VALUED FOR THEIR UTILITY—NOT LOVED FOR THEIR HUMANITY

 

PEOPLE ARE BEING VALUED FOR THEIR UTILITY—NOT LOVED FOR THEIR HUMANITY

[Image description: The hardest realization is discovering you were loved for your utility, not your humanity.”]

If we entertain the notion that Bible-God is real—

OR

if we merely discuss him as we would discuss Darth Vader within the Star Wars canon—

the moral problem remains the same.

Whether Bible-God actually exists is an entirely separate question from whether the character, relationships, and systems presented within the biblical canon are morally admirable.

And the “moral of the story” remains:

People are being valued for their utility to power—not loved for the irreducible humanity within them.

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WHAT DETERMINES A PERSON’S VALUE?

Across much of the eclectic biblical canon, human beings are valued primarily according to their usefulness within God’s purposes:

• whether they obey him;

• whether they glorify him;

• whether they advance his plans;

• whether they preserve his chosen order;

• and whether they function as instruments of his will.

And what is that will very often said to serve as its ultimate end?

The glorification of God’s own name and the celebration of God’s own might.

That is not merely an adversarial interpretation I am imposing upon the Bible.

The canon very often says so explicitly:

• All things are described as being from God, through God, and for God.

• Human beings are described as having been created for God’s glory.

• Whatever people do—even eating and drinking—is to be done for the glory of God.

• The chosen are said to exist for the praise of his glory.

• Salvation, judgment, conquest, mercy, punishment, and redemption are repeatedly narrated as demonstrations of God’s power and occasions for magnifying his name.

The biblical canon does not possess one perfectly unified theology. Its texts were produced by different people, communities, and traditions across centuries.

Nevertheless, the canon very often makes God’s glory its ultimate end.

My interpretive contribution begins afterward—when I ask what we should morally and psychologically call a personal agent who:

• creates dependent beings for his own glory;

• commands them to organize their lives around glorifying him;

• requires continual praise;

• demands exclusive loyalty;

• identifies obedience with love;

• treats rejection as punishable wrongdoing;

• and declares the everlasting celebration of his own greatness to be among the highest purposes of conscious existence.

Christian theology calls that divine supremacy.

But if any other personal agent constructed dependent beings for the declared purpose of magnifying himself, demanded their exclusive devotion, and subjected them to catastrophic consequences for withholding it, we would recognize the relational structure as profoundly and clinically narcissistic.

These are apparently things this “God” cannot sufficiently provide for himself.

He therefore requires groveling, trembling sycophants to supply them continually from below—forever laboring to feed the immensely burdened and insatiably hungering ego seated above them.

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“BUT GOD CANNOT BE PSYCHOLOGICALLY EVALUATED”

A predictable objection is that applying a term such as clinically narcissistic to a transcendent being commits a category error.

But Christianity itself presents God as a psychologically intelligible personal agent:

• He possesses intentions.

• He has preferences.

• He establishes relationships.

• He loves and hates.

• He experiences anger and jealousy.

• He desires loyalty.

• He responds to rejection.

• He punishes disobedience.

• He seeks glorification.

• He represents himself as a father.

Christians routinely apply morally and psychologically meaningful descriptions to him:

• loving;

• merciful;

• patient;

• trustworthy;

• paternal;

• relational;

• compassionate;

• and just.

They cannot coherently claim that God’s represented behavior proves his perfect love while declaring the same behavioral evidence inadmissible whenever it supports an unflattering psychological characterization.

If Bible-God is sufficiently person-like to be called loving, paternal, jealous, wrathful, merciful, and relational, then he is sufficiently person-like for us to examine the relational patterns consistently attributed to him.

“Transcendent” is not a magic word that causes those represented traits to disappear.

Darth Vader cannot sit in a clinician’s office either. Nevertheless, we can analyze the psychology attributed to him within the Star Wars canon.

Likewise, calling Bible-God clinically narcissistic is not a literal medical diagnosis of an empirically examined patient. It is a psychological characterization of the persistent behavioral and relational patterns attributed to the character.

The question is not whether Bible-God has completed a diagnostic interview.

The question is whether the character has been written as a literary personification of clinically narcissistic dynamics.

