bad religion

I’d like to try to write a post about religion. This is a very delicate subject in any country, so I will try to use tact and discretion.

I was recently sitting next to a woman during a vaccination campaign. There were many children around us, most of whom would take one look at me and scurry off, giggling. Then they would peek out at me from behind whatever large object was around.
“I think I scare the kids,” I remarked to the lady. “It’s because I’m too tall.”
“Well,” she said, “They shouldn’t be scared. God made the tall ones, and the short ones, and the skinny ones, and the fat ones, the white ones, and the brown ones. God made them all. There’s no reason to be afraid.”
Wow, I thought. What a reasonable and kind thing to say.
The problem is, most statements that I hear motivated by religion are neither reasonable nor kind.

When I hear someone attribute the death of an innocent by a drunk driver to “God’s will,” I get downright angry, though I can’t express it.

My reaction was about the same when someone explained to me that the reason her cousin was born with fluid on the brain, causing permanent and severe brain damage in the baby, was because the child’s mother questioned the Virgin birth during pregnancy.
“God doesn’t punish us…but he does put examples in our lives,” she told me.

Like my own stomping grounds in the deep South, Guatemala is a Christ-haunted landscape. Jesus turns up everywhere: T-shirts, pick-up truck decals, in all sorts of kitsch people use to decorate their homes. Traveling evangelists board the public transportation to spread the gospel via chicken bus. And when someone asks your religion, the question is “Are you Catholic or evangelical?” rather than something more inclusive.

However, as I mentioned earlier, for all Jesus’ ubiquity, his teachings often seem conspicuously absent. Catholics and Evangelicals constantly approach me to hate on the other denomination, using anything at all to assert their superiority over the offending faith.
“You know why the Evangelicals make me laugh?” someone once said smugly, “They use the exact same praise song as the Catholics!” To this young lady, the use of the same worship music was a clear indication of the Evangelicals tacit lowliness.

I’ve never been one to hate on religion in general, and this post isn’t meant to do that either. I go to church with my family every Sunday, and that’s been one of the few things in my life that has not changed since moving to Guatemala. I appreciate the warmth behind each kindly utterance of “Dios te bendiga.” And I know that the most read book here in Guatemala is definitely La Biblia. Any time people are reading, it can’t be a bad thing.

There’s so much more I could say, but in the end I find myself asking the same questions about religion that I asked at home. Why is it such a comfort to people? Is it a force for good or ill in society? Will I ever really understand it?