I don’t know how prevalent the I Am Second billboards are in other states, but here in Texas I see one or two every morning on my way to work, and they pop up every few miles or so, it seems. And they always make me incredibly sad.
If the creators of these messages meant for me to stop and think when I see them, then they definitely got the job done. However, if they intended for the I Am Second message to make me think favorably about their religion, then they are way off base.
See, the thought “I Am Second” is a great indicator of what religion does to the psyche of those who follow it. The billboard on my way to work is one with Sam Bradford, apparently some kind of football star. It says “Picked first in the draft, but still second.”
No! No you are NOT second! You worked hard, you trained, you practiced, and you earned your spot and your future. Jesus did not make your hands adept at catching or throwing a football. Your genes and your determination did.
Religion makes its foothold by destroying your own beliefs in your self-efficacy. It creates doubt in your mind and fills it with an unquestionable certainty about the dominance of a being you’ll never see or hear from. It makes a one-way street for attribution of events in your life. If something good happens, it’s not because YOU made it happen, it’s because God smiled on you. If something bad happens, well, you didn’t have enough faith, God is testing you, you disobeyed God, blah blah you suck and God rules.
How utterly useless.
As children, when we are truly innocent, we have no concept of our own failings. We are nothing if not arrogant as children, and learning your own true limits is a crucial part of the growing up process. To circumvent that maturation by inserting God as the only capable entity in someone’s life is to completely offset the trajectory of healthy mental and physical development.
If you stop a child from learning that he can climb up the small tree in your yard, but not the giant redwoods out in the national parks, and instead tell the child that he is capable of nothing except what God allows him, and that all things are possible with God, you have created what could potentially be a monster. At the very least, you have confused the child’s concepts of what is real and what is not (beyond the harm of introducing the God character at all). That child will grow to believe he is possibly capable of anything, but personally capable of nothing. This isn’t even taking into account the sheer amount of buck-passing and lack of accountability these teachings introduce.
When the kid does well on a test, then it’s all “Praise God! He gave you such a smart little brain!” When the same kid fails a test, it’s all “You didn’t study hard enough. Practice more.” Why couldn’t the magic brain God gave him perform the same on every test? Doesn’t seem very reliable, to me. Could it be that maybe the kid tried hard the first time, and when you told him God was the one who succeeded, he stopped trying and assumed God would carry him through to his next A? Of course not! That would make sense.
To be fair, I Am Second is probably one of the less harmful campaigns I’ve seen on the subject. Being second to God is better than the idea most Christian music would present, that you are nothing, a wretch, a sinner, worse than the most vile creature you can think of. I’d rather be a silver medalist than the heap of dung beside the garbage dumpster, but over all of that I’d prefer for my own accomplishments to be my own making.
You know, I’ve spent a lot of my life being depressed and feeling worthless. I turned to religion, to Jesus, to feel better about myself. I put faith in this God that would supposedly lift me up from the nothing I felt I was, and imbue me with his power and make me capable, but I never stopped and realized that this deference I was showing was actually keeping me depressed and worthless. I should never have acknowledged I was worthless in the first place.
I am not nothing. I am not a wretch. I am not worthless. I am not incapable of good. I am not evil. I am not a sinner. I am not unworthy of love.
I am good. I mess up, but I face those mistakes and learn from them. I am improving. I am full of love and deserving of the same. I treat people with respect, and deserve it in return. I am not in good physical shape, but I am beautiful regardless, and I can make a difference. I am intelligent, but even smart people do dumb things sometimes.
So to those who try to get off the hook by saying that religion doesn’t harm anyone, you’re wrong. It harms the very core of your being. I’d never say you don’t have the right to believe whatever you want to. You have the right to believe you’re a worthless pile of crap and only an undead son of God can redeem your soul to being even worthy to look at. I don’t think you have the right to tell a child the same message, because they’re too young to argue with you, but that’s a touchy area.
Anyway. You are not second. You are first in your own life, and you must take responsibility for your own actions and outcomes. You own your victories and your failures, and you have the power to change the course of your own life. Putting that power in the hands of a clearly ambivalent and probably nonexistent deity is chaining yourself to a life of someone else’s choosing.
