Believe It or Not

Sacchi Green

Over a long life I’ve come to believe that belief doesn’t matter as much as acting according to certain beliefs. I’m not thinking of the just-in-case sort of thing, behaving according to a religion’s rules on the off chance that the teachings may be true and affect your chances of an afterlife, or what kind of afterlife you’d qualify for. I’m thinking in practical, everyday terms.

I’ll get back to the religious connection soon, but I have another example in mind. Every now and then I see something to the effect that scientists (I don’t believe I’ve seen details as to which scientists) are more and more convinced that we’re living in computer simulation being run (or set in motion far in the past) by hyper-intelligent entities to whom our entire cosmos is just a game setting. Do I believe this? Of course not. I’m not capable of understanding their reasoning well enough to believe or disbelieve. My reaction is, interesting, but so what? What difference does it make to how we need to go about our lives? There have been other theories of life being an illusion, but illusion or not, we’ve learned how we have to deal with it. We feel hunger, pain, joy, or loss, and generally know what causes these feelings. A broken bone will hurt, whether it’s an illusion or not. Gravity affects us in predictable ways, even though it’s not completely understood and there are theories that it doesn’t actually exist. We still have to accept gravity’s perceived effects, from the way things drop if we let go of them to the way planets revolve around suns and suns around the central masses of galaxies. We have to act on our perceptions of what works, and revise those perceptions when we see evidence to the contrary. And whether we believe in something like global climate change or not, we’ll feel its effects.

Getting back to religion: that computer simulation idea has a certain similarity to some of the traditional religious creation stories. Hyper-intelligent entities creating our cosmos sound pretty close to some notions of deities. But when it comes to our ideas of good, evil, morality, immorality, all those sorts of things, I think—not necessary believe, but think—that they've evolved along with our physical attributes. Maybe those extra-terrestrial (and extra-galactic) entities have imbued us with those values as part of their game (somewhat like the Sim City computer game my granddaughter plays, although I don’t know whether that includes value systems), but it seems more likely that they’ve developed as survival tools just as opposable thumbs and big brains have. Being able to live together in communities is a survival tool. Being suspicious of other communities may have at times been a survival tool, even though these days it may be more of a danger to survival.

But it doesn’t matter whether you believe in a particular deity as much as whether you behave as though certain teachings of that deity are important to making life work. Most religions have something resembling the Golden Rule of Christianity: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” We recognize the value of this idea, and have a vague sense that life would be better if everyone did this, even though very few people actually manage it.

Christianity is the religion I was brought up in and know the most about, and the teachings of Jesus as reported in the Bible seem right and good to me, but that doesn’t depend on belief in Jesus as a deity, or even as a historical figure. I know that presumed followers of Christianity have caused great harm, and continue to do so, probably outweighing all the good that others of those followers have managed to do. I know that the magnificent works of architecture and art and music inspired by Christianity do not outweigh the persecution and warfare waged in this religion’s name.

Still, there may be something I do believe, as far as there can be any belief based on human perception. I read something today that made me think of this. My Senator, Elizabeth Warren, is known as a fighter for justice, but not for her religious beliefs. It turns out, though, that her political activism is based on a deep faith. She doesn’t flaunt this, but sometimes quotes passages from the Bible to explain her views, including one from the Book of Matthew 25:40. When Jesus’s disciples ask when they have seen him hungry and fed him, or sick, or imprisoned, etc., he tells them, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” Warren quoted this, and then shared her interpretation: “He’s saying to us, first, there’s God in every one of us, there’s Jesus in every one of us — however you see it in your religion, that inside there’s something holy in every single person.”

My belief is not that there’s something holy in every person. I don’t even have a clear sense of anything being holy, or even what holy means. But I do believe that whether or not Jesus ever existed, someone, more or less two thousand years ago, wrote those words, and related ones on the subject of caring for each other and helping those who need help. And I believe that the fact that those words were considered important enough to be written and passed down through the centuries—as were similar ones in other religions—is reason to hope that we humans do have a sense of what is good, what works in life, however often we may fail to follow those words. Does it make any difference whether that sense was imbued in us by extra-galactic computer gamers, or deities, or our own evolutionary development? Probably not. But I confess to preferring to think—maybe even believe—that we did it on our own.

Test of Faith

by Jean Roberta

I’ve never really experienced religion first-hand. I was raised by parents who joined the local Unitarian Fellowship (this is a community of Unitarians without a resident minister) after leaving more orthodox Protestant churches when they were teenagers. Still, the ethic of denial that they were taught when they were young seemed to stay with them in secular form.