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“GROVELING”

Consider the Canaanite woman who begged Jesus to help her daughter.

The story depicts the following sequence:

• A desperate woman from an ethnically excluded population cries out to Jesus for mercy.

• Jesus initially ignores her.

• His disciples want her sent away.

• Jesus explains his refusal by saying that he was sent only to the “lost sheep” of Israel.

• The woman comes before him and kneels—or prostrates herself—while pleading, “Lord, help me.”

• Jesus compares helping her to taking the children’s bread and throwing it to dogs.

• Instead of rejecting that degrading framework, she accepts her assigned position within it.

• She argues that even dogs are permitted to eat the crumbs falling from their masters’ table.

• Only after she physically lowers herself, accepts the dog comparison, and formulates her request from within that hierarchy does Jesus praise her faith and grant what she begged him to provide.

This is not merely metaphorical groveling.

She is literally positioned beneath him, begging for help after being initially refused on the grounds of ethnic othering.

She must represent herself as a dog pleading for scraps from the table of a superior before she becomes minimally worthy of receiving assistance.

And this relational framework was not invented by the Gospel writer for this one encounter.

Throughout earlier Hebrew religious texts and traditions, we repeatedly encounter:

• physical prostration;

• declarations of personal unworthiness;

• pleas for mercy;

• dependence upon the superior’s favor;

• self-abasement before divine authority;

• and the understanding that whatever kindness is granted remains an unearned gift from above.

The Greek term translated as grace fundamentally means favor or gift. “Undeserved kindness” is a theological expansion rather than the term’s sole lexical definition.

But that theological expansion matters because Christians are routinely taught to regard divine help, forgiveness, and acceptance as favors to which no human being possesses any rightful claim.

Human beings are not merely needy.

They are told that they are intrinsically undeserving—and that recognizing their own unworthiness is itself a condition of receiving mercy.

So yes:

Groveling.

[Image description:“PRAYER—Because I already know what you want; I just want to hear you beg for it.”]

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“TREMBLING”

[Image description:“Work out your salvation with fear and trembling.—Philippians 2:12.”]

The language of trembling is not something hostile critics invented.

The biblical text explicitly instructs believers:

Work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

Christians debate whether that means:

• literal terror;

• reverential awe;

• grave humility;

• recognition of divine power;

• or some combination of those things.

But trembling is the canon’s own chosen word.

Nor does it appear within a coercion-free relational environment.

The threat of divine violence has been a core feature of this religious domain from its earliest texts and traditions:

• destruction;

• plague;

• conquest;

• collective punishment;

• execution;

• divine wrath;

• final judgment;

• exclusion from salvation;

• eternal conscious torment;

• or permanent annihilation.

Modern Christian sects disagree about the precise form of the threatened consequence.

Some teach a literal, everlasting Hell.

Others teach annihilation.

Others soften the language by describing damnation as freely chosen separation from God.

But the underlying power relationship remains:

• God possesses the ultimate coercive power.

• Human beings are commanded to submit.

• Refusal carries catastrophic and potentially irreversible consequences.

• The threatened punishment is then presented as compatible with perfect paternal love.

When “Father” holds the power to impose infinite torment, permanent destruction, or final exclusion, fear and trembling are not inexplicable corruptions of an otherwise noncoercive relationship.

They are structurally appropriate responses to the threat.

So yes:

Trembling.

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“SYCOPHANTS”

A sycophant praises, elevates, and flatters a powerful superior from whom favor, protection, acceptance, or advancement is sought.

The biblical-religious system repeatedly commands human beings to:

• proclaim God’s greatness;

• praise his name continually;

• magnify him;

• celebrate his power;

• credit him for everything good;

• deny themselves;

• declare their own unworthiness;

• thank him for undeserved mercy;

• attribute every admirable human quality back to him;

• and treat any refusal to worship him as moral corruption.

That is functionally sycophantic behavior—even when the believer has sincerely internalized the arrangement and no longer experiences the praise as strategic flattery.

There is, of course, a difference between:

• a calculating flatterer who privately disbelieves his praise;

• and a conditioned worshipper who sincerely believes that continual praise is morally required.

But both can perform the same function within a hierarchy.

