Becoming Children of God
MAY 14, 2026
I’ve been thinking about the power of belief, of faith, its ability to inspire us, to bring us together for collective action. Of course, belief, faith, or ideology can easily be used to inspire or justify murderous collective action. Still, just because belief and faith can be misused doesn’t mean it has no use.
I was raised Catholic and though I no longer attend church, I still consider myself to be a Christian. By that I mean I believe in the Beatitudes, I believe in Christ as a man of peace, I remain inspired by the Gospels and by Christ’s parables. I don’t concern myself with the intricacies of dogma and doctrine, debates about the right time and form of baptism, whether it’s transubstantiation or consubstantiation. Those debates don’t worry me, and indeed I find them distractions from the central message of peace, charity, love.
In the bad old days, I was taught salvation outside the Catholic Church was unattainable. This strikes me today as nonsense. Whatever salvation exists in this world of ours is available to anyone with a kind, loving, and generous heart. Even Protestants! (Just kidding, my Protestant friends.)
My opposition to war is based in part on its murderous waste but it’s also grounded in my sense of right and wrong, which in itself is based on what I learned reading the Gospels. Anyone who finds support for aggressive warfare and killing in the New Testament is preaching heresy of the worst kind.
You have to admire Jesus the man, who came to help beggars, to heal the sick, to comfort the afflicted. Jesus in his day hung out with workers, fishermen, and the like, and he was remarkably open to giving women from all walks of life a place at the table. (Not an openness that was adopted by the Roman Catholic Church, mind you.)
What concerns me is the extent to which the power of faith and belief is being twisted and almost monopolized by so-called christians who are thirsty for war, power, and money. There is far too much emphasis on apocalyptic visions and end-times prophecy and not nearly enough on core tenets such as loving thy neighbor.
I don’t think it’s wise to cede Christianity to the zealots who use it as a kind of sanction for men like Donald Trump. Again, the misuse of religion doesn’t mean that religion has no use.
I’ve never tried to proselytize, never tried to convert anyone. To me the efficacy in any system of faith or belief is the good works it inspires. Many people throughout history have drawn deeply from a well of faith and belief to change the world for the better. Think here of Martin Luther King Jr. or Mother Teresa or Dorothy Day, among so many others.
It pains me to see evangelical ministers praying over Trump in the White House because I believe in the separation of church and state. I also believe religion and faith should not be tied to any one nation or political party. Those who misuse religion — well, let us judge not, lest we be judged. But I’m not going to turn away from the New Testament because it’s being cited and misused by fools, the power-hungry, and heretics.
Christ’s Beatitudes are easy to understand and should form the core of any faith that labels itself as Christian. Getting back to that core should concern all Christians everywhere.
The Beatitudes
And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him:
2 And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying,
3 Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
5 Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
6 Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
7 Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
8 Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
9 Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
10 Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.
12 Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.
Along with this bonus passage:
43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
46 For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?
47 And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?
48 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
Of course, Christ’s teachings here are incredibly demanding; no human can be perfect. They are meant to be aspirational—they are meant to be arduous, in fact unattainable, and that is their point. We must strive to be better, we must believe we can be better, we must have faith in ourselves and our ability to do better, knowing we’ll fall far short of perfection.
The idea or the belief in a better, more humane, more compassionate, world is fundamental to making it so, however imperfectly or incrementally we achieve it.
Faith can help move mountains; a twisted faith may remove mountains, as in an apocalyptic nuclear war. A faith based on love of neighbor, a humble faith, a faith built on respect for life and that celebrates peacemakers as the children of god is surely a faith that is worth celebrating. Or so I believe.
And if you think religion is gibberish, or if you believe it is insidious and harmful, I take no offense. It’s not organized religion itself that motivates me: it’s the basic teachings of love, tolerance, compassion, and the rejection of hatred, murder, greed, and war. Plenty of people who reject the idea of a higher power are guided by morals and ideals that are consistent with the better angels of our nature.