When boys began inviting me out, my parents warned me that boys liked sex. Presumably, this was something I couldn’t understand. Later, my mother advised me to go to a doctor to get medication to “cure” me from wanting “sex with men all the time.” I told her I didn’t want it all the time, just now and then. I said, “You know what that’s like.” Apparently she didn’t.

The message I got from all my grandparents was that sex was immoral except within marriage – and even then, if I were a normal woman, I wouldn’t like it. The message I got from men was that any past sexual experience I might have was much more disgusting than theirs. (And this was from self-defined sexual revolutionaries.)

My parents were threatened with Hell as the ultimate punishment for lust. I was threatened with psychiatric “treatment” and social ostracism. It seemed as if the disapproving God of old times was replaced in the mid-twentieth century by the “mental health” establishment and a general consensus on how women were supposed to behave.

The Puritan streak in North American Protestantism seems to prompt a belief that pleasure in most forms is self-destructive and contrary to God’s will. And that hard work is virtuous, not because of what it can produce, but because it numbs the mind, heart, and libido.

I’ve always wondered if the “wrath of God” that is so feared by so many could be a well-buried internal rebellion against self-denial. If there is a God, and if He/She is angry, the causes might be the opposite of what is usually preached from the pulpit.

Some people join religious communities and accept rigid rules to escape from “temptation,” the supposed corruption of the world. But the kind of spiritual seekers I admire don’t run from chaos, dirt, or human appetites – they work in the world’s worst slums, and try to bring comfort, not judgment or deprivation, to their fellow-beings.

My story, “The Battle Lost and Won” (in my single-author collection of historical erotica, The Princess and the Outlaw) is set in a vaguely medieval world that is dominated by a Church that seeks to control whole populations. Susanna, an innocent maiden from a large family, has entered the local convent as a novice to save herself from the Seven Deadly Sins. After an older nun offers her a shockingly carnal kind of love, and Susanna runs away, she is confronted by a supernatural being. Is her tormenter a demon or an angel?

Susanna is tested in much different ways than she ever expected as a sheltered virgin. She learns that children are sacred, even if conceived outside of wedlock, and that Christian charity can be expressed in a brothel. She learns that love is never an abomination.

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This is the opening scene:

"Sister Mary Agnes."

The creamy, insinuating voice held a hint of mockery as it echoed off the high ceiling of the convent kitchen.

Everything else within the room could be identified and put back in its place. Cups, bowls, tableware, sun-bleached tablecloths, pots, pitchers and candlesticks waited patiently in the cupboards until they could be of service. Like penitent sinners, the dirty dishes from the evening meal were being scrubbed clean, dried and placed safely where they belonged.

Sister Mary Agnes enjoyed washing the dishes alone, when she could focus on her work and not on the presence of another sister. Everything about this humble task was satisfying, from the warmth of the soapy water to the caress of the young nun’s plain habit on the skin of her legs as she moved back and forth.

But someone else was in the room with her, and its voice was too androgynous to be identified clearly as that of a man or a woman. "Do not ignore me, Sister, at the risk of your immortal soul." The voice was not human, yet it reminded her of someone she knew.

The sister, who had been named Susanna by her parents, was armed against temptation. "Then tell me your name. I command you."

A chuckle rumbled and bounced from one stone wall to the one opposite. "'Beseech' would be a better word from your lips, lady. My name is Gabriel."

The sister was unconvinced, and she knew that demons have myriad different names to confuse the gullible. She lifted both hands from her basin of water and sprinkled each corner of the room, as if to cleanse the air. Water ran down the walls, left puddles on the floor, and soaked her habit in spots. "Tell me your true name, hell-spawn!"

"Do not toy with me, wench!" trumpeted the voice. "I am Gabriel, messenger of God. If you do not wish to hear what I have to tell you, I shall leave you at once, and worse visitors will come in my place. Doubt this at your peril."

Sister Mary Agnes was shaken, despite her determination not to show fear, and despite the timbre of the voice, which seemed to lack the masculine thunder of either God or the Devil.

Moved by some instinct she hadn't known she had, the sister looked into the water in the basin, and saw the amazing reflection of a smooth, shining face with delicately arched, cruelly sarcastic eyebrows above terrible dark eyes and full, sensuous lips that wore only the hint of a smile.

She was not convinced that her visitor was an angel, but she knew better than to continue to antagonize him (her?) unnecessarily. "Speak, then. I will listen."

"Susanna, you refuse the gifts that God has set before you. This is neither wise nor virtuous. You wish to be of service to all the other children of your Creator, but goodness requires courage and action, not cowardice and lethargy. You shall be tested three times, and much rests upon the choices you make."

The face in the water dissolved into wavering shapes. A faint hiss, like the sound of steam from a kettle, signaled the departure of the mysterious being from ordinary space and time.

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