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  "description": "Faith, morality, and why believing in God can sometimes feel less like a question of goodness and more like a question of membership.",
  "path": "/blog/membership-fee/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-03-15T10:04:45.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:tyqadi4nl52kqm7wykhmysl5/site.standard.publication/3mmyiavqtgmpx",
  "tags": [
    "MORALITY",
    "PERSONAL",
    "PHILOSOPHY",
    "RELIGION",
    "REFLECTIVE",
    "TRANSITIVE"
  ],
  "textContent": "Agnostic means someone is sceptic towards a subject, unless the sentence has no subject, in which then it is aimed towards God. But it is usually used in place of atheist, because atheist is so riddled with certainty, that it sounds almost as dogmatically bigoted as the faith it faithfully opposes. So, usually, when someone describes themselves as agnostic, they mean that they currently, and politely, reject your God, which is the complete opposite to what I assumed it meant when I first heard the word. Growing up in the nineties, I assumed it just meant to be nostalgic towards aggression, which is the oppisite. “Why have they put a NO ENTRY sign there?” She asked.“Sorry.” he said.“Why are you apologising?” She asked.“I asked God to send me a sign.“ I am agnostic, generally, with one exception – the text. Maybe, I’d accept that some books within the bible, might have something to them – although to be honest, when I say “some”, I actually just mean Genesis, and I’m not sure if my hesitation around Genesis is a flicker of belief or just literary admiration, but I suspect it’s the latter, dressed up as the former after a long week. The rest of it though, I have issues with, well, several, in fact, – I’ve written six posts about the morality alone, so I won’t drag you through all of it again, but to briefly restate the case for the prosecution: the serpent, who tells the truth and gives humanity the gift of knowledge, is cast as the villain. The mass murder, the flood, the cities, the firstborns – not a small complaint. The requirement to sign up without question, to join on faith alone, which, if you replace the branding, reads less like religion and more like a cult. And then, as I said, the morality. Which, in fairness, the Bible does value. Proverbs praises integrity, Jesus commends mercy and justice, and so it is kinda mentioned, a lot. However, whilst it says good things about good things, and it is in the brochure, it is described as desirable, and desirable is not the same as required. The actual criteria for acceptance, the actual job listing for Heaven, is not goodness. It says plainly – not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy. The entry requirement is acceptance, faith, membership. Just pay the fee and trust the T&Cs. Morality is a nice-to-have, but the non-negotiable is belief. And part of me wants to believe, and I don’t say that lightly, – the world is full of suffering that I can’t make sense of, and there is a part of me, that desperately wants there to be something hopeful at the end of all this. Something that makes it mean something, but then I look at the terms. The morality I have, wasn’t a copy and paste from a book. I built it, with every bad decision, every time I hurt someone, every moment of guilt I had to sit with, – all of it went into the architecture. My empathy, my integrity, the lines I won’t cross regardless of whether anyone’s watching, – these were not handed to me boxed in Amazon packaging. They cost something, and yet, despite all of that, the God described in that book would not accept me. Not because I’m immoral, but because I haven’t paid the fee. Meanwhile, the people he has, over the course of the text, essentially sentenced to death – not for wickedness, but for amusement of his disapproval – those decisions trouble me. As does the consistent priority of worship above everything else. The way the entire moral structure of the universe, in this telling, is built less around goodness and more around the maintenance of ego. I hate to say it, because it sounds like a level of arrogance that would have got me killed not too long ago. But I think my understanding of people, and my acceptance of their environments as factors, is greater than what I see in the Biblical God. And if there is a God worth the title, and not just some content creator nepotism baby with low self-esteem trying to prove his own worth to the rich parents that never hugged him, I have to believe my refusal to applaud cruelty would matter. I just want something that I can trust without having to betray myself to do it. But then, I think to myself, sure, he’ll cast me to hell, and sure, I’m not overly optimistic about it. But I know – somewhere in the deep, quiet certainty of the person I’ve spent forty years building, – that as I burn for eternity in His glory, I will know, I held the moral high ground.",
  "title": "MEMBERSHIP FEE",
  "updatedAt": "2026-05-21T11:02:18.000Z"
}