ExFundie

As discussed in the previous essay, fundamentalists believe they know The Truth about the universe and human beings, and morality is a very large component of The Truth. The first implications of this belief were that: a) tolerance of “other truths” is illogical, since they are all false; b) the “moral fix” to problems will always take precedence over the “physical fix;” and c) deniers of The Truth are at best mistaken or deluded, but are more likely outright “sinful.”

But with this framework established, now we need to get into some specifics of The Truth as fundamentalists believe it. (Remember that I am using the capitalized phrase “The Truth” to show how fundamentalists view it; I am not endorsing their belief, but explaining it from their viewpoint.)

The first really big “specific,” of course, is God. He’s the one who they believe has told them The Truth in the first place. In fact, they’d never have figured out The Truth on their own, so he pretty much had to reveal it (and the reasons for this will be discussed later). But who is he, anyway?

Most of us are familiar with the basic ideas about God. According to fundamentalists, He (again the correct pronoun, from their viewpoint) is literally the creator of the universe, and is therefore the ultimate power, and the ultimate Authority over it in every respect (physical and moral).

He is also the creator of Man; in fact he created Man “in his image,” as the Genesis story claims. (“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” Genesis 1:26, 27) Most Christian fundamentalists do not take this to be a literal physical image, although Mormons do. Mormons also take quite literally the “male and female” reference to the image of God, which leads to many interesting theological ideas. We should note, though, that most Christian fundamentalists regard Mormons as heretics, and their religious establishment as a cult. What they all agree on, though, is that the “image of God” concept does apply at least to Man’s mind and soul, his inner components.

(I am less familiar with Islam, but what I have studied so far suggests that this view is part of Islam as well to some degree; they do, however, strongly emphasize the idea that God is so far above Man as to be almost unknowable unless He reveals the information; even then, all his self-description is metaphor, and cannot express in any way what God is “really” like. I believe, since Jewish fundamentalists share the book of Genesis with Christian fundamentalists, that they may have a similar understanding of the “image of God” in man. However, their rabbinic commentaries over the centuries may have elaborated and explained this concept in ways that diverge from the Christian concept. Since I haven’t studied Judaism very deeply, I can’t say for certain how they do interpret the “image of God.” I am not aware of a corresponding concept in Sikh fundamentalism, but this, too, would need further study to know for sure. Hinduism teaches a very different concept of the nature of both gods and humans.)

One implication of the “image of God” concept for Christian fundamentalists is that if the mind and spirit of Man is somehow analogous to the mind and spirit of God (albeit finite, whereas God is infinite), then God’s creations and acts are understandable by the mind of Man, even if he can’t press his understanding into the totality of everything. We will examine this idea in more detail later.

Another implication of the “image of God” concept is that communication is possible between God and Man. This, too, becomes very important later when we discuss whether Man can find out The Truth on his own, and why or why not.

More details about God: he is infinite; he is the three big “omni’s” – omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. In other words, he is all-powerful and all-knowing, and he is simultaneously everywhere at once. And being infinite, there is no end to him – whatever that really means. It does not have a spatial connotation, because God is believed to be outside both space and time – again, whatever that might mean.

Once you encounter these ideas about God, you can potentially find yourself enveloped in a lot of theological dispute, which becomes very confusing. Here is just a sample issue, probably familiar to everyone: if God is “omnipotent,” that is, all-powerful – can he create a rock that is too heavy for him to lift? If he can’t lift the rock, he is not all-powerful, is he? But if he can’t create such a rock, then there is something he can’t do – which means that, again, he is not all-powerful.

I don’t introduce this example so we can start a big philosophical debate about the question. It just shows that even among fundamentalists, there is some dispute about the meaning of particular concepts when they talk about God. There are similar debates, occurring in seminaries and Bible colleges everywhere, about every one of the other concepts as well. But the differences in their explanations are really a matter of degree only. When they use those terms in talking to the world outside their faith community, when insisting that God exists and we must do something about it, they pretty much agree on what they’re trying to tell us about God.

All we really need to glean from these descriptions is that the fundamentalists want us to believe that God is really, really big and powerful. They essentially want to convince us that: 1) God is THE Authority in the universe, in every conceivable way, period; and 2) what God says, goes. Period. He can’t be contradicted, he can’t be resisted, he can’t be denied. He is always right. The highest Court, and the last word on absolutely everything. And he is always going to win.

On this, every Christian fundamentalist is in complete agreement. You will find a similar confidence in their Allah, for Islamic fundamentalists, for similar reasons.

(This, incidentally, puts another lock on The Truth, because if the all-knowing, all-powerful, final Court of Appeal has spoken The Truth – there is no other. There is no room whatsoever for “alternate truths,” and no tolerance for them.)

Another description of God which must be included here, which is found only in fundamentalist Christianity, is that God is a Trinity. This is the oddest metaphysical concept of all, about God, and is very difficult to explain. [Indeed. Christian sects and church Councils have literally been fighting each other and excommunicating each other, for centuries, trying to explain it and force other sects to accept their explanation instead of someone else’s.] The idea is that God is one God (qualifying Christianity as a monotheistic religion), yet God exists in three distinct persons: the Father, the Son (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit. Each member of the Trinity performs more-or-less separate functions, yet at the same time it is the unified, three-in-one Being who is acting each time.

