The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture (19 page)

• People who have a lot of education should be treated as suspect unless they graduated from a Bible College.

• Ministers are the examples for the church. Follow their words but not necessarily their deeds. They are human after all.

• God loves everyone but you don't need to; Blacks are welcome in the kingdom of god but not in our church, Whites don’t marry Blacks, Christians don’t marry members of other religions, Gays are going to hell.

• You have to believe to get into heaven. If you end up in hell, it is because you didn’t believe enough.

• The Bible is the perfect word of god. If you read it and find some inconsistencies, it is because you are imperfect and can’t read it right. God’s word does not need interpreting. Just read it, it is in black and white, but the preacher will tell you how to interpret it if you get it wrong.

• God wants everyone to be saved but Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons are probably not going to be saved. Muslims and Buddhists certainly won’t.

• So-called mainstream churches like Episcopalians and Presbyterians don’t follow Jesus. They pervert the word of the God.

• Pornography will pollute your mind and make you incapable of controlling yourself. Most criminals do pornography.

• Sex is sinful, except in marriage and even there, it is suspect. Sex before marriage will make you get divorced later.

• God loves America; if you question America, you obviously don’t love its god.

• Give to the poor, but only to the deserving poor.

• Only missionaries from our denomination, or closely aligned ones, are doing god’s work.

• If someone does not believe in our religion, it is okay to let her know she is going to hell. In fact, it is your duty to inform her.

• Science is good as long as it doesn't question the Bible or teach evolution. Always be suspicious of scientists.

• Too much education can undermine your faith.

• Money will ruin you if you don't tithe to our particular church.

12
George Barna is an evangelical and long-time pastor. The mission statement on his website states, in part, “We seek to use our strengths in partnership with Christian ministries and individuals to be a catalyst in moral and spiritual transformation in the United States. We accomplish these outcomes by providing vision, information, strategy, evaluation and resources.” Barna Group,
What is The Barna Group, Ltd.?
[article on-line] (accessed 22 November 2008); available from
http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=AboutBarna
; Internet.

13
The News and Observer,
by Yonat Shimron, July 12, 2001.

14
Religions of the Book include Judaism, Christianity, Islam.

There were no actual Sunday School lessons or sermons on these topics, but they were taught loudly and clearly through behavior and attitudes of people like the church elders, minister, parents, youth leaders and Sunday School teachers. Many sermons and Sunday school lessons taught one thing verbally but church members sent subtle contradictory messages.

When I was a child my grandmother loved to sing me to sleep with this song:

Jesus loves the little children,

All the children of the world.

Red and Yellow, Black and White, they are precious in his sight.

Jesus loves the little children of the world.

But when the black children that god loved came to swim in the city swimming pool, grandma got upset, as did many other Christians in town. I guess the interpretation is that god can love them, but grandma didn’t have to. It was a subtle, but effective, moral lesson about how I should behave and view people of other races.

Most of these lessons could not be questioned. Here are some of the discussions that came from asking too many questions:

Q: Can homosexuals go to heaven?

A: “Of course, not! Why would you even ask such a question?”

Q: Can America be wrong about the Vietnam War?

A: “No, and the very fact that you asked makes you un-American and un-Christian. Are you a communist or a liberal?”

And who would dare ask, “If the 40-year-old preacher with a wife and three kids can have an affair and be forgiven by the church, what is wrong with me having a little sex before I get married?”

If your religious training was like mine, chances are much of it was downright immoral. Immoral in the sense that the values that were taught were racist, sexist, insulting and cruel to other groups, and misleading if not downright wrong about human relationships, sexuality, science, education, other religions and many other things.

Every fundamentalist preacher talks about god’s unchanging word and that god’s morality never changes. The myth of unchanging morality allows the virus to control current behavior. If people have amnesia, it makes it
easier for the priest or preacher to dictate what is acceptable behavior today. It is religious situational morality. An unchanging morality would mean there is a way to calibrate a given behavior against a moral measuring stick. In reality, the priest or preacher controls the measuring stick and adjusts it according to the best interests of the virus in the specific culture.

How many preachers rail against integration these days? Heard any sermons on the evils of casino gambling in your local church lately? Has your local priest preached a series on the evils of birth control in the last ten years or so?

We would think that murder is an unchanging moral absolute. “Thou shalt not kill” seems very clear. But this commandment also changes with the times. The Jews who wrote and followed the Ten Commandments didn’t think it murder to stone adulterers to death or to kill all the women and children in a city during the war to liberate Palestine. The Catholic inquisition and Tomás de Torquemada didn’t think torture unto death was murder. Would these be considered murder today?

Slave owners in Mississippi were within their rights to kill an errant slave. It was not prosecutable as murder. In 1850 it was not considered murder for a Christian mob to hang a black man who disrespected a white woman. Lynch mobs could hang blacks with impunity for almost 80 years after the Civil War, and no one was charged with murder. Was it murder or not?

For an Islamic man in Pakistan, it is not murder to kill his sister if she is found alone with a man not related to her. For a Christian prison guard, it is not murder to administer the death penalty to a duly convicted murderer. It was not considered murder to drop napalm bombs on Vietnamese villages in 1968. Murder is a remarkably fluid thing and does not seem to have any relationship to the Ten Commandments.

