June 1, 2025 Dr. Roger Ray
My weekday routine is to have a cup of coffee, catch up with the news while I dress to play racquetball and then I head over to my old health club where there are about a half a dozen men who are old enough to remember what racquetball is. We range in age between 50 and 83 and I am not proud so say that my win loss ratio with the 83 year old ex-marine is about 1 to 5. He is amazing. . . and I kinda hate him.
But I recently had to call for the club’s security guard to help me with a guy who had become absurdly difficult. The guy in question, when he learned that I am a minister, began to try to talk church business with me and when he learned that I am not a traditional Christian, that I don’t believe in heaven or hell, souls, demons, angels, supernatural theism, nor the Loch Ness Monster, the Tooth Fairy, or, regardless of my appearance, I don’t even believe in Santa Claus, he became enraged.
And day after day, he would try to debate me using Biblical quotes and eventually by shouting at me, with a really creepy smile on his face, telling me that I am going to hell. When the other guys tried to get him to leave me alone, he shouted even louder that I was teaching a false gospel and leading people astray. I repeatedly told him that I didn’t want to discuss religion with him, but nothing could seem to stop him.
When I refused to play with him anymore, he started putting scripture quotes in my gym bag. After several complaints about his harassment, the club finally told them that they would ban him from the club if he bothered me again.
I have lived in Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, and now Florida, so I have had a lot of exposure to right wing evangelicals and even though I am used to hate mail and even called in and emailed threats from these guys, I have never encountered anyone who was so singularly obsessed with trying to make me afraid of going to his imaginary hell.
Sadly, this annoying character is neither unique nor rare. He is a man trapped in a prison made entirely out of religious beliefs that have been drilled into him, probably since early childhood. It is a prison composed of absolutes. As I mentioned in my last message, there are religions that have taught people that God will send you to hell if you get a divorce, or if you are gay. Others adamantly insist that you will go to hell unless you are a part of their specific group, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Church of Christ, the Mormons, or, in many instances, the Catholic Church.
My in-laws, decades ago, went to a non-instrumental Church of Christ and they believed that you not only had to be a Christian with all of the dogmatic teachings that usually involves, but you also had to be baptized by immersion, and, if you went to a church that used instrumental music in their services, an organ, a piano, or, God forbid, a guitar or drums, that you would also go to hell for that. How could anyone worship such a petty God?
I was a young philosophy major in college when I gave up on believing in hell. It was simply too absurd to think that any deity could be so cruel and inexcusably mean. But for a whole lot of people, hell poses the threat by which they were taught how to behave. And you mind adapts to the environment in which you are raised. Thankfully, most of us think our way out of that mental prison by many never do. They are not taught not to steal, or lie, or use drugs, or get drunk, or pay for sex because such things are bad for you and reflect a lack of character, they were taught that their morality was rooted in a fear of punishment, eternal punishment, fire and brimstone, agony without end.
And when such a person encounters someone who just refuses to be trapped in that exchange of piety to avoid eternal fire, they are terrified that they might be infected by the “false gospel” that finds such fear to be laughable.
And when you have been taught to stay out of the saloons and brothels lest you be thrown into hell, and you start to think that maybe all of that hell stuff is just made up to control you, then what is there to keep you out of the saloons and brothels? I suspect, for people like my racquetball playing acquaintance, not much at all. It may be that fear is the only thing, in his old age, that has constrained him for decades.
Now, this is an extreme case, but for the whole of the church, temple, mosque, and cathedral going public, they are still taught that they world is defined by certain moral absolutes that have come down to them from on high. This is part of what fascinates me about the public attention given to the election of a new Catholic pope, replete with all of the hand wringing about whether he approves of gay marriage or not, will he consider ordaining women, and might he do something crazy, like suggesting that eating meat on Friday is a mortal sin.
I can barely keep from yelling at my TV during their around the clock coverage of the new pope that no one can decide for the world if being gay is a sin. No one can rationally say that you have to have a penis to preach, consecrate communion, or baptize someone. I have been baptizing, serving communion, and preaching since 1978 and I have never once used my penis in the process. What on earth are people thinking? And what kind of a genitals obsessed deity would make a rule that allowed morons who were male to preach and keep brilliant, educated women out of the pulpit? Honestly, people should be embarrassed for what surely amounts to blasphemy, if such a thing can actually exit.
My favorite quote from the late Pope Francis was when, in reference to gay relationships, he said, “Who am I to judge?” Yes, Amen! Not the pope, not an imam, not a rabbi or a priest gets to dictate moral absolutes. But the difficult thing for many people who have spent their lives trapped in the mental prison built by religious teachings is, when you step out of that cage, you have no one to give you moral boundaries.