It’s not about being a holy roller, and it’s certainly not about being holier than thou. It’s about reverence for life—a love of life in all its forms. For if we truly embraced a love of life, how could we possibly justify the pursuit of mass death that is so painfully manifested in America’s incessant imperial warmongering?
In God We Trust? A warmongering state makes a mockery of that motto. Yet why do the self-avowed Christians connected to Trump embrace war so tightly to their chests? Some would say this is why religious faith is so dangerous. But just because someone says they’re born again doesn’t make them children of God. Make peace and then I’ll call you a Child of God. Make war and I’ll call you a warmonger.
With some trepidation, I welcome your comments. (Wouldn’t it be something if comment sections showed compassion and generosity of spirit?)
Bracing Views 
Please forgive the takeoff on your opening line, but I’m in a mood, while also illustrating what you say, albeit in a negative context:
“I’ve been thinking about the power of belief, of faith, of worship of the dollar, its ability to inspire us, to bring us together transactionally, utilitarianly, to exploit, to take from others, whatever opportunity opens up before us.” Thus spake Trumpathustra.
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I am an atheist and though I admire what Jesus said, most important of all to me is the Golden Rule because it is down to earth, applicable to all situations and cannot be denied since none of us want to feel pain or experience hurt while having it in our power to determine how we treat others.
The fundamental problem with Jesus’ teaching is his proclamation of an afterlife, the “good news”. At the time that he lived, so little was known scientifically that the opinion of one person was just as likely to be right (or wrong) as that of any other. That there was a god that created the world seemed logical in explaining the wonder of the natural world that functions so well that the powerful impression of design demands a designer.
We now know that the designer was, as Richard Dawkins put it so well, a blind watchmaker; evolution.
The concept of a Judgement Day was just as satisfying, if not more so, than the idea that one could have eternal life. With the widespread despair at the fall of Rome, is it any wonder that Christianity took off? When life was short bringing discomfort if not pain to all, inexplicable in the pre-scientific world, how comforting to think a god would make everything right in the end.
But it was make-believe for which we have no evidence, an imaginative creation that was wildly popular and spread around the globe. Jesus in a very real sense was the savior of mankind by taking the thoughts of so many off of unbearable reality, most recently evident among American slaves.
We are informed now or should be by science that has brought us comfort as it has ended ignorance. Your opening paragraph properly indicts us in that for all that we have won from the use of reason, we plunder the natural world for all the stuff that makes up the artificial world we inhabit and take a pass on being the stewards of the planet that our species alone can be.
Able to know with virtually infinite information available, we seek entertainment and distraction rather than knowledge, the wonder at the world that remains as wondrous as always is gone in favor of the wonders of technology that remove us ever further from what is real, like the ground beneath us and the sky above us, into the artificial world of the smartphone; the dog-walker ignoring not only the dog but the beautiful day as attention is fixed on a tiny screen, thumb scrolling.
Plato believed that the life of the philosopher was the best life. He defined a philosopher as one who contemplates the world, not to put this contemplation into words because it is ineffable, but simply to be in a constant state of wonder at the fact that things are as they are.
I think of this when I consider that for all we know of the universe, this one planet of ours is the only one with life though there are billions of galaxies each with billions of stars. Science tells us that the odds of ours being the sole residence of life are infinitely small yet so far that is the case.
Every one of us knows this yet to be falsified fact but most of us behave as if the Earth is just one of many cornucopias that can be used up and discarded for another. To know and not act on that knowledge, is that not stupidity? The most intelligent creature acting dumb as a rock. So much nature gives us at birth, none we do anything to earn or deserve and we grow into unthinking adults whose primary effort in life is to consume, constricting the world the next generations will enter.
If there really were a judgement day, would even one person get past the Pearly Gates? Jesus lived a sustainable life. His comments reveal his wonder and admiration of the natural world (consider the lilies of the field). I look around me every day and see no evidence that anyone takes Jesus’ life as a model while well-to-do “Christians” gather around a plunderer to bless him in prayer.
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Thank you for going there, Bill. Worthwhile and well done.
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