Morality is defined in terms of the current culture. The virus tends to follow along and intervene only when its survival is threatened. Since culture is constantly shifting, the god virus is always trying to position itself for survival within the culture. In a society that is not deeply infected – that is,
coupled to the religion – the virus has to constantly mutate to stay viable. In cultures with strong coupling, such as Saudi Arabia, the moral yardstick is more stable over time.

It is important to look behind the words of religious leaders to understand the real messages they are sending. We can apply the viral paradigm to show how apparently benign religious statements are really efforts to maintain position within the culture. Newspapers reported in September 2007 that Pope Benedict in a major speech, said, “Europe has become child poor, we want everything for ourselves and place little trust in the future.”
¹⁵
His message was to produce more children and prohibit abortion. He claimed that Europe has become immoral and cannot distinguish right from wrong.

Let’s apply the god virus paradigm to Pope Benedict XVI’s statement to understand the hidden intentions. First, is he calling for more children in Europe? On the surface, this appears to be a benign request. To understand, we should ask if he would be satisfied with more Muslim children in Europe? Would he praise a Europe where Atheists started having twice as many children as they currently do?

I don’t think this is his message. Neither would he exalt Lutherans if they began having large families. The Pope wants Catholics to have large families as they did in the past. It is a simple, yet cloaked call to ensure the Catholic virus gains strength in Europe.

Next, he decried immorality in Europe. What does he mean by immorality? Is the murder rate up? Has there been a large jump in armed robberies or rapes? Are there more hate crimes or persecution of minorities? The answer is that while all of these crimes continue in some measure, they have declined throughout Europe since WW II and remain far lower than on other continents.

15
Vatican Radio,
Pope’s Homily at Mariazell
[article on-line] (9 August 2007, accessed 22 November 2008); available from
http://www.radiovaticana.org/en1/Articolo.asp?c=153806
; Internet.

At the same time as the Pope delivered this speech, the Austrian Catholic Church was in the throws of a major priest sex scandal. Around the same time, in another speech, the Pope stated, “The Church wants to show ‘repentance’ for the murder of millions of Jews by the Nazis.”
¹⁶
An interesting juxtaposition for the Pope to call for a return to morality even as he is admitting the Church’s role in one of the most heinous crimes in world history and dealing with major sexual misconduct among his own priests.

When religious leaders decry immorality, what they generally mean is, “You are not following the dictates of the god virus.” Morality is an entirely separate issue. The Pope is not concerned with immorality in the sense of crime rates. He is concerned with adherence to practices that will increase the influence of the Catholic Church. The key to understanding this is to ask, “If all the Pope desired could be achieved under a Muslim caliphate, Protestant theocracy or with a secular government, would the Pope rejoice?” Most likely not! Thus, what is cloaked as a simple call for a return to morality is nothing more than a blatant attempt to increase the power of the Catholicism over others.

We have focused here on the Catholic Pope, but the same analysis could be conducted on the religious pronouncements from Pat Robertson, Binny Hinn
¹⁷
, James Dobson or the head of the Sunday School department in a local church. Simply change the religion and use the same pronouncement, then ask, “Would the person who made that statement be happy with the new outcome?”

Now that we have established where morality comes from, what does this mean for the non-religious? If you are a non-theist, you recognize no big lawgiver in the sky. You are responsible for developing your own moral compass. Most of the time, it is not a big job. As a member of this culture, you already abide by and agree with the basic code of behavior. You didn’t need a preacher to tell you not to steal, lie, cheat, rape, pillage, murder or
to strive for honesty in your daily interactions and dealings with people. It comes with being a citizen of any civilized society. Your parents would have taught you this, no matter what their religion or lack of religion.

16
New York Times,
7 September 2007; also
European Jewish Press
7 September 2007.

17
Binny Hinn is the leader of a major television ministry. His ministry was investigated for financial mismanagement by the U.S. Senate. Hinn along with four other ministries refused to cooperate with the investigation. Pegasus News,
Grapevine-based Benny Hinn Ministries defies U.S. Senate
[article on-line] (8 December 2007, accessed 22 November 2008); available from
http://www.pegasusnews.com/news/2007/dec/08/grape-vine-based-benny-hinn-ministries-defies-us-s/
; Internet.

The one difference between you and those infected with the virus is that you know that you are responsible. No excuses, no “the devil made me do it.” Virally infected people are not so clear on this point. Some think Satan tempts them. Others think some god has a plan and they have to figure out that plan. Still others think a god preordained it all and that they have little choice in the matter. Muslims are always saying, “Allah willing.” Some Christians say it, too. It’s as if they don’t have any say in things; their god is going to do what he wants to do.

Being clear about responsibility is a huge advantage for the non-theist. You are not going to waste time and energy trying to read some god’s tea leaves to figure out the plan. You don’t worry about whether a god is looking over your shoulder when you think a bad thought. How much do you worry about disappointing the Virgin Mary? When was the last time you worried about offending Allah? In normal day-to-day life, you are saving energy and emotion for more important things.