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It is well over seventy years ago now, since I was first sent to primary school as a six-year old. Unfortunately, this happened to be a so-called “School with the Bible”. This choice had already been made for me, and I was surely going to feel the effects of it. After all these years, I can still remember one certain experience that made a big impression on my childish mind. Until then I had remained unblemished by the ill effects of religion. In my youthful innocence, I had never even heard about it, but now grown-up educators were going to do something about that.
At this school, the “Van Beeck Calkoen School” on the Havikstraat in Utrecht, teachers were going to make damn sure about that bit “with the Bible”, since God and School Board had assigned them to this holy task. At the time, we still had six school-days every week, and relentlessly each of these days was to commence with the study of “Biblical History”. I was far too young then, to realize that this term constituted a ‘contradictio in terminis’ all by itself.
It was only some years after leaving this school, that I came to the age in which I began to take an interest in real life. I became aware of the fact that I formed part of a large society that had to be governed by authorities, in which drinking water had to flow from the tap, garbage had to be collected and a great number of other essential matters had to be taken care of, by man. Because God was useless in all these matters, apparently he couldn’t care less. For a decent barbarian in the Sinaï three-thousand years ago didn't care a hoot about all these things.
And regretfully I discovered how little I knew about these mundane matters. I realized how useful it would have been if only these irresponsible people would have taught us just a little of this information, instead of spending all these dreary hours on useless fairy tales. What a shame these educators at the time did not have that much sense of responsibility!
But of course, in these days I was still completely unaware of that fact. We started each school-day with fairy tales. I just loved them! Could there be anything more delightful to a six-year old than story-telling every morning?
The star character in all these stories was somebody called “Our Dear Lord”. Once upon a time he had made just everything, all by himself. First of all the world itself, and after some distractions also a man and a woman. You will be familiar with the technical details, although you do not understand them. The names of these two people appeared to be Adam and Eve. Our Dear Lord allowed them to live in a beautiful garden, and they were not required to work or strain themselves in any other way. And they were free to eat all the juicy fruits that a great variety of trees provided in abundance. And all those animals that Our Dear Lord had also manufactured completely by himself, lived peacefully together in these pleasant surroundings. Everything overthere was perfect, and there was no discord of any kind. There was no sorrow, nor inclement weather, ever. The sun was shining every day. It was brought to us so compellingly, and was enlarged upon so much, that it made us – town children living in laborers districts – wish we had been there ourselves.
Unfortunately, the idyll didn’t last. For one day, Eve had eaten from the forbidden fruit. This made Our Dear Lord so mad that he kicked them both out of his garden. And they were never to return. To me, this seemed rather exaggerated, for just one scrumpy apple. I knew my dad wouldn’t have made such a fuss about it, because when I once had nicked an apple from the fruit-dish, I was just told off, and that was it.
To me, the glory of Our Dear Lord began to tarnish there and then, but teacher stayed nuts about him. She kept on and on about his unending goodness and mercy, and how his love was to protect us all our lives. How he could see everything we did, and keep records about us. The latter made me feel more than a little uncomfortable.
In my memory, it must have been soon after, when she suddenly disrupted the fairy tales with an absolute horror story. Apparently, at least so the story went, after some time earth became populated by many more people. And some of these people didn’t live the way that Our Dear Lord wanted them to live. It did not become quite clear to us in which way these people did not conform, but according to teacher, Our Dear Lord had a solution for the problem. He was just going to kill everyone on earth! Everyone! It was related without emotion, without disapproval, without compassion for all these people and animals that were going to die, on the same didactic tone in which she had taught us to count from one to ten. And yet, this was still the same teacher who had enthralled us with all those lovely fairy tales about the same Our Dear Lord!
Still, after all these years, I can feel my childish disappointment and dismay, my mental confusion of that moment. I was aghast. Because, to teacher this seemed fully justified and normal. Perhaps she didn’t quite understand what death meant, I thought. I did. It was over a year ago now that my mother had died, and here Our Dear Lord was going to kill all mothers! All mothers! And all fathers! And all children! And even all those home-made animals! And for what? It just did’t make any sense at all.
And although six more years of Biblical History were to follow, from that moment on, I was no longer receptive for Our Dear Lord. I couldn’t express it in words yet, but to my mind his morals were not acceptable. Once one have done something as extremely evil as that, one could never mend his ways again, ever! I was no longer interested in these fairy tales, I had learnt a lesson.
Since then I am often reminded of that deciding moment, when people I hold in high esteem and who wouldn’t hurt a fly, point at a rainbow with shiny eyes, as a token of Gods promise never to commit genocide again. Such mercy!
Or, when people who love their children dearly, and who would do everything to protect them from mishap, tell me without any restraint that Our Dear Lord loved the world so much that he allowed his only son to be cruelly tortured to death.
Each time, I am baffled. How can an ideology, spread by fire and sword, induce good people to such dual morality, without them even realizing it?
And I am angry. I am angry about the heartless cynicism the clergy employs to subject gullible people by means of fairy tales, dreamed up by primitive barbarians in a far past. Fairy tales they cannot now – because of their education – believe in themselves, but that still appeal to the gullible and brainwashed masses.
A blatant example of that cold cynicism has been unashamedly exhibited by the Dutch archbishop Wim Eijk. Perhaps not known bij all believers, this detestable figure completed a study in medicine in 1978 and was later promoted doctor on a paper about medical ethics. So, some medical knowledge must be available to him. And yet, since being ordained a bishop, he wholeheartedly started promoting and accompanying pilgrimages to Lourdes for the chronically ill, who hope to be cured there by the Virgin Mary!
Is a better example of religious fraud conceivable?
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