality of the believer. If we want to understand, reckon with, and influence those 75,000,000 Republicans who voted for Donald Trump, so many of whom are devout believers, we need to understand how religion and its mirrored empty box work. It will not pay to try to point out contradictions in their belief system, as the box is empty and there is nothing to contradict. It will not do to point out the more outlandish beliefs of their religion, as the box is empty and there is nothing to point out. The only effort with a chance of making a difference is changing them so that they themselves change their God.
But how to change them? With the simplest of slogans. If we repeatedly say to believers, “Be kind,” and even the tiniest percentage of that message sinks in, then they will bring a kinder version of themselves to that empty box and as a result see reflected back a kinder God. If we can inch people toward more kindness, more love, more generosity, more tolerance, and so on, then we will have made their God kinder, more loving, more generous, and more tolerant. By employing these simple messages, we might improve their God.
It is silly to quibble about the contents of an empty box. No believer has ever been convinced by having some contradiction pointed out. Believers only stop believing when the scales fall from their eyes and they see that the box is empty and has always been empty.
But we do not have to move believers that far, all the way to clarity. Let us just bombard them with simple messages like “Be kind” and “Be loving” and “Have some compassion” and hope that those almost incontrovertible messages sink in. If they do, then believers will have upgraded their God and turned Him just a little bit bluer.
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Follow all of Eric Maisel’s posts here: authory.com/EricMaisel
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