Stop Using Jesus to Justify Inequality

The PBS news magazine Religion & Ethics Newsweekly recently ran a segment about same-sex marriage that featured a protester holding a sign that read: Stop Using Jesus to Justify Inequality. That sign got me thinking.

I’ve never understand how religious folks can use the phrase “God the creator” with great reverence then show such disdain for those parts of God’s creation that they don’t particularly like.

I’ve so often heard Catholic homilies or Protestant sermons that preach the infallibility of God – yet many of those same preachers (certainly not all, thank goodness) speak of issues such as gay marriage as if god had made a terrible mistake by creating gay people.

It doesn’t make a bit of sense to me.

Let me be frank. I don’t know if I believe in a god or not. I certainly have my doubts about the Christian version of god. There are so many inconsistencies and examples of bad behavior in the Bible that I think I prefer my own sense of morality to that found in the Bible.

Regardless, I know that we are all created. Nobody asks a cow to act like a cat. Nobody expects a tree to flow like a river. These things simply are what they are. We, as humans, assign a value to each creation. I doubt that nature creates with any sense of value. I’m no scientist, but I would suspect that nature strives for balance – and that which is created is intended to help create balance.

Is it so difficult to believe that people are created different from one another? That variation in human beings is natural – as it is in other species – and not some defect?

Believe me, I know what a difficult issue this is. The part of me that still longs to believe in God, doesn’t believe that God intended our world to be filled with such hatred – but it is. And religion only seems to further poison the waters.

I wish I understood how to help change that.