We are Born Good
Challenging the Doctrine of Inherent Wickedness by comparing it to Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy.
There’s an Eminem lyric from the song “Cleanin’ out My Closet” that says:
“My whole life I was made to believe I was sick when I wasn't
'Til I grew up, now I blew up, it makes you sick to your stomach, doesn't it?”
This lyric describes his experience being a victim of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, known now as Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another (FDIA). Someone else, in this case, Eminem’s mother, made him believe he was sick, even though he wasn’t.
Isn’t that what we are told in fundamentalist/evangelical Christianity? Aren’t we told as children that we are unworthy, broken, wicked sinners who deserve eternal punishment in hell? Aren’t we told that we are so “unwell” that we need a “cure”? We need a “treatment”, which is the blood of a sacrificed son of God.
Put very simply, we were told that we were so sick that someone else had to die a terrible, bloody death to save us and cure us from our wickedness.
This sounds like Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (FDIA) to me.
Read article below for a more in depth look at the similarities of god and FDIA:
I wasn’t born wicked. Neither were you. This is a fabricated narrative to control us, manipulate us, and destroy our self-worth and perception of reality so that we depend on a deity who needs praise and attention for “saving us” from a disease that this god himself invented.
What if religion stopped telling people they were inherently wicked? What if religion appealed to the goodness of the human condition? What if religion stopped telling people that they are so disgusting that they deserve eternal hellfire?
Unfortunately, religion will not stop telling people they’re sick. The religion benefits from people hating themselves. Without the fake disease, the fake cure becomes useless, rendering the entire religion useless. And while that would benefit the individual and society, it would drain the offering plate, and cash rules everything around us.
It’s a gift to free yourself from a manufactured sickness. After realizing that I was made to believe I was sick when I wasn’t, I was initially very angry. How many humans throughout the history of humanity have been told this narrative? It makes me sick. Yet, I am grateful to be living in a time where education is freely accessible, and more and more of us are seeing through the smoke and mirrors of toxic religion.
We are born with so much inherent goodness. We deserve water to nourish us, not fire to torture us.