The system turns human beings into suppliers of glorification for the authority above them.

And victimhood does not make that function disappear.

A coercive authority can condition vulnerable people into continual self-abasement and praise—and then benefit from the behavior it has compelled.

The masses can simultaneously be:

• victims of the system;

• defenders of the system;

• instruments through which the system reproduces itself;

• and suppliers of praise to the authorities above them.

So yes:

Sycophants.

“Groveling, trembling sycophants” is intentionally caustic language.

But it is not arbitrary abuse directed at religious people for sport.

Each word identifies a recurring component of the relational order:

• Groveling names the demanded posture of abasement.

• Trembling names the fear produced by overwhelming power and threatened consequences.

• Sycophants names the resulting function of continually praising and magnifying the authority above them.

My contempt is directed principally at the relational order that manufactures and requires those postures.

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HUMANITY REMAINS SUBORDINATE TO UTILITY

Within this structure, a person’s:

• compassion;

• moral courage;

• intellectual honesty;

• curiosity;

• psychological depth;

• capacity for empathy;

• resistance to cruelty;

• and recognition of other people’s humanity

remain subordinate to the overriding demands of divine authority.

[Image description:"The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world.”]

The greater the depth and brilliance with which a person’s humanity has flourished—the more deeply that person thinks, questions, empathizes, and refuses to participate in cruelty—the greater the risk that person may find himself at odds with:

• certain biblical commands;

• certain biblical moral judgments;

• religious authorities;

• institutional power structures;

• and communities claiming to speak for God.

Even compassion is evaluated from within a hierarchy of loyalty.

A compassionate unbeliever can remain condemned.

A profoundly harmful believer may be forgiven and reconciled through:

• allegiance;

• profession of faith;

• repentance;

• grace;

• or renewed submission to divine authority.

Thus humane conduct may matter within Christianity—but it does not necessarily matter most.

A person’s relationship to divine authority can remain more decisive than the person’s demonstrated relationship to other human beings.

That is why “God is loving” does not resolve the moral problem.

The system first makes submission to God the supreme definition of goodness.

It then evaluates every other virtue—including compassion—from inside that hierarchy.

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THE EARTHLY POWER STRUCTURE

This does not remain an abstract relationship between an individual and an invisible God.

Someone must claim and interpret what God wants.

[Image description:“I bring a message from the Lord.” / “Why didn’t he come himself?”]

Someone must define:

• obedience;

• sin;

• righteousness;

• acceptable belief;

• proper worship;

• sexual morality;

• family hierarchy;

• gender roles;

• religious duty;

• financial obligation;

• and the boundaries of belonging.

And how is a person’s usefulness to this supposedly invisible God measured in practice?

By how effectively that person preserves, expands, and serves the earthly power—and pseudo-humble egos—of the people, mostly men, who presume to represent that God.

People are valued for their practical usefulness:

• in upholding the existing religious power base on Earth;

• in expanding that power base on Earth;

• in recruiting additional followers;

• in producing obedient children;

• in supplying money and labor;

• in protecting the institution’s reputation;

• in enforcing conformity;

• in repeating its doctrines;

• in opposing its designated enemies;

• and in functioning as a source of narcissistic supply for the ego of “Father”—euphemistically renamed “the Glory of God.”

Those who sit atop the hierarchy frequently describe themselves as humble servants:

• servants of God;

• servants of the Word;

• servants of the congregation;

• reluctant leaders;

• shepherds protecting their flock;

• or mere messengers who possess no authority of their own.

Yet these supposedly humble servants often retain the power to determine:

• what God has said;

• what God requires;

• whom God accepts;

• whom God condemns;

• whose suffering is deserved;

• whose identity is sinful;

• whose questions are rebellious;

• and whose resistance constitutes disobedience to God himself.

Beneath the vestments, solemn language, and performances of pseudo-humility, the underlying demand can remain psychologically adolescent:

Respect my authority because I possess authority.

[Image description: Cartman:“RESPECT MY AUTHORITAH!”]

Their personal authority becomes difficult to challenge because it is presented as borrowed authority.

They are “only telling you what God says.”

That framing allows profoundly human authorities to exercise power while disowning responsibility for exercising it.

