There’s no great advertisement for God

My 13 year-old son announced the other evening that he wanted to turn me on to Jesus. I have to say that I was a bit taken aback. It’s the kind of moment you’ve been dreading all your life – the values that you cherish are in danger of being thrown out by one of the ones that you love the most. Oh woe is me…

He was brandishing a gospel at the time, which had a number of yellow stickers protruding from it. He had gone to some trouble to mark particular pages. Now, on his way to bed, he wanted to read the word of the Lord and his apostles aloud to me, from the pages in question.

When he started in secondary last year, we had asked him if he wanted to be liberated from Religious Education class. He had said no. He enjoyed the discussions that took place there. As a born conversationalist, it was obvious that the format of the religion class, which puts no emphasis on either homework or exams, was his kind of thing. Now, as I sat down on the side of the bed, I wondered should I have taken a firmer line!

During RE class that day, they had been asked to pick out some passages, which they liked, from the New Testament. He had chosen three, from Paul’s Letter To The Corinthians and his Letter To Timothy, as well as Jesus’ own thoughts on divorce. As he read them out, it quickly became obvious that he had approached the task with his bullshit detector in full operational mode. In a matter of 15 minutes, in class, he had found separate sections in which the words of the New Testament were condescending and offensive to women and to gays. And he had found another, which was essentially racist in its tenor.

He was both amused and aghast. Was this what people were promoting as the Gospel of the Lord? We haven’t discussed religion much, except in the ordinary course of living – like when he wondered what the other kids were doing, making their Holy Communion, and how come they got to make a shitload of money and he didn’t. But having read the Good News for himself now, he was having none of it.

He waxed eloquent about how insulting, not to mention plain wrong, it was to suggest that women would never be above men and had a laugh at Paul’s opposition to make-up. I turned off the light and he went happily to sleep listening to Ash’s greatest hits album.

The next morning, the Irish Times carried a report on the downward trend for church or Mass attendance in Ireland, as revealed in the Power To Change survey on the nature of Irish spiritual beliefs. As recently as 1973, a whopping 91% had attended weekly Mass here. In 1996, the figure was still relatively high, at 66%. Now, we are down to 48% – roughly the standard international level. It is interesting to look behind the figures. Currently 80% of over 65s say that they attend church or Mass weekly. The equivalent figure for 25 to 34 year-olds is a mere 27%. On the basis of those figures, it seems certain that the downward trend will continue apace.

It is against that background that the Power To Change campaign is being launched. The campaign, which is apparently independent of the four main churches but supported by them, is designed to encourage people to develop a personal relationship with Jesus. Already the campaign has run into difficulties, with the refusal of RTE and TV3 to run the ads, on the basis that they contravene Section 65 of the Broadcasting Act. As I write, there is a hearing in the High Court, in which the decision of the broadcasters is being challenged.

Whatever the outcome of that spat, I sincerely hope that the campaign fails in its objectives. With all due respect to the decent Christians I know, there isn’t a shred of evidence to suggest that the prevalence of the kind of people who consider themselves to have a personal relationship with Jesus has ever benefited society in any way at all. Indeed, there is considerable evidence to the contrary – both George Bush and Tony Blair believe that they fall into that category, and together they are threatening to do the most terrible, violent things to Iraq and to the Iraqi people. What’s more, from the utterances of both, there is every reason to believe that it is the very fact that they do claim to have a personal relationship with Jesus which emboldens them in their resolve to wage war.

It is commonplace among war-mongers that they assume a special relationship with Allah, God or Jesus. There are, of course, people of no religion who are utterly immoral – ref: Joe Stalin. But the point is that there is no basis for believing that a ‘relationship’ with Jesus, personal or otherwise, makes people better or more moral.

Besides, the fact is that when you step back and think about it even for a second, it is clear that the entire edifice of Christian belief – that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and that he came down to earth, was born of a virgin, lived among us, was crucified and rose again, and left a body of teachings behind, on which we could all base our way of living in order to get to heaven in the long run and share in the glory of God the Father – well, it’s not even remotely credible at all, is it? Any smart 13-year-old who thinks about it can figure that much out.

The common answer to observations of this kind is that it is all about faith. Which is fine – but you might as well say that it is about superstition and illogic.

That’s what makes the finding in the Power To Change survey that 66% of those polled believe that Jesus is the Son of God, with whom they have a personal relationship, just a little bit scary. On one level, I really don’t much care what people believe. I am quite happy to live and let live. But on the other, I do feel that a belief in something as patently irrational as the Jesus myth is too often an impediment to reason – and to making decisions and choices that are reasonable and logical.

The figures tell us that those who do not believe in this Son of God stuff have made a lot of progress over the last 30 years. But what’s equally clear is that there is still a long way to go.