Wind Up

"Wind-Up"

When I was young and they packed me off to school
and taught me how not to play the game,
I didn't mind if they groomed me for success,
or if they said that I was just a fool.
So I left there in the morning
with their God tucked underneath my arm --
their half-assed smiles and the book of rules.
And I asked this God a question
and by way of firm reply,
He said -- "I'm not the kind you have to wind up on Sundays."
So to my old headmaster (and to anyone who cares):
before I'm through I'd like to say my prayers --
I don't believe you!
You have the whole damn thing all wrong --
He's not the kind you have to wind up on Sundays.
Well you can excommunicate me on my way to Sunday school
and have all the bishops harmonize these lines --
How do you dare tell me that I'm my father's son
when that was just an accident of birth.
I'd rather look around me -- compose a better song
`cause that's the honest measure of my worth.
In your pomp and all your glory, you're a poorer man than me,
as you lick the boots of death born out of fear.
I don't believe you!
You have the whole damn thing all wrong --
He's not the kind you have to wind up... on Sundays.


So, can there be any question that I will always feel this way about organized religion? No, I think not. I related in some other post my early life trauma with a racist church who called themselves Ridgecrest Baptist Church of Montgomery, Alabama. I have tried to reconsider organized religion again recently. But, I have seen the fruits of hundreds of thousands of dead innocents in just the last decade. I will forever be affected by this particular winding set of events that I know so well from being hopelessly politically aware throughout. Perhaps I was a child during my first bad experience, but this time I am wise enough to see things from both sides. I just cannot believe in gathering together when the results of that gathering are these fruits. And I do not even trust my own judgement to know whether my experimentally stepping into such a gathering will contribute in any small way to consequences as dire.

This does not mean I do not believe in their God. I do, probably more than the gathered will ever be likely to grasp.

I don't argue the point much any more. I am so flawed myself that I feel an improper spokesperson for my God. And I do want those people who need the gathering to have what they feel they need to understand God. I just caution them. Their flaws may end with another leader who...

So I believe in my God, the One who speaks to my heart. The One who tells me specifically not to pray in public but to go into a closet. The One who would hope I would have a problem with collateral damage. The One who would want me to turn the other cheek. The One who has influenced me all through my life. The One who would want me to worry if my neighbor were out of work. And let me go further and say, my God is the One that wouldn't want me to argue with facts and learning but would want me to argue with many of science's moral underpinnings and effects upon the human condition. Or, perhaps put another way, the One that would want me to believe in Darwin's theories without creating an economic and social system for mankind based upon the morals contained therein.

It is this last point (though it is probably not strictly Biblical in any substantial way but is so central to my belief structure) which I think is so crucial to understand. Yes, it is easy to make fun of the fact that many Christians gathered together think that the world is not as old as it is, that dinosaur fossils may have been put here by Satan to test us, or that all mathematicians are wrong about how far the stars are from our Earth. But, I believe as strongly against this kind of disingenuously fundamentalist atheism as I do the beliefs of those they are mocking. I honestly doubt seriously if some sects of organized religion understand science or mathematics, or by virtue of their ignorance, understand what their beliefs beget. I also more seriously honestly doubt those who think they can logically reject the possibility of my God, and I doubt also their understanding of what their belief begets.

An important point I see so clearly after years and years of life, is that Darwin, and those that proceeded and followed him with the same scientific construct, influenced our economic and social system...to the worst possible outcome. No longer is humanity looking up with humility to my God. They look down upon others who failed and prop their own selves up as achievers. They forget the many innocents who are no longer among us. Can it be that those who argue so vociferously against Darwin have completely misunderstood the real threat to their God from Darwin, the implementation of the doctrine of "survival of the fittest" into our entire economic philosophy and system, our foreign affairs policy, our social fabric, and our interpretations of just what God has told us? Rejecting what is most likely scientifically true and then accepting the very same ideas (as a way to organize our social structure based on blind moral values of competition which as humans who believe in a higher power we should want to rise above) is by far the worst mistake that has been made by those who organize. Another way to think of it in our current economic predicament is the adoption of "rich people" values as Godly. I realize that all who organize do not fear Darwin's science in a fundamentalist way. And I know and have read things by some who do understand the way in which Darwin should be feared.

Coming from a particular country and culture with a particular set of beliefs, often people believe they are correct beyond doubt when others around them are so equally confident. I am flawed in many ways and will avoid that temptation. I hope my God approves.