Driving through Iowa recently, I saw a handmade sign along the highway, large enough to be read from a distance but not billboard size. It had only three words on it:
FEAR
GOD
OBEY
Unfortunately, by the time I visually processed it, I wasn't able to snap a photo.
I thought it was a nice distillation of some Christians' message. The maker means, I assume, Fear God [and] obey, but instead it reads as a list of the three components of this believer's world view: fear, god, and obedience (obeying) to authority.
It also made me think about how this kind of religious attitude is so clearly a superstitious remnant similar to other mythologies that Westerners smugly assume are based on extreme weather events and natural occurrences like earthquakes and volcano eruptions.
I'm an atheist, and I think all supernatural beliefs are probably rooted in prescientific attempts to make sense of the world, and that religion can have some communitarian and beneficial properties in cases where it's not exploited to personal aggrandizement and out-group persecution.
But one religion that thinks all the others are myths is all too common, and it's a bit hard to take when one member proclaims "Fear God Obey" without realizing they sound like someone trying to appease the angry sky-being to prevent a lightning strike.
Even if you are in the middle of Iowa.
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