DEADLY DOCTRINE: HEALTH, ILLNESS, AND CHRISTIAN GOD-TALK

This book is a masterpiece from cover to cover.  Its critique of Christian dogma and its psychological ramifications is one of the most devastating I have ever read.

The Bible is many things.  It is a work of literature.  It is a book of history (much of which is apocryphal and even downright erroneous).  But first and foremost, Deadly Doctrine shows it to be a book of psychological manipulation.  That it continues to wreak the devastation that it does is a testimony to the Church’s success in promoting ignorance and hatred, all in the name of love, morality and eternal truth.

Author Wendell Watters discusses the Christian attitude toward sex, its emphasis on suffering as a moral ideal, and a number of other areas which collectively illustrate the noxious influence the Bible has had on all of us, believers and non-believers alike.

Most religious persons still cling stubbornly to the notion that religion is essential for morality.  Watters shows the pitfalls of such thinking: when one is enmeshed in a rigid, inflexible way of thinking, a moral code based on rules, the possibility of true moral growth, emotional maturation, and self-actualization becomes remote indeed.

Watters explores the writings of the Bible and its early apologists in order to better understand and explain the foundation for all the human misery that  has resulted from it.  It is true that the church no longer uses the stake, the sword, or the rack to enforce its will.  But, as the author explains: “Christianity has discovered more psychological forms of torture and has mastered the use of the mass media for this purpose, with the permission and blessing of the state.”

The medieval theologian Thomas a Kempis is quoted here as an example of the backward morality and intellectual stagnation that characterized the Christian Dark Ages, and which still dominates the thinking of many religious fundamentalists to this day.  Kempis’ book, The Imitation of Christ, has been described as the best-selling and most read book after the Bible.  Watters notes that Kempis urged the devout to hate themselves and avoid any kind of “pride.”  God’s demands of humans, as seen through Kempis’ eyes and as depicted in his writings, are even more extreme and demanding than the Biblical missives.  Kempis, using god as a speaker, says, “ask not that which is delightful and profitable to thee, but that which is acceptable to me and tends to promote my honor.”  And what could be more inimical to a healthy self-esteem than this passage: “Be fiercely angry against thyself and suffer no pride to dwell in thee, but show thyself so humble, so very small, that all may be able to walk over thee, and to tread thee down as the mire of the streets.”

These absurdly evil musings are by no means confined to the ramblings of a hate-filled medieval monk:  they remain part and parcel of many fundamentalist Christian denominations today.  Anyone who reads such words and still denies Christian animosity toward self-esteem is simply denying reality.

The church, of course, justifies this emotional self-flagellation by promising eternal life to their sheeplike followers.  More than any other single fact, this shows the repugnant nature of institutionalized Christianity.  The church has been unbelievably successful over the millenniums by feeding off one of the most basic of human fears: the fear of death.  Moreover, by doing so, they are instilling an element of greed in their flock, for what could be more greedy than to be willing to do anything in order to live beyond one’s allotment of years?

The notion of dualism, of each individual possessing a material body and immaterial soul, serves to prevent the believer from ever achieving any feeling of “oneness,” or unity, without which there can be neither self-esteem or any understand of self.  Consequently the believer, buying into this false dichotomy, becomes a pitiful pawn on the chessboard of the church, to be manipulated accordingly.

Watters’ book is essential reading for all non-believers interested in understanding what makes believers tick.  As the author states: “It is ironic that while health care costs mount, the institution that glorifies suffering for its own sake continues to enjoy the tax-free blessing of the state.”