By Steve ~
Ohh-kay, so the past two weeks have been a fucking circus. People near my Student Union protesting abortion by showing the whole school bloody pictures of aborted fetuses - while we are trying to eat for goodness’ sake! Two preachers on the green spouting hellfire and brimstone. “True” Christians trying to do damage control and warp their own theology to fit their views. And on a national level: even worse! The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is trying to run roughshod over the reproductive freedom of women by claiming the false mantle of “freedom of religion”! People still have their balls in a bind over abortion – 40 years after Roe vs. Wade was passed. The Right is trying to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, which looks to be a decent step in the direction of providing more people in the U.S. with healthcare at a higher quality. People are still trying to prove that the separation of Church and State is a lie and that Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists in 1802 was not an important document. And I’ll tell you one thing – religion may give people structure, but that’s it! Their dogma, their ideology – it’s all HORSESHIT! Maybe Hitchens overreached when he said religion itself poisoned everything, but I can’t list more than maybe one or two religions that have toxic dogma. Religious ideology has become like birdshit – ubiquitous and annoying.
But people who make an apology for this kind of behavior by saying: “No, no, no! This is not how Christianity is supposed to be run! It’s about the pure love of God, not about sin or anything like that! Don’t listen to them!” don’t get my ear and they certainly do not get my respect. I have had to hold my tongue about this more than once – and I’m growing tired of it. Have they actually read their Bible? Do they know that they’re espousing a heretical point of view, similar to that of Marcion, who said that the OT and NT god were different gods? Do they know that scripture is fucking them over and they’re digging through a garbage dump of bad advice to find these small pearls of wisdom that they could have learned without this “sacred text”? Do they know that we don’t even have a good grasp on who Jesus was and what he said? Do they know that most of the OT is just a rewritten version of the NT, spoken primarily through the mouth of Jesus? Do they know that Paul and Jesus had diametrically opposite views about salvation and how to obtain it? Do they know that Jesus was a stooge and a jerk, certainly not worthy of my ear and do they know the Pharisees’ rebuttal to what Jesus said to them? Do they know that Jesus couldn’t even get Jewish history straight? Do they know that Jesus was, essentially, a country bumpkin? The Gospels cannot be considered authoritative texts.
But literally, a pure relationship with God means to be free of all sins and all selfish desires. Love of the self leads to sin and the only way to have a pure relationship with God is to be rid of that sin. People can NEVER have a pure relationship with His Holiness. Christianity sees sin as selfishness, so there is honestly no way to have a pure relationship with God. Sin is either “missing the mark” (amartia) or doing something that negatively affects your relationship with God. And the Biblical authors don’t like sin. The Lord is so pure that his eyes cannot look at sin! In essence, a personal relationship with God will not benefit you because God does not care if you are happy, but he damn sure cares if you are holy! A relationship with God is a master-slave type relationship; Paul often wrote about how he was a slave to Christ. Christ used slaves in one of his parables to illustrate the relationship between the believer and God. It didn’t paint a very nice picture – one slave receives mercy and although having done evil things is beaten with few stripes, but the other is beaten with many stripes! Why do you want a master-slave relationship? Is this how far a human is willing to sink for eternal life? Don’t we have more dignity than that?
As this writing draws to a close, I am reminded constantly of the almost omnipresent power of religion in our daily lives, but that power is almost always its sick dogmas. “Pray for me, I’ve got to make a decision about my summer plans!” – make your own decision! You have a brain; don’t appeal to your skydaddy and his followers, instead seek advice from those you trust, research, and make the BEST decision you can! And stop evangelizing so damn much! Most people hate that shit and it makes you look obstinate and foolish. If you want to host an Interfaith Week at my school, why the hell don’t you include opinions from those who have no faith? I don’t see any indication that you have – our view on religion is a just as valid, and probably more so than your beliefs! I see religion every damn day and for once I wish believers would take a look at themselves and realize that they don’t know who they are at all, and that those of us who are out of the bubble know them better than they could ever know themselves.
But people who make an apology for this kind of behavior by saying: “No, no, no! This is not how Christianity is supposed to be run! It’s about the pure love of God, not about sin or anything like that! Don’t listen to them!” don’t get my ear and they certainly do not get my respect. I have had to hold my tongue about this more than once – and I’m growing tired of it. Have they actually read their Bible? Do they know that they’re espousing a heretical point of view, similar to that of Marcion, who said that the OT and NT god were different gods? Do they know that scripture is fucking them over and they’re digging through a garbage dump of bad advice to find these small pearls of wisdom that they could have learned without this “sacred text”? Do they know that we don’t even have a good grasp on who Jesus was and what he said? Do they know that most of the OT is just a rewritten version of the NT, spoken primarily through the mouth of Jesus? Do they know that Paul and Jesus had diametrically opposite views about salvation and how to obtain it? Do they know that Jesus was a stooge and a jerk, certainly not worthy of my ear and do they know the Pharisees’ rebuttal to what Jesus said to them? Do they know that Jesus couldn’t even get Jewish history straight? Do they know that Jesus was, essentially, a country bumpkin? The Gospels cannot be considered authoritative texts.
But literally, a pure relationship with God means to be free of all sins and all selfish desires. Love of the self leads to sin and the only way to have a pure relationship with God is to be rid of that sin. People can NEVER have a pure relationship with His Holiness. Christianity sees sin as selfishness, so there is honestly no way to have a pure relationship with God. Sin is either “missing the mark” (amartia) or doing something that negatively affects your relationship with God. And the Biblical authors don’t like sin. The Lord is so pure that his eyes cannot look at sin! In essence, a personal relationship with God will not benefit you because God does not care if you are happy, but he damn sure cares if you are holy! A relationship with God is a master-slave type relationship; Paul often wrote about how he was a slave to Christ. Christ used slaves in one of his parables to illustrate the relationship between the believer and God. It didn’t paint a very nice picture – one slave receives mercy and although having done evil things is beaten with few stripes, but the other is beaten with many stripes! Why do you want a master-slave relationship? Is this how far a human is willing to sink for eternal life? Don’t we have more dignity than that?
As this writing draws to a close, I am reminded constantly of the almost omnipresent power of religion in our daily lives, but that power is almost always its sick dogmas. “Pray for me, I’ve got to make a decision about my summer plans!” – make your own decision! You have a brain; don’t appeal to your skydaddy and his followers, instead seek advice from those you trust, research, and make the BEST decision you can! And stop evangelizing so damn much! Most people hate that shit and it makes you look obstinate and foolish. If you want to host an Interfaith Week at my school, why the hell don’t you include opinions from those who have no faith? I don’t see any indication that you have – our view on religion is a just as valid, and probably more so than your beliefs! I see religion every damn day and for once I wish believers would take a look at themselves and realize that they don’t know who they are at all, and that those of us who are out of the bubble know them better than they could ever know themselves.
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