Inspired by encounters with an angry Catholic and a member of the Westboro Baptist Church. People whose conception of the divine consists of God being really angry with everybody.
Ironically as well as believing that I am going to hell, each of this pair believe the other is going to hell, in effect for picking the wrong side. Which makes me the only one with an optimistic religion, as I believe in divine compassion on all that God has made. This does not make me a universalist - I believe, with CS Lewis, that we can choose to go to Hell because we'd rather not be in the other place. Because something else is more important to us.
In the case of both the encounters I mention earlier, it is fair to say that the thing they reckon is more important than anything else is sodomy. I reckon extreme Catholics and Westboro Baptists think about sodomy more than than the people of Sodom. Sodomy - or thinking about it, at any rate - is a fair chunk of their lives. But I reckon if you're picketing the funerals of dead soldiers, and yet your major concern in life is which socket a plug should go in, you've probably got your priorities wrong.
See I'm prepared to believe God gets really angry about things. Famine, pollution, greed, thoughtlessness, hatred, rivalry, the idea that people with Downs Syndrome are less worthy of life than others. I just think what consenting people do with their bodies ain't one of them.
So anyway. Here's my Children's Songs for an Angry God. By the way, if you're only here for the Children's songs, best not read the passage above. Bit racy.
Our God is an angry God
Our God is an angry God
Our God is an angry God
And he's really rather angry.
If I were a butterfly
I'd deserve to be caught and mauled by a cat
And if I were a wiggly worm
God would hate me just for that.
This little light of mine
Won't get me into heaven
This little light of mine
Won't get me into heaven.
Burn Baby Burn (Disco Inferno) [Is this right? AE]
Angry Father, let me be
Scared of hell and fire
Help me not to upset thee
Or to raise your ire.
Alas, this post is not as far-fetched as one might suppose.
ReplyDeleteI recall with some horror a popular children's chorus...
"Be careful, little hands, what you do
Be careful, little hand, what you do
There's a Father up above, and he's looking down with love
so be careful, little hands, what you do."
(Repeat with "little eyes, ears", etc.)
Somehow the assertion that he was looking down "with love" rang rather hollow... Very creepy.
I've always thought of that as the dog poo song: Be careful little feet where you walk...
DeleteAnd what about all those Hitchcock birds that God sends to terrorise the little kiddies:
ReplyDeleteThere are hundreds of sparrows,
Thousands, millions...
My mum (1919 - 2000) was brought up in a very Victorian household, and in a hellfire and brimstone non-conformist spiritual tradition.
ReplyDeleteAn embroidery sampler, made by her mother, hung over the mantelpiece - "Thou o God seest me". This was meant, I believe, to be comforting, but it frightened the life out of her.......
There is a green hill far away
ReplyDeleteWithout a city wall,
But we will build one anyway
Because God hates you all.
Jesus wants me for a sunbeam,
ReplyDeleteBecause he appreciates classic British cars from Wolverhampton?
What a friend we had in Jesus
ReplyDeleteTill he told us to like gays.
Now we say we love the Bible,
But don't follow what it says.
Colours of day dawn into the mind,
ReplyDeleteThe sun has come up, but just for our kind.
Though we like the straight, our translation's quite neat
And let's give the Message to the people we meet.
He's got the men and the women in His hands,
ReplyDeleteHe's got the men and the women in His hands,
He's got the men and the women in His hands, But probably not the trans(-gendered).