Mark Twain is famous for the quote: “To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.”
(From his book “Following the Equator”)

Ah, but Mr. Twain, being good brings soooo much trouble, because truly being good, and showing others HOW to be good, requires exposing the opposite of good practiced by so many misled ‘sheep’ all around us who are still mindlessly conforming to the lies of organized religion that only create division in the name of God.

I think Twain may have realized this as well, because interestingly, he also would write in another book that if one is good, one will be LONESOME.

First, it IS ENOUGH to be good…

But Christianity says otherwise because of Christianity’s sick, hallmark obsession with condemnation in the name of God toward ALL those who don’t adopt their beliefs in same…”We are the ONLY true church” (Catholics recite this mantra generally in the benediction of their services led by the priest…”We are the one true church”)

That, my friends, and I do not apologize for saying this truth, THAT condemnation in the name of God by the Christian church is the epitome of what we could characterize as the root of evil…the OPPOSITE of ‘good’. And it recently came to my knowledge that one of the most respected authors in history, Mark Twain himself, understood this hypocrisy of the church as well.

Unbeknownst to me until recently, Twain had come to the same awareness, and was expressing a lot of the same things I have been writing about on this topic over the last several years. (This is encouraging as it shows many are waking up to these institutionalized lies)

The core belief that all others are condemned who do not believe what Christianity and/or Islam teaches (The Koran embraces the same endemic condemnation as Christianity does) is nothing but an unholy, religious form of bigotry that is harmful beyond description, and has been one of the major causes for most of the wars and genocide in mankind’s history, Christianity and Islam being two of the “Big Three” which also includes Judaism, all having prominently engaged in the same bigoted, tribalistic, man-made evil behavior over the centuries, ostensibly in the name of “God”.

Some of you reading this may be shocked because you consider yourself a “Christian” but you don’t hold such condemning beliefs. Well, sorry but in that case you have no clue what the Bible – The Old and New Testament – actually says. You call yourself a Christian, but have just carefully cherry-picked select passages that ostensibly talk about “love” and being “good”, without reading the overwhelming context and the rest of the entire story.

That is a problem…It is a problem because it is clearly NOT BEING HONEST to support an institution whose fundamental teachings include the following below (which as I mentioned above, I was recently encouraged to find that our American treasure Mark Twain himself also strongly wrote about some of the same observations):

1. God is a “male” and created Eve to serve and be a ‘help mate’ to his primary and preferred male creation, “Adam”.

2. God is omnipotent, All “Good” and “Holy”, but despite such all powerfulness, the “Devil” was still able to get into this perfect Garden of Eden creation of “his” and tempt Eve to eat of the “forbidden fruit” of the Tree of “Knowledge Good and Evil”(Adam and Eve could not depend on the protection of God from this, and subsequently, after being tempted by a powerful, supposedly fallen ‘archangel’ of extensive powers, they couldn’t depend on a loving, forgiving Father? Instead they were condemned?

Would you condemn your little, innocent children if you told them…”Do you see that candy jar full of colorful candy? Do not eat any of that!”…and then the inevitable result happened, they ate some of it out of desperate curiosity THAT YOU BOTH CAUSED AND CREATED for them in the first place? That would be a horrible, abusive “sin” on YOUR part toward them, not the children’s part toward you the parent.

3. The Devil was a “talking snake”, one might assume to likely be the inspiration for Jim Henson’s “The Muppets”?

You can’t walk around society expecting others not to see you as mentally handicapped when you actually believe in “The Devil”, and more specifically actually believe in said ‘Devil’ being a “talking snake” in the Garden of Eden. If you believe that, you are pretending in your daily life to be a normal person, but in fact you have some kind of mental illness…(I have said in the past that organized religion often causes such psychological harm that it can be said to create a ‘learned mental illness’ as opposed to a biological one.)

4. Eve was branded as the weaker sex, and more specifically branded as a corrupt “temptress”, tempting Adam to join her in eating the forbidden fruit. The story paints Adam as being ‘noble’ because he didn’t want his wife to suffer punishment alone, so he ate the fruit she tempted him with.

5. This initial description of the female sex as being a weak servant of man and a corrupting temptress influence runs rampant throughout the entire Bible, with women constantly demeaned and made to be second class citizens in the eyes of God, when in fact this is nothing but a man-made construct, masquerading as “Gods Word”.

Even Paul wrote in the book of Romans I think it was, that women were forbidden to not only be a “Bishop” (meaning a pastor or priest) but forbidden to even ‘speak’ in the church, or hold any position of authority over men. This is all coming from this fundamental sick man made teaching all throughout the Old and New Testament beginning with God creating Eve as an ‘afterthought’ from Adam’s rib, to serve him, and that women were the original cause of sin, in being the weaker sex and the ‘temptress’ of Adam in the Garden.