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CONDITIONAL VALUATION DISGUISED AS UNCONDITIONAL LOVE

In ordinary relational language, we would not call this unconditional love.

[Image description: Comparing God’s statements and demands with the language of an abusive partner.]

We would call it conditional valuation:

You matter insofar as you submit, serve, obey, and magnify the one who possesses ultimate power—and the earthly authorities who claim to act in his name.

When Christians describe this arrangement as perfect love, they do not resolve the moral contradiction.

They redefine love so that it can include:

• domination;

• demanded adoration;

• compulsory submission;

• conditional acceptance;

• punishment for disloyalty;

• terror of rejection;

• and the destruction or endless suffering of those who refuse allegiance.

Once those things have been absorbed into the definition of perfect love, virtually no conduct by the authority can count as evidence against his loving nature.

If God comforts, that is love.

If God heals, that is love.

If God commands slaughter, that is mysterious love.

If God threatens Hell, that is corrective love.

If God annihilates, that is holy love.

If God refuses help, that is sovereign love.

If God demands praise, that is love inviting humanity into its highest purpose.

If God condemns people for failing to worship him, that is justice made necessary by love.

The conclusion is protected regardless of the evidence.

“God is love” ceases to be a moral claim evaluated through God’s conduct.

It becomes an unfalsifiable definition imposed upon everything the character does.

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WHO BENEFITS?

People are not loved for the irreducible humanity within them.

They are valued according to their usefulness to a hierarchy—

a hierarchy that “coincidentally” benefits, above all others, the mostly male authorities who sit atop it, at enormous personal cost to the masses who sustain it.

The stations these men occupy are routinely celebrated as forms of greatness, although institutional rank is an impressively unimpressive metric for either the value of a man or the value of his function within the larger social machinery.

The system can even convert apparent human failure into evidence of cosmic importance.

New Testament reversals—the last becoming first, the least becoming greatest, and the lowly being exalted—can offer genuine consolation to people whom ordinary hierarchies have unjustly devalued.

But that same framework can also become self-flattering and self-sealing.

A man’s prominence within the religious system may be treated as proof that God has elevated him.

His insignificance or failure outside that system may be treated as proof that God will elevate him later.

Success validates the believer.

Failure may validate him even more profoundly.

He need not demonstrate unusual:

• wisdom;

• compassion;

• competence;

• courage;

• insight;

• social contribution;

• or depth of humanity.

His position within the sacred narrative supplies the greatness that his humanity has not otherwise demonstrated.

The people beneath these authorities supply:

• money;

• labor;

• loyalty;

• votes;

• children;

• legitimacy;

• social enforcement;

• institutional protection;

• emotional devotion;

• and continual affirmation of the hierarchy’s sacred importance.

And those masses are taught to experience their own exploitation as divine love.

[Image description: 1984: “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”]

They are taught that:

• submission is freedom;

• fear is reverence;

• abasement is humility;

• obedience is love;

• dependency is relationship;

• indoctrination is discipleship;

• institutional expansion is salvation;

• and the glorification of power is the highest possible purpose of human life.

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THE MORAL OF THE STORY

Whether Bible-God exists is a metaphysical question.

Whether the character and the relational order attributed to him deserve moral admiration is a separate question.

We do not have to settle the first question before examining the second.

Whether we regard Bible-God as:

• a real supernatural being;

• a composite literary character;

• a projection of ancient human authorities;

• a symbolic personification of institutional power;

• or some combination of those possibilities,

the moral structure presented across much of the biblical canon remains available for evaluation.

And the moral of that story remains:

People are being valued for their utility.

Specifically, they are valued for their practical usefulness:

• in upholding the existing power structure on Earth;

• in expanding that power structure on Earth;

• in serving the people—mostly men—who presume to represent God;

• and in functioning as a continual source of praise for the clinically narcissistic ego of “Father,” otherwise called “the Glory of God.”

They are not loved for the irreducible humanity within them.

They are valued according to their usefulness to a hierarchy—

a hierarchy that disproportionately benefits the men seated atop it, at enormous personal expense to the masses who support it.

And those masses are taught to experience that exploitation as divine love.

[Image description:“The sheep will spend its entire life fearing the wolf, only to be eaten by the shepherd.”]