Jeff's Lunchbreak: God vs. Supervillains

I've written along these lines before, but here's a slightly different version that's been rattling around in my head.

Imagine a supervillain bent on taking over the world, building a secret society of supporters to help him achieve his ends. He's very charismatic and likeable in person, and very generous in rewarding his supporters. But he's absolutely brutal with his enemies. Once he gets his hands on them, he'll torture them mercilessly, putting them through unimaginable pain, using methods that keep them alive and prolong the pain as long as possible. He's trying to build up his base of supporters as large as he can, so one of the tasks of existing supporters is to find new people to join their secret society. And of course, they focus on the rewards part, but once the potential converts learn of the society, there's also the threat of torture. In a sense, it's kind of like the mob - as long as you're not involved at all, you can steer clear of the whole thing. But once you get caught up in it personally, you have to either go along with them, or face some type of punishment. But unlike the mob, this is a megalomaniacal supervillain, so if he gets his way, eventually there will be no possibility of avoiding his influence. Once he gets enough supporters, he'll be ruler of the whole world, and then he'll be able to put all his resources to bear on finding and torturing his enemies.

Now in real life, this would be a difficult situation to deal with. On the one hand, you'd like to imagine yourself being a hero, and standing up against the villain. But on the other hand, as long as he's not punishing you, you may just keep your head down and do the minimum he asks of you. Just look at the drug cartels in Mexico right now. If a cartel demanded use of your house for a drug smuggling operation, would you stand up to them and face being tortured and killed, or would you just go along, knowing you were cooperating with an evil force, but saving your own hide, and probably your family's as well. And when you throw in the bribes and rewards, it gets even more tempting.

Now, instead of a supervillain bent on taking over the world, imagine a god already in control of the universe, who merely keeps his presence a bit of a secret on this world in an effort to find his most faithful supporters. Otherwise, the situation's mostly the same. Suck up to him and do as he wishes and you'll be rewarded. Oppose him and you'll be punished. Only unlike the mortal supervillain, this god has the ability to make the punishment last for eternity.

Now, I know that most Christians believe God is good, and the source of love and morality and all that. But look at the methods. They're not the methods of heroes, but rather of supervillains. Eternal torture as the punishment for any finite action, and particularly for not giving blind obedience, is evil. I'm just glad that God isn't real, or I'd be faced with the decision of going along with it all to save my own hide, or opposing it but damning myself to eternal torment. Imagining the God of the Bible to be real is a pretty bleak scenario.

I know, I know. Not all Christians believe God is like this. Even if the vast majority of Christians believe accepting Christ is one of the requirements of avoiding Hell, more liberal Christians believe that God will reward good people and only punish bad people, and the more liberal yet don't believe in eternal punishment, or don't even believe in a literal Hell. If God were like those more liberal Christians imagined, then it wouldn't be such a bleak scenario. But that's not the God of the Bible, nor the God believed in by the majority of Americans. I'm still in the Old Testament in my task of re-reading the entire Bible, but the God presented there is not particularly lenient. He demands obedience, and punishes people harshly if they fail to give it to him.

Edited 2015-04-22 to fix some typos in the post script.