If The Religious Were Truly Honest

“Lord, I know I have been commanded to love you, but you bore me—you’re too demanding, authoritarian, and domineering. I probably ought to love you—but I’m sorry, I don’t. So rather than lie to you and everyone else I’m going to be straight with you”—Alan Watts

You think an honest expression of your feelings would be disruptive to the church? Not at all. If you are honest and say; I’m not doing this because I love you, or because even I like you—but because the book says I must. And I hate this whole hypocrisy game so here’s the deal.

Making a bargain that is most sensible and honest (for you really ought not to ever lie nor pretend when it comes to religious matters) it would go something like this; Lord, I really don’t love you (although I have tried) and I really often doubt you were the one, but for now I will go along with it to keep harmony in the family, church community, business, or whatever the benefit is (social insecurities) That type of honesty would nurture the inclusion the churches preach, but never attain.

It is formidable to admit unbelief, or non-love of god in the churches. There is much pressure to say you do, even when you don’t, even for an outright atheist.

The command to genuinely love god is the breakdown

Ought one maintain the pretense of love after entering a covenant with the Lord, or should we now see how we can provide ourselves with these spiritual conveniences? First the initiate attempts the first, then your inner self, your consciousness, your personality, the pragmatic side, the you you can’t insist away, demands the second—so you do. And then you go inserting things into the religion you can tolerate. Creating your own scripture to add to the very book that which nothing can be added. You cannot stop you, from being you, any more than you can insist your blood to stop flowing by hoping.

The demand of God to love Him above all else is to assume you can command the true feelings of your heart. “The moment that you subscribe to the idea that your inner feelings can be commanded, you have opened the door to hypocrisy“—Alan Watts

If you tell someone you love them, but know in your heart that you do not love them—your a liar. And the more you insist on that lie, the more you feel it’s your duty to usurp your true feelings, merely gesturing (pretending) to love that other person, the more you get into trouble. Because in love, if anywhere, the truth will win out. You will not be able to sustain the pretense. You will not have the energy to mock the real feeling of love. You all may say that you love the lord, but the actions of the churches (composed of its members) say you tired of that years ago—about 2000 of them

Real honesty is the authentic basis of morality. Real honesty is not pretending that your feelings are other than they are, so you keep your deal inward because the desire to conform is greater than our respect for objective facts. At the foundation of Christianity we’ve been commanded to love someone we readily admit we can’t comprehend and, other than a couple of neat sermons has shown to be difficult at best to love within our human ability. That would wear anybody down to the nubs.

And by the way, who wants someone to pretend to love them, when they don’t? Certainly not the Lord nor the man or woman. You may want to love god but you really don’t.

Conformity implicitly makes history. The world has seen enough of this type of pretense and would benefit itself to write some different chapters.