6. That God has a strong ‘blood lust’ that can only be satisfied by animal sacrifice, all entirely because of man’s so-called ‘sinful nature’. Think about this…If you really think about this, it is impossible to go on believing there is anything ‘holy’ about such a fundamental trait of “God”…”He” is an omnipotent, perfect and all powerful God, and yet needs a blood lust to be satisfied because his own creation, desperately searching and trying to figure things out in this physical dimension, made a mistake, or makes mistakes.

Later, with the advent of the New Testament, it gets even SICKER with the depiction of this man-made “God” needing a HUMAN sacrifice…A human blood lust…Animal sacrifices were no longer enough! Hence, there had to be a human being born into humanity…and that human had to be born of a ‘virgin’, for the purpose of shedding so-called ‘perfect’ human blood to satisfy this age-old blood lust of God.

Also recall how it is one of the FIRST Bible stories that CHILDREN get taught in Sunday School, that being Abraham hearing “God” telling him to ‘sacrifice’ his son to God to satisfy this well known blood lust – So a very dutiful Abraham takes little Isaac for what he thinks is just a happy walk with his father, the one person any child would trust as being their protector from all harm.

But when they reach the top of a nearby mountain, Abraham grabs his little son, binds him with chord on a stone ‘altar’ and is about to drive a huge knife into his chest, when an angry angel shows up at the last second and stops him from doing so…And you dutifully accept this as “God’s Word”, without recognizing how sick it is?

This is of course described by Jews and Christians as just being a ‘test’ by God to see if Abraham would ‘obey’ him…So a loving omnipotent, all wise God needs “his” ego to be stroked and worshiped? To the extent that “he” needs to “test” Abraham in such a way that would so traumatize little Isaac? Were the Jews really having this much trouble with their kids, trying to get them to do their chores and clean their corner of the cave?

Dad: “Caleb, I told you to go and feed the camels”

Caleb: “I will later Dad, I’m playing ‘World of Jewish Warcraft’ right now’.

Dad: “What was that God? What did you say you wanted me to do to Caleb?”

Caleb: “OK, OK, I’m going now, please please don’t kill me Dad!”

Jews and Christians not only dutifully accept such a sick story, but they routinely teach it to their little children. Yet it just gets even sicker, because Christians love to embrace the same story as a prophetic, symbolic event of the “beauty” of the eventual ‘human sacrificing’ of God’s son on the cross, again something that God demanded to satisfy “his” blood lust because man was so horrible! (Yes, I keep putting quotes around the male pronoun depiction of God, to highlight the absurd, patriarchal man-made lie that God is first and foremost ‘male’, when if God created male and female in its image, God would obviously by definition be “BOTH” genders.)

The Bible’s sick, constant hypocrisy is so incredibly obvious, but fear-based conformity of the masses has been the enemy of truth for too long. That is changing now more than ever, with a growing mass of spiritually awakened people refusing to continue feeding that harmful conformity, exposing this UNHOLY CANCER of belief (organized religion) with a spotlight of what real ‘goodness’, real ‘spirituality’ and real ‘holiness’ means.

7. Speaking of this fundamental ‘blood lust’ of God all throughout the Bible that demanded such blood sacrifices which we tend to think are only found in ‘satanic cults’ (Think again!)…Let’s not forget the incredibly sick story of the Jewish Passover, to this day one of the most cherished ‘holy days’ of the year for Jews to ‘celebrate’… Jews love to focus only on this story being about their ‘deliverance’ from slavery by the Egyptians, all while ignoring their depiction of God as again requiring and needing a mass animal ‘blood sacrifice’ in “his” honor, which blood must be smeared on the door posts of all the Jews to show such honor and worship, and all whose door posts did not have the sacrificed animals’ blood had their FIRSTBORN CHILDREN killed by “God’s angel of death”.

The Jews crafted this sick, tribalistic image of God…First and foremost they state over and over in the Jewish Torah that their race – their ethnicity – was “CHOSEN” to be God’s people over all others.

Their is no more dangerous thought process toward the diversity of mankind, nor any greater foundation for racism, elitism and bigotry, than to maintain such a thing. Ironically, the biggest example of this we know to be true is Germany under Hitler leading to World War 2 and the HOLOCAUST, perpetrated upon the Jews by the Germans, under much the same mindset that they were the elite race of human beings.

With the story of the Passover, the Jews crafted an image of God that made the genocide of untold numbers of innocent Egyptian children perfectly ‘justified’ in then name of their God showing off “his” powers. There was, as you will recall, a litany of plagues that God kept wanting to send, EVEN THOUGH the story has the Egyptian Pharaoh AGREEING to let the Jews go MULTIPLE TIMES, but the story says God HARDENED PHARAOH’S HEART…

God intervened AGAINST Pharaoh’s will, and made him change his mind BACK again,after Pharaoh multiple times decided to let the Jews go early on, just so God could keep demonstrating his power and bringing more and more suffering, all in complete VENGEFUL retaliation for “his” CHOSEN race.

