By: Dani Langevin – October, 2015
I think everyone would agree that the world can be an ugly place. Not a day goes by that the media doesn’t inundate us with stories of horrific acts of violence. The worst part of it is, that mankind on mankind commits these acts of violence. Isis is beheading anyone who they see as a threat to their extremist views of Islam. Hungary is turning away thousands of Syrians trying to escape war. Those they don’t turn away are treated like criminals. The media is falsely spinning white cop violence on the black community. Cars are being shot from overpasses and children are showing up dead on beaches.
What is going on? Why do we treat each other so poorly? And where are all the gods? Where is the Christian God? Where is Jesus, Allah, Buddha, and the thousands of Hindu gods? Why are none of them stepping in and saying, “Enough”. The old and new testaments are riddled with stories and parables about God reaching out to His earthly children reminding them how to behave. Why haven’t we heard from Him in over 2,000 years?
In reality, gods were created by the human race to make us feel better about our miserable lives. In the beginning they were created to explain nature. There were many gods: a god to make the sun rise, another to make it set, bring rain, wind, and so on. There were gods that brought sickness and others who brought health. Before real scientific theory, study, and discovery, gods were used to explain away every natural phenomenon. They were man-made.
Then Jesus came and claimed he was the Son of God. He risked his life in the Roman Empire by running his mouth and saying that, “Yes, the Roman Kingdom is great and the Roman Emperor is powerful, but there is a greater kingdom, the kingdom of heaven and your emperor is not a god, (a belief held by Romans for thousands of years). There is only one God and that is the Lord your God who resides in heaven and he sees all of mankind as equal. He loves you and if you accept him into your heart, you will be saved immediately.” Who wouldn’t want to be saved right away in a kingdom that enslaved just about everyone? And in a symbol of complete self-sacrifice and martyrdom, Jesus was crucified and those who call themselves Christians believe he rose from the dead, proving his God-like status and ascended into heaven. Where has he been since then?
Over the years we have seen many people claim that they have some sort of knowledge of unworldly and God-like forces: Jim Jones of Jonestown, David Koresh of the Branch Davidians, and Marshal Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles of Heaven’s Gate to name a few. They had a number of people believing that they were a part of something greater than themselves as a singular human being.
I get that. I get wanting to be a part of something bigger than my singular self, but I don’t believe in gods or one god. Their existence is simply in the minds of men and men make God or gods too small and too human. I do believe in something greater than a singular person. I believe in mankind. We, collectively are greater than any god we he have created to explain our existence. Think about that. We spend so much time wasting our energies to fight one another, beating our chests, and screaming our rebel yells. Imagine what we could accomplish as a human race if we pooled the energy, strength, knowledge and love of over three hundred million people. We would be more invincible and more heavenly than any god we have tried to envision or create in our own minds. We need to worship our abilities as a human race to rise above our earthly burdens. I believe in mankind. Leave the gods to the heavens.