By condemning and hating, we create God in our own image

Life is a mystery! The longer we live the more we discover how little we know of our universe and the little planet we share with seven billion others, not forgetting of course the millions of plants and animals of every description.

Life is full of wonder, beauty, harmony and opportunities. We would be best advised to embrace and safeguard it rather than pretend that we are masters with all the answers.

Good religion opens us up to the goodness, mystery and beauty of life. Bad religion spreads fear, hatred and division. Living life to the full demands that we acknowledge that we don’t have all the answers, yet we still live the mystery. Acknowledging our creaturehood is an admission that we are not mini gods. We have our holy books as well as our prophets and teachers in every religion. Yet none of them pretended to have every answer to the challenges of each age or the final word in every argument.

All of them witnessed to truth and gave us the golden rule. Jesus went a step further by insisting that we just don’t love one another but that we love as he loved us, to the point of sacrifice and death. That is what his followers are asked to do in every age; yet they must still search with wisdom, humility and insight to address the questions of each generation.

Absolute belief in their own particular version of truth brought about the crusades, the holocaust and conquests by every religion. It increasingly led to the elimination of those that were different and a threat by their race, beliefs or ability. Jesus defended the lepers, the poor, women and the rejects of his day. Children born with Down Syndrome, albinism or many other physical or mental challenges for generations were neglected and frequently murdered.

Those who were born different in any way appeared to challenge public notions of divinity and so they were often regarded as satanic and evil and treated as such. We have come a long way, yet the gays of today are the new lepers in our society. 

That their sexual orientation is different than ours is considered ungodly and their behaviour deemed satanic. Yet sexuality is clearly not a choice as who would choose a lifestyle that leads to discrimination, hatred and violence as gays in Kenya experience all the time?

I don’t know why God created gays no more than why he created my beautiful nieces who have Down Syndrome or my nephew with Autism, nor any of us for that matter since we are all imperfect but worthy of love.

But I do believe that all of them were created in God’s image and each of them demonstrates divine beauty and wisdom and is therefore worthy of love, respect and rights. That is exactly what Pope Francis said to a young Chilean man last year when he informed him that he was gay.

God may have created us in his image, however, but we proceeded to create God in our image. The hatred, ignorance and prejudice that we exhibit are often attributed to God. By hating and condemning others we imagine that we are defending God as if the Creator was so powerless that he needed us as his foot soldiers.

This may also go a long way to explain how politicians donate generously to churches to bribe the Almighty into ignoring their graft and buying cheap tickets to power in this life and the next. It is no stretch of the imagination to think that those who are accustomed to buying their way to power may believe that God too has his price and good St Peter would let you enter the pearly gates if the brown envelope was large enough. Yes, we create God in our own image. He is there to serve us rather than we serving Him.

This flawed theology is also responsible for the so called prosperity gospel, whose message is ‘get saved and get rich’. They of course conveniently forget that Jesus spent most of his time with the rejects of society and was born relatively poor and died like a criminal.

They will not confess that inequality, injustice and corruption are the causes of the 45 per cent of Kenyans living in destitution and misery. That is hardly the plan of the God. We are all pilgrims trying our best to understand this crazy, beautiful world while not condemning but loving those that are very different to us.

- Gabriel Dolan [email protected] @GabrielDolan1