Original sin
“Lot and His Daughters” - a 17th century oil painting by Jan Brueghel the Elder depicting the story of Lot and his daughters, Genesis 19:30-38. Lot is in bed with his two naked daughters as the world burns in the background.
Warning: contains discussion of suicide, incest, sexual abuse of children, trauma, religion
I wish my parents hadn't birthed me. I didn't ask to be alive, and it feels like the greatest violation of consent that I was forced to do so. Then to add injury to injury, they filled my head with all this shit that I now have to deal with! I can’t remove the parts of my brain that are infected, so instead I tear myself apart trying to reshape them.
I was raised Roman Catholic. I was baptised, first communion-ised and confirmed by a religious organisation that just admitted to abusing more than 200,000 children in France since 1950 alone, in addition to all the other thousands of children they abused elsewhere. I was never abused by a priest, but I was traumatised by one.
A 1998 photograph of Ward in a white first communion gown in front of the fireplace in a living room.
I remember my parents taking me to a family mass at the Most Holy Trinity Church in East Hampton, New York, Montaukett territory. The priest told us that the devil wanted to kill us and that God was saving us, that every time we did something bad we were risking that protection and that every day we should be grateful for God’s grace. I remember how strongly it contributed to a pervasive feeling of being watched and judged, of shame and guilt, worry and terror.
Roman Catholicism doesn’t want you to think too hard about the story they are selling. Despite taking “confirmation classes” we spent fairly little time reading The Bible. The passages we did read were pre-selected set-pieces, like the ten commandments and some bits about Jesus. The King James Authorised Bible is over 780,000 words long - they are not really looking for you to read it, they just want you to trust them about what it means (Martin Luther was on to that scam).
It only took reading a small portion in my highschool English class for me to abandon the religion in an instant. The passage was from the first book of The Bible, Genesis (19:30-38). Here is the passage:
Lot and his two daughters left Zoar and settled in the mountains, for he was afraid to stay in Zoar. He and his two daughters lived in a cave. One day the older daughter said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is no man around here to give us children—as is the custom all over the earth. Let’s get our father to drink wine and then sleep with him and preserve our family line through our father.”
That night they got their father to drink wine, and the older daughter went in and slept with him. He was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up.
The next day the older daughter said to the younger, “Last night I slept with my father. Let’s get him to drink wine again tonight, and you go in and sleep with him so we can preserve our family line through our father.”
So they got their father to drink wine that night also, and the younger daughter went in and slept with him. Again he was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up.
So both of Lot’s daughters became pregnant by their father. The older daughter had a son, and she named him Moab; he is the father of the Moabites of today. The younger daughter also had a son, and she named him Ben-Ammi; he is the father of the Ammonites of today.
That story is so awful, you’d think it would end with something like ‘and then God sent a meteor down to punish them for their wrongdoing’ or at least ‘and this was a bad thing Lot’s daughters did’, since Lot’s wife is turned into a pillar of salt for “looking back” at her destroyed hometown in a passage before this. Even though the story of Lot’s daughters is meant to insult the Israelites’ rivals, the Moabites and Ammonites, the actions of Lot, his daughters, and God are all presented as good and reasonable.
What child could possibly be worth raping your father for? It's inconceivable to me. So not only does the story make no sense, but it also has an awful message. That was the end of my relationship with religion.
In a way, science filled the hole that religion left in me. Now that I was an atheist, the universe was all big bang and primordial soup. There is no watcher, nor test to get into heaven, there are only atoms interacting with each other for eternity.
Unfortunately I’ve found this belief system to be the opposite of comforting. If the earth has existed for 4.5 billion years, and modern humans have only existed for 300,000 years, and I am only going to exist for ~100 years, what is the fucking point of me enduring all this pain?
I remember in science class the teacher doing a timeline of the history of the earth, I think by spreading their arms and equating the time humans have been around to the length of a fingernail. I’m suffering just to be part of a fingernail? A footnote to a footnote to a footnote of the history of our planet, let alone our universe.
The sky full of stars seemed dead and cold, everything in it the result of the mechanical, indifferent interactions of molecules and particles that would continue for the rest of time whether Lyra lived or died, whether human beings were conscious or unconscious: a vast silent empty indifference, all quite meaningless.
Reason had brought her to this state. She had exalted reason over every other faculty. The result had been - was now - the deepest unhappiness she had ever felt.
- The Secret Commonwealth by Philip Pullman
I have a fundamental belief that it is not possible for anything I do to matter, because it’s not possible for anything humans do to matter. I spend so much conscious time and energy challenging this belief in different ways, because it is a danger to me. Because I feel pain everywhere, and I want it to end.