And of course, as I mentioned above, the ultimate vengeful act of God being the genocidal killing of untold numbers of babies and children of the Egyptians. This story shows Pharaoh choosing to give in and let them go, but God ‘hardened his heart’ so “he” could get to the last, biggest display of vengeance, the killing of the Egyptian’s children.

When you bring this to the attention of Jews, they often get angry and only want to respond by saying “Yeah, well what about all the Jewish babies that the Egyptians were guilty of killing back then?” As though evil by one group would naturally result in the same vengeful evil acts committed by a ‘holy, loving God’…But in the latter circumstance, it is perfectly ‘holy’ and acceptable because God can do anything “he” wants, and ESPECIALLY when it is in retaliation for “his” Holy Chosen People.

Secondly, any justice of an honorable God toward evil done by the Egyptians would need to be carried out on those who perpetrated such horrible acts, NOT THEIR CHILDREN. That kind of sick violence is the craft of drug cartel kingpins and mafia families…the whole “we’re going to murder your family and your children” if you don’t do our bidding, etc.

This is obviously and entirely a FALSE depiction of who and what “God” is…It is man creating a “God” in man’s bigoted image…It is entirely based on unhealthy ethnic tribalism. It is beyond sick, and it reflects the opposite of what is “GOOD” and what is truly “HOLY”.

IT IS ENOUGH TO BE GOOD…AND BEING GOOD INVOLVES EXPOSING THESE DIVISIVE RELIGIOUS LIES MASQUERADING AS “GOD’S WORD,” NEEDLESSLY DIVIDING MANKIND. It is time we wake up the masses about this in the name of healing and in the name of peace and equality for all on our shared home we call Earth.

8. And of course there are the many stories of the same kind of genocide toward ‘gentiles’ (non Jews/pagans/unbelievers, etc) endorsed and ordered by the God of the “Chosen People” as demonstrated by one of the most well known of these stories in the Old Testament book of Joshua, chapter 6.  Christians and Jews alike love to teach their children in Sunday School not only about Abraham and his being told to ‘sacrifice’ little Isaac, but also about the ‘beautiful story of Joshua and the battle of Jericho’…

Their is no beauty in this story…only an evil act of genocide supposedly ordered by God. God arranges for the walls of the pagans who resided in Jericho to come down, after “his” Chosen People march around the city and blow their trumpets. God is described as telling the Jews that due to these people who dwell in Jericho being ‘pagans and gentiles’, they needed to all be exterminated in the name of God…The scripture says the Jews killed EVERY MAN, WOMAN and CHILD, and left not one alive in the name of God. But it says that God told them they were certainly allowed to take all their gold and silver and keep it for their own.

As author Joseph Campbell also writes on page 22 of his phenomenally sourced and researched book I highly recommend, called THE POWER OF MYTH: “The Ten Commandments say, ‘Thou shalt not kill’.Then the next chapter says ‘Go into Canaan and kill everybody in it’. That is a bounded field. The myths of participation and love pertain ONLY to the in-group, and the out-group is totally other. This is the sense of the word ‘gentile’ – The person is not of the same order.”

OK, are you starting to get the picture? Where is the fundamental “GOOD” in any of these fundamental Judeo/Christian teachings so prominent in children’s Sunday School classes taught to this day in churches and synagogues?

I have only listed but a few examples here…I could go on and on into the New Testament and list so many more, like Jesus’ quote in Matthew 10:34 where he supposedly says “I did not come to bring peace, but I came to bring a SWORD”…and all the many passages that teach condemnation toward all those who don’t accept this depiction of a God who requires a ‘blood lust’ to be satisfied for your ‘sins’.

THE SIN WE CAN SEE FROM ALL THIS IS THE SIN OF THIS SICK GOD BEING DEPICTED, AND THE PATTERN FROM THE BEGINNING OF “HIS” MONSTROUS SINS AGAINST “HIS” CREATION!

Hopefully by now, most of my readers have gleaned the fact that I am making the point that this ‘depiction’ of God is completely FRAUDULENT. Such a God does not exist, and such a tribalistic depiction of a God like this is at the root of what is keeping humanity from realizing our ONENESS…from coming together in our brother and sisterhood as a family on this planet, and truly loving one another as an eternal, diverse PART of what God is.

In closing, take a look at this quote/excerpt targeting the hypocrisy of Christianity, taken from the last page of Mark Twain’s fantastic short story, “The Mysterious Stranger”:

…A God who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it. Who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body…

Who mouths justice and invented hell…Who mouths MERCY and invented hell…Who mouths Golden Rules, and forgiveness multiplied by SEVENTY TIMES SEVEN, and invented hell…Who mouths morals to other people, and has none himself…Who frowns upon crimes, yet COMMITS THEM ALL…Who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man’s act upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself…And finally with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor abused slave to WORSHIP HIM”
(Mark Twain)

Connie Bryan

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(Connie Bryan is a writer in Sacramento, CA…Check out all of her material on her website and blog at www.conniebryan.com)