You have laws. There is the police, there are courts, which are hopefully crafted to protect the well being of society, but on a personal level, the horrifying reality is that you have to decide for yourself. And, like it or not, morality is an ever moving target.
I trust that we can all agree that pedophilia is wrong. Even if they agree to a proposal, no 9-year-old should be allowed to get married. Still, we know that the Prophet Muhammad, in his late 50s, married his third wife, Aisha, when she was 6 years old. Many of his friends told him that it was a bad idea, but it was still done in the 7th century. Muhammad defended the marriage saying that he did not consummate the marriage until Aisha was 9 but that doesn’t really help much, even though this was more than 1300 years and 8000 miles from us. Many modern Muslims have spun like tops trying to deny the historical fact that Muhammad married a child, but it was accepted for centuries until modern defenders of the faith have tried to silence this historical fact.
But you might find it even more disturbing to learn that less than 200 years ago, the famous American writer and poet, Edgar Allan Poe, at the age of 27 married Virginia Clem who was 13 years old. . . which is made a bit more of a bitter pill to swallow since Virginia was his first cousin. 1836, just not that long ago and not far away at all. It was not uncommon to marry a cousin in the 19th century, but still, was it wrong?
My 18th century paternal family ran a slave plantation in Kentucky on which they built, for the community, a non-instrumental Church of Christ where it was morally fine to own dozens of slaves but if you played a piano during your Sunday services you would go to hell. Religion can be very funny that way.
In the mid 1990’s I actually got involved in Missouri’s state legislature to amend the state’s crime bill. I was teaching religion at Drury University and learned that one of my students, a 19-year-old woman, was working at a local strip club, and she and her boyfriend were fighting because he, at age 19 was not old enough to go into the club to offer some protection from exploitation. The irony was too much for me. I had recently officiated at the wedding of my state legislator and so I used my contact with him to get an appointment in his office to insist that if a 20 year old man is not old enough to go into a strip club, an 18 year old girl shouldn’t be allowed to give naked lap dances there. It was a small victory and a short lived one as my student assured me that all of her fellow dancers obtained fake IDs and went back to work; but I tried to protect them, even if they didn’t want to be protected.
But I hope that you get my point, neither religion nor the law and certainly not a majority public opinion can dictate moral absolutes. I don’t believe that God had had anything to do with the writing of the Bible, the Talmud, the Quran, or the Upanishads. I don’t believe that God rewards piety or punishes sins. But I still don’t use drugs, or get drunk in saloons, or pay for sex. Not because of God, a church, a priest, or even the law, I choose to live by a different moral code because I don’t want to be the kind of person who exploits the vulnerable or puts society at risk, driving under the influence.
My religion does not demand that I be a good person, I’m religious because I choose to strive to be a good person. God doesn’t create a moral society through religious laws and a threat of judgement; people who want to be good people create religions that might offer guidance, even with a host of mistakes along the way.
There are no hard and fast rules. We have to be willing to enter into dialogue with the moral universe every day. I have been to Honduras often enough that I know that children are used in agriculture there. So, when I see fruit and melons from Honduras in my neighborhood grocery, I refuse to buy it. However, I have an Apple iPhone, Apple Watch, and iPad in my hands several hours a day and this sermon was written on an Apple MacBook and I’m pretty sure that child labor and sweat shop conditions were a part of all four of those products coming into my possession and the mere fact that I like them, or are addicted to them, and owning them is legal and everyone else does it . . . . which is pretty much how Muhammad and Edgar Allan Poe justified their marriage choices and how my ancestors justified the uncompensated internship program for African immigrants on their plantation, we all know that ethics is not determined by law, the marketplace, or public opinion.
I might be inclined to try to convince Tim Cook that Apple’s labor practices are wretched, but I’m not willing to give up my Apple products, at least not yet. And I know that at least some of you are still stuck back five minutes ago when I told you that I tried to set an age limit on when a young woman could be exploited by the sex industry, thinking that if they wanted to work there that it was none of my business. And if you think that, well, you suck but this is a one way form of communication and there isn’t much that either of us can do about that.
I’m saying that if you lack clarity about morality, you do not have a deficiency of religion. You have a deficiency of conscience. And conscience, sadly, is not innate. Having a conscience is a matter of choice and that is a choice which many people simply fail to make. While I have my own failings and hypocrisies, to the extent to which I am a good person, I am a good person only because I was radicalized by basic human decency.
I will have more to say on this topic in my July 6th message at the Unitarian Church in Vero Beach which will be posted here on July 13th.
