Religious Content - Tumblr Posts
Crowley lives under near-constant critical despair, openly disparaging heaven, finding reasons to be disappointed in God as a coping mechanism for the fact that it was him who disappointed Her first.
And I love that, I really do. As someone who grew up mired in evangelical Christianity and left it behind, I understand how you can miss it, wonder why you weren’t good enough to just do what you were told, why you had to ask all of these QUESTIONS until you suddenly found yourself down this other path far away from the God who grew up with–but at the same time recognize how absolutely abusive that sort of religion is. To ask for unquestioning, blind loyalty in the guise of killing your son, oh, but not really, so it’s okay is not okay. To turn the story of Lot’s wife into a parable about the dangers of doing something so human as looking back is not okay. I mean, we were told that a story where God lets Satan fuck Job’s entire life just to win a bet was about how we should be content not ever knowing why God does things (the ineffable plan, anyone??) A faith that demands unrelenting, unquestioning, absolute obedience is NOT OKAY.
I love that Crowley’s story, though, is to find someone he can believe in, with Aziraphale, with humanity, so that he doesn’t need God anymore. And Aziraphale isn’t demanding his loyalty through manipulative means–he’s not forcing Crowley to do what he says. That’s most clear in the scene where he has the flaming sword and a more definitive means of threatening someone, but looks down at Crowley and tells him that he’ll never talk to him again instead. (I mean, yeah, you can read that as guilt, but clearly it’s just a plain fact of their situation.) Crowley finally gets a healthier relationship after a 6000-year-long rebound period.
All through the series, God is the target of Crowley’s despair: he prays, he snipes, he picks, he rages. He understands he’s a disappointment, and he wants to believe that he doesn’t care about that, but he obviously, obviously does. That’s just… so relatable it hurts. But at the end, he’s content to hand that all off to Aziraphale and humanity, finds their flaws infinitely more worth Crowley’s devotion than God’s ineffable perfection.
Because losing God doesn’t have to mean losing your faith, and that was a thing I really needed to hear.