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Let me start off by making a confession: I am codependent. I don’t know this because of some professional psychological evaluation or report, I know through my own independent research and my reactions to certain life experiences. For instance, I’ve been in a few bad relationships, much like many of us have. Unlike many people, for me, relationships that should’ve ended in weeks lasted for months and those that should’ve ended after months lasted for years. I’ve had jobs where I’ve postponed for days submitting a voluntary resignation… voluntary in the sense that I didn’t have a pending offer and a need to tell my boss that day that I was quitting. Even for those occasions where I was on the clock to resign, there always was a pit in my stomach like I was going to be attacked verbally or in some other way for leaving. Of course, those break ups always turned out to be for the best and my bosses never freaked out on me.

How did I determine where my codependency came from? I can trace the root of the problem back to my alcoholic mother, as many others can due to their experiences with alcoholic and otherwise narcissistic and abusive parents. I went to a few meetings of Adult Children of Alcoholics and found some comfort in talking with others who experienced situations like what I had.

SIDE NOTE: I highly recommend that anyone who feels they may have been traumatized by an abusive, alcoholic or narcissistic parent or parents seek out mental health treatment and any other professional help that they need. 

Why am I writing about my past like this in a Satanic blog? Simple answer: I started comparing my own actions and reactions to situations in life to how we are taught that God would react to similar types of situations. I have, for decades now, critically questioned the existence of God and the lack of answers that Christianity, through the Bible, as well as many other theological sources and religious texts fail to provide. These questions, the lack of answers and the answers that I’ve developed through rational contemplation will be the subject of many more blog posts in the future. The one thing that has struck me as extremely odd and disturbing is how demanding the Judeo-Christian God is of worship (such as attending church services, making confessions and saying prayers) and sacrifice (not eating meat on Fridays during lent, tithing, etc.). The same types of demands have been made by the gods and deities of many other faiths who expect some type of worship and sacrifice from their followers, although through different methods and actions. While the demand and expectations for prayer and financial offerings to religious institutions are common among almost all religions and faiths, here I will be only focusing on Christianity as that is the religion in which I was raised and the one in which I’m the most knowledgeable about.

First, let’s talk about prayer. Apparently, despite the Judeo-Christian God having a “perfect” plan that we neither know the details of (short of what you may read in the Book of Revelations regarding the apocalypse) nor that we should question. Even though God will only answer certain prayers if it fits into God’s plan, if you want something done you need to pray to God for it. There’s no other way of obtaining it, except through your own hard work and effort, if applicable, and even then, it’s apparently still up to God to determine if your effort will result in change. Is it really necessary for a “perfect” God that knows all to demand prayer in exchange for divine intervention for your desires, whether it be the mundane of wanting your favorite football team to win a game to the severe of a beloved relative who is fighting a life threatening condition?

While it may seem logical enough to ask those with power to give you something that you want or need that they can provide, one would have to ask why an omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent God will require as humans to beg for… I’m sorry, pray for… divine intercession in either personal or worldly affairs. If you were God, unless you were a malevolent or vindictive one, would you really require lesser beings to beg for you to intercede on their behalf, and then only respond to the ones that fit into your “perfect” plan?

Next, let’s look at the topic of attending church service. Again, we’re faced with a situation where one is expected to devote their time, money and effort towards a weekly group activity that is meant to collectively ratify the sovereignty of a divine being. As with the above example, if you were God, unless you had a massive ego trip or were a complete narcissist, why would you care if the beings you created took time out of their day to worship you? You have all the power of the universe, what do you need these little creatures known as humans congregating at a central location each week just to praise you for existing, creating them and providing them with the world and sustenance that it generates? There’s always the positive communal aspect of gathering to celebrate one’s beliefs (for groups of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Satanists, etc.), but at the same time any type of gathering to come together for shared beliefs should be by the choice of a freethinking individual, not done under the threat of eternal damnation.

Taking this one step further, let’s try to understand the thinking of an omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent God who cares about the lesser beings that it has allegedly created or caused to come into existence. We have numerous Christian commandments, 10 of them in fact, that are meant to be the rules on what to do and what not to do as a human being, as defined by God. However, the question you should ask yourself is, why would an omnipotent, omnipotent and omnipresent God care about most of them? Let’s look at this as less of a moral code but more as an exercise in common sense. Starting out with marital infidelity, affairs between other people that just that, affairs. If you want to fuck your neighbor’s wife – and do so – why would a God care? It has nothing to do with your God, unless you consider that your God thinks its morally wrong and wants to punish you for it. Also, why would your God care if you wanted to worship something else? If you were a God, what would cause you to care about this? Would it be jealousy? Nonsense! You, as God, would laugh at these little human creatures because you know that there aren’t any other gods because you are God! Why would you need to make three Commandments out of ten demanding people worship you as the only god when there are no other gods? What harm does that do against you except for having a bruised ego? Why should you care if someone worships another god, gods or no god so long as this being is good towards your other creations?

Let’s have a little fun with this: do you care if other people masturbate? No, seriously, if you’re reading this, you’re probably a Satanist and that means you’re a little more open-minded, rational and respectful of personal choices than others. If you are God that created a body that derives physical pleasure from itself, wouldn’t you be happy for your little human subjects if they were experiencing such pleasure if they can still use such pleasure to procreate and expand your little kingdom of subjects?

After contemplating all the examples and hypothetical scenarios above, one cannot rationally imagine that a truly loving God would demand such things as idolization and worship by those creatures that it has created. The bigger issue, however, is that we are attributing flawed human desires such as being  loved, needed and wanted to a God that, as perfect, should be so advanced as a being as to not require any of those things from its creations. Not only does this show that such a God would be flawed in that God has human vanity for threatening that someone will burn in hell for all eternity for not worshipping them as that God desires, but furthermore it goes to show that God is once again nothing more than a human construct based upon ancient human understandings of what a divine being would be and what it would expect. 

If I were a God, although I cannot imagine what infinite power would be like, I would probably want to create not only a perfect race but also a relatively happy one. I would endow my human creations with a morality code but still give them the free will to make their own choices. Sure, there will be challenges and struggles as giving your human creations everything they want would take the rewards of hard work out of life, but there would be substantially less suffering, hatred, violence and horror than our race has now and has had for thousands of years. Furthermore, I would take pride in the collective successes and accomplishments of my creations. I would want them to be generally happy and healthy and without the need to suffer horrifically without a purpose or direction simply before cause I demand it. That’s what a loving God would do.

For those theists out there who believe that this is what their creator and supreme ruler demands, the question you should ask yourself is: Would you live up to the same standards as your God?