One might wonder why the Trinity is considered important. If you study the actual functions of the three persons in the Trinity, it is hard to understand why these functions couldn’t just be performed by three separate deities, who are all “united in purpose.” Functionally speaking, the mechanics of creation and redemption would work no differently and the scheme of salvation would lose nothing essential, if all the work of salvation were done by three equally divine and holy Beings. So the Christian fundamentalists’ frantic, almost fanatic insistence on the doctrine of the Trinity is mystifying.

But cling to this doctrine they do, with everything they’ve got. In fact, despite the fact that the Trinity doctrine doesn’t even seem (to an outsider) remotely necessary to the logic of the rest of their world view, it is one of the yardsticks they themselves use to decide who is “a real Christian” and who is not, what is a “false religion” and what is not. A religion which talks about the Father, the Son, and the Spirit being three separate but infinitely cooperative beings (like Mormonism)? Right out. A religion which views God as one Being, and only one (like Unitarianism and especially Islam)? False religion or cult. Judaism gets a bit of a pass (but only a bit), because supposedly the early Hebrews gained understanding of God very gradually over their history, until all the promises of their religion were “fulfilled” in Christianity. So according to Christian fundamentalists, Jews “really” worship the same, tri-partite God that Christians do – they just haven’t realized it yet.

Meanwhile, non-Christian religions also use the Trinity to determine which faith is true and which is false. Much of the impetus for the formation of Islam was Mohammed’s repugnance for the doctrine of the Trinity as he perceived it being taught by the Christian church of his time. Hence, Islam’s insistence on the One-ness of God – he is so very One, in fact, that even describing his attributes constitutes a “dividing” of God, and is therefore done very cautiously, with the proviso that these descriptions are not “really” God, but only inadequate metaphors. Judaism, too, is fairly repulsed by Christians trying to claim that the Jewish god was “really” a multiple of some sort, and they certainly reject the concept of the “Son” of God, Jesus, being the Jewish Messiah.

Hindu fundamentalists, meanwhile, might be tempted to say sceptically, “What, only three??” Though really, even in polytheistic Hinduism, much of the fundamentalist fervor comes from devotion to one god (say, Vishnu) over all other Hindu gods. Indeed, the claim is frequently made that other gods are “really” included within the one god that a Hindu fundamentalist worships. So while they do not have trouble visualizing one god functioning in several different personalities, even they can fall into the trap of coalescing all gods into one and penalizing those who try to keep the gods separate – or coalesce all gods into a different god than they do.

Why bother going into this detailed discussion about the Trinity, when functionally it makes little difference in what a Christian fundamentalist thinks about the world, and how the person acts? It is necessary because the fundamentalists themselves vehemently insist on this doctrine, indeed consider it almost the most important doctrine in their entire belief system. The best we can do is acknowledge this and be prepared for their vehemence about it, even when we don’t see what difference it makes in practical terms.

Moving on. The above descriptions deal mainly with metaphysical aspects of God, but there are also some major personal qualities we should mention. Three of them are especially important: God is good; God is love; God is just.

Fundamentalists talk about the first two a lot, but the third quality is in fact the one they are most driven by. The idea of God’s justice – everything being where it should be and doing what it should do, or else suffering the consequences – is the principle that determines how his goodness operates, and how he shows his love. Neither his goodness nor his love are allowed to operate outside the rigid framework of his justice. All the rules and regulations have to be fulfilled, and if God wants to show mercy sometimes, even he has to go through some horrifying contortions so he can do so, without somehow violating the strict mathematical equations of justice.

In fact, God’s “goodness” and “love” are almost interchangeable with his “justice,” they are so subsumed in it. This is why fundamentalists are so keen on the idea of “tough love” – because they are convinced that as long as you are fulfilling the stern demands of justice, everything is going to come out alright in the end for the person upon whom you are exercising this “tough love,” so this is obviously the best, most loving thing you can do for them. If your concept of “goodness” prompts you to go soft, and let someone get away with something, this is not in fact a good thing at all, because justice is eventually going to get them for it. So the most loving, good thing you can do for someone is frequently the most harsh and rigid thing, so the demands of justice can be met.

There is an odd leakage of this idea of justice/goodness/love into the physical world. Because he is essentially justice and goodness personified, there is a sort of moral underpinning even to the physical world God created. Morality permeates everything. Nothing can really be neutral. In Genesis, where God creates the world and declares it “good,” fundamentalists understand this not merely to mean “Hey, look at this cool thing I made.” The word “good” carries the idea that everything functioned perfectly and was in its place. Nothing jutted out, and nothing went in a way that God didn’t want. The fact that things can nowadays go very wrong in nature has very little to do with the laws of physics, and virtually everything to do with the morality or immorality of Man, or at least, his not having a proper relationship to God. (This usually does not, however, include environmentalism as a moral concern. It is all about whether a person is a Christian or not, not whether they treat the environment “morally.”)

In the same way, this rigid justice operates in the world of choice, in the moral world. The concept that is foremost in every fundamentalist’s mind is that nobody gets away with ANYTHING, ever. Every sin, every crime, every foible, every mistake, every atrocity – it all has to be paid for. This requirement is above any other consideration whatsoever.

Which really puts Man in a very bad situation. We will look at the fundamentalist story of Man – how he began, what went wrong, how he got to where he is now, and what can be done about it – in the next section.

Next: So, What's Wrong with People?

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