Am I Evil?
To many of you I am a caricature. A bogeyman. The pitchfork-wielding monarch of an afterlife realm filled with fire and suffering souls. Priests, parents and politicians have used that image of me for years to make you toe the line.
Screw around when nobody is looking, and you will have me to pay. God sees it all. He is keeping his petty little checklist just waiting to nail you for acting on your nature; for being as you were created. The game is rigged against you from the start, and if guilt is not enough to get you to comply, then fear will do nicely.
Problem is, that is all a crock of shit. In reality, those are all just aspects of the god you praise - a vengeful capricious god who demands you submit to his will without question. He’s a judgmental god to whose standards you can never measure up. God of love? My ass.
All of the threats of hell and damnation are part and parcel of his little melodrama. It is all for show. He sells you an oversimplified vision of the world in black and white, right and wrong, good and evil. You may have noticed that a lot of his “good” seems to be pretty evil. We are talking about a guy who takes pride in the fact that he sent his minions on a genocidal rampage to slaughter the children of the Egyptians in their sleep. And they say that you should be afraid of me. Please.
So now that we have established who I am not, let me tell you who I am. I was here before the Big Three – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Back then, people celebrated nature and their place in it. Their faith was centered round the seasons, fertility, and harmony with the earth. These were the things that were critical to survival in small agrarian communities. I am usually depicted with horns which are supposed to make me seem frightening and evil. They are simply remnants of an ancient fertility symbol. The same is true of a horseshoe over a doorway with the ends pointing up for luck. Ever see a painting of Jesus’ arms uplifted representing life? Me again. My horns, his arms, no difference.
When the Big Three began to spread, those who followed the pagan religions were persecuted, forced to convert their beliefs or killed. The symbols of their beliefs celebrating the gift of life were subverted and branded as evil. As these new religions held sway, they became instruments of political subjugation. This was especially true of Christianity, and they created a mythology of me which has served their purposes for centuries.
I am not the yin to the Judeo-Christian god’s yang, at least not in the way that they would have you believe. I do not lurk in shadows looking for opportunities to torment you. That is his job, acting as his own false hobgoblin. I am, however, antithetical to him. Where he is judgmental and punitive, I am uncritical and accepting. Where he created you as a “sinner” and demands that you sublimate your very nature, I delight in you as you are. Why else would it be that nearly everything fun is forbidden under his rules?
To be fair, I am subversive and I am his antagonist, because I reject his hypocrisy. Still, you will not find me waging crusades or decapitating hostages in his name. You will find me mocking the self-righteous, taunting them with their own contradictions, and encouraging those human tendencies which lead you to your greatest achievements: pride, greed, lust, envy, wrath, gluttony and sloth. He calls them sins. I call them the fuel of industry, innovation, and human accomplishment.
Pride, greed and envy are my favorites. They motivate you to do more than the minimum, to refuse to simply subsist. They drive you to accomplish the unnecessary but also great achievements of your world. Is there any need to send men to the moon? No. You do it because of the pride of accomplishment. Greed and envy push you to build businesses that provide more than you need, and gluttony allows you to never be sated by the abundance you have produced. Wrath makes you protect what is yours and keeps competition vibrant. Lust and sloth provide balance. They represent your ability to enjoy the fruits of your labor. Work hard, play hard, and get ready to take on the world again on Monday morning.
Look around at what these wonderfully human traits have wrought and ask yourself if you need his moral relativism to make you feel bad about it. Quality of life continues to rise, as does life expectancy. There is more information in a Sunday New York Times than the average feudal worker would encounter in his lifetime. Despite conventional wisdom, you are working fewer hours and working less hard. How can he tell you that this is wrong?
Am I evil? You decide.
“It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil.
If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men,
the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.”
H. Keller
