The Devil’s Not Real, Sorry to Disappoint

I know it’s been a couple of days since I spat out some incendiary, tradition-denying, possibly-offensive statement about the belief system with which I grew up so here goes…

I don’t believe in The Devil, Satan, Beelzebub, The Prince of Darkness or whatever you want to call him. I believe God created everything and God is all good. Not only do I not believe there isn’t any evil in God, I don’t believe there is any potential evil in God. I also don’t believe there ever was. God is Love. Love is all good. God is Love reining supreme and eternally and everything outside of that will ultimately fall away as illusion.  And least any of you missed my previous blog in which I categorically debunked the excuse so many who believe in Satan offer up as their “proof”— that being all that craziness about “free will,” let me tell you again, that is horseshit. Not that we don’t have free will. We do. But if you want to see what God’s will is, look at what is. If that is not true, then God is not all powerful. You can’t have  both. It is a logical impossibility and to participate is such a rationalization is a sin. The experience of life is the eternal process of God revealing itself to itself and the only reason there is ever an appearance of darkness is because it is the only contrast available to light so that the light may be known. Therefore God is all of it, the light and the dark.

The Bible was presented to me as a child as “the sole inspired word of God.” They breezed on past that word “sole” and I believe there was a time when I was very young I might have thought they were saying “soul,” another word that got tossed around the pews of Hatt Church of Christ a lot. But it’s not. It’s “sole,” as in “the only.” That means that there are not any other books that are “the word of God.”  Sorry to all the other religions with texts you consider sacred, there’s simply no room outside of “sole.” That the Bible is the only word of God must also mean that God made revised decisions along the way when books such as the Gnostic Gospels were tossed for fear that they would let the people believe they had too much spiritual power and therefor would bow (and empty their pockets for) the powerful churches that controlled the government. Did I say controlled? As in past tense? I must have been thinking of Catholic history, but actually that’s pretty much a story ripped for today’s headlines. Except at back of these MegaChurches who exert such political control, there are actually more powerful forces at work. I Timothy 6:10 will tell you what those powers are. What? Did I just allude to scripture? What the fuck? Am I actually going to debunk the prospect that this book is the “only inspired word of God” and then allude to it? You bet your ass I am. There’s not need throw out the baby Jesus with the baptismal bathwater. What the Bible actually is is the group of 66 separate texts that have survived according to the dictates of those who have been in power since its authorship over the several thousand years that took place. The originals, I mean. The extant text you call the Bible was actually composed much later and over a relatively short amount of time according to the dictates of those in political power at the time— in the Church and in the Government, often they were the same. The Bible is precious to me because is the story of human’s search for meaning and God over several thousand years and I believe I have a lot to learn from that. It is beautiful and scary and perfectly flawed and I love it. The Bible is precious to me, mostly because it tells me what I can know about the life of Jesus which still rocks even though it has been highjacked like the Gadsden Flag.

My mother, a very intelligent woman, actually thought that the Gospels according to Saints Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were composed by those for Apostles! I smart people believe this stuff, I am horrified to think of what damage the ignorant can do when wielding a little bit of “truth” and a whole lot of “Onward Christian Soldiers” zealotry. Actually I don’t have to wonder, I only have to look at the history of war on Earth to see what the result is. And there is also the problem of translation. I have heard entire sermons preached on parts of speech from the Queen James Vers— oh excuse me, the King James version by preachers who couldn’t trudge their way through Beowulf if their souls depended on it! Do you understand that?  If an elected member of our Congress can actually remain in office after saying, “If English was good enough for the Bible, it’s good enough for me,” then maybe it is simply tool late for us. It is frightening when you think about how much political power these yahoos have in our country right now. But God is still in charge and I love America enough to laugh when it’s all crumbling because these assholes took over. I actually believe a better America will rise in her place. I’m a huge fan of “Christian values” as they really are, and true “American values”  as they really are. (If you had to list these you could.) Only the spartass, godless, lefties, would actually try to say that greed is a Christian or American value— but I get their point.

If God can make a tree, He could write a book. And those who pimp that “he made it that way to give people the opportunity to believe and obey” bullshit are assholes and their God is an asshole. But that’s the same God that could see into the future and know that all those poor sons-of-bitches were going to follow the dicks he gave them (along with the correlative desires) straight into an eternal punishment more horrible than the human mind can imagine— and yet he did it anyway. Don’t come at me selling that shit and then try to smile and say that’s a “loving God.” You’re full of shit. That’s full of shit and if you pray to God to help you understand, you’ll know it too. God will not turn away your intreating for enlightenment. God is good. All the time.

So what about this devil?

The Devil exists because humans are basically, ultimately, unwilling to accept responsibility for their actions. They may “succumb to sin and temptation” but ultimately it was “the devil” who was back of this temptation because ultimately he is just that evil and wants you to go to hell forever because— well, just because he’s that evil. And remember he was created by God— a God that knew all this was going to happen. Bullshit.

I am going to break with tradition here. I am going to say that all this pain and suffering I have experienced in my life was and is… (wait for it)

OF MY OWN MAKING!

I have chosen temporary pain relief over longterm benefit time after time and it has gotten me into all the trouble in which I’ve ever found myself. If at those points, I had actually paused, breathed, and listened to the GOD VOICE WITHIN ME, I wouldn’t have married someone who needed to get sober (I knew better) I wouldn’t have participated in a bullshit war (I knew better) I wouldn’t have compulsively spent myself into debt (I knew better) and I wouldn’t be a lonely, single, forty-nine year old because my better choices would have afforded me what my heart really desired instead.

So no need for a mythological being to pin partial blame on for me, thanks. I’m all the Devil I need.

See y’all tomorrow.