Skip to main content

Slamming the Door on Jesus

By Carl S ~

Matthew 10: 34-36. “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A man's enemies will be the members of his own family.”

I found a connection between lessons of personal experience and the lessons of history. I was watching, “The Real War of Thrones: The Wars of Religion,” online at Curiosity Stream. It was about wars fought for dominance by Christian denominations, with thousands upon thousands killed. And it wasn't only between nations dominated by different interpretations of what the one true faith meant. They were also within nations. In England, Queen Elizabeth I, the Protestant, was conflicted against her Catholic sister Mary, Queen of Scots. Then there's Catherine de Medici in France, one moment issuing a decree guaranteeing the religious rights of Protestants, and the next, rescinding the decree, re-starting their slaughter. Also, in France, there were two royal brothers belonging to different faiths, one Catholic, the other Protestant. While one brother's armies slaughtered Catholics, the other's slaughtered Protestants. If a king or queen changed from one sect to another and back to the original, each time it happened it was woe to those who did not belong to the preferred sect! These were Ages of Faith.

Protestant, Roman Catholic, Calvinist, Huguenot, etc.; each claimed to be the “one true faith,” and each used the same scriptures held in common to justify their tortures, enslavements, and slaughters. Many became martyrs, each dying horribly for their chosen faiths. That Jesus claim of “sword, not peace” extended outside families, as the flames of faith were devouring nations. After all the destruction, bloodshed, and torturing, did they prove who was right, who was wrong, or were they all wrong? You know the answer. They were wars fought over opinions. My friend wisely refers to them as wars fought over hearsay.

What was the ultimate outcome of Jesus' “sword, not peace?” Well, after those decades of wars fought in face-to-face-combat, of persecutions, tortures, burnings at the stake, beheadings, and so on, God couldn't stand it any longer, so he, in his compassion and peace-making, revealed which is His One True Faith, didn't he?

I remember a time years ago when I thought of gathering some of my commentaries into a small book. While doing this, I found one from 2009, describing our experiences with two families staying at our place during their vacation. Two of the members were my wife's fundamentalist brother and his wife. With my usual trusting candor, I sent a copy to her brother. I had a very good reason, since I thought he should know my wife's and my feelings due to the disruptions they caused our household. (At one point, our lives were endangered.) I thought that was the end of it, but no. He just had to phone my wife and get her very upset. I told her “if he has something to say, he should say it to me, and leave you out of it.” From here on out, it was only greeting card communication with him. It wasn't until the next morning I remembered the Matthew verse, and gave it to her. I don't know what effect it had, but the message was clear to me: Jesus wanted my wife and me to split up.

An internationally famous book written by a native African, “Things Fall Apart” refers to that Matthew quote, and it's a memorable part of it. It's a history of what happened to native African villages, families, and their co-existence traditions after the arrival of Christian missionaries.

There are to date 33,000 Christian denominations. Each one is the true one. Except for the fact the Islamic, Hindu, and Hebrew faiths are the true one. There have been religious wars and persecutions between and amongst the religions themselves, from their beginnings. So, what did they prove? What are they proving now?

We're still having to live with traditional fears hostile and immune to reason, those mind-set mighty fortresses with drawbridges that resist being lowered. Are those within the fortresses living in fear of the outside? Are they so enclosed they're prisons for the minds inside them? I don't have the answers. Maybe you can explain. I have reached total agreement with Chris Hitchins: Religion poisons everything. I refuse to expose myself and my wife to poison any longer.

This does not stop me from making remarks to de-poison people. We can sometimes get through with reason, so it doesn't hurt to try. I can never forget the day a woman in her forties stood on my doorstep and started to quote from the bible. I told her men lie, men wrote the bible, so they might have lied writing it. She said that might be true. Now, I don't know about you, but this is the only experience I've had of a believer respecting an opinion to concede, “You may have a point there.” (It wasn't an original point; I got it from someone on this site.) She said she had to go, but would be back. I won't hold my breath.

My wife's fundamentalist brother did send me a letter of reply. I know what that means. We've been over that territory many times: believers take any criticism of their faith personally and then the automatic human reactions kick in. True believers are left with a conflicted situation: Sure, “true” Christians may hate me for challenging dogmas they hold sincerely, as if I mean them to be personally hateful. But their faith forbids them from saying “I hate your guts” They're in a corner, obligated to “hate the sins and not the sinner.” And then, too, one “must forgive to be forgiven.” To me, this “We forgive you, sinner.” sounds superior and condescending. (Does this make faith prideful?)

I don't mind frustration if there's a chance of positive results, but I'm wasting my brain on him and his kin. I can't get past their fears. I can offer them examples, but I can't explain to them what it means to be free in mind and thought. It doesn't work for those who aren't already free; they can't understand. Even the persuasive arguments of the Enlightenment have not yet reached them. Fortunately, they are in the minority.

I shredded his reply, unopened. He could have tossed mine in the trash; I told him more than once. If he or my beloved ever asks why, I'll turn it around and say, “What would you do with letters from the Witnesses, Mormons, Scientologists, etc.? I have the same reasons, and more. Think about that.”

I must have peace in my own house. No one gets hurt and Jesus' sword is scrapped as far as my household is concerned. He, if there ever was a “he” who said that, can kiss my butt.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Are You an Atheist Success Story?

By Avangelism Project ~ F acts don’t spread. Stories do. It’s how (good) marketing works, it’s how elections (unfortunately) are won and lost, and it’s how (all) religion spreads. Proselytization isn’t accomplished with better arguments. It’s accomplished with better stories and it’s time we atheists catch up. It’s not like atheists don’t love a good story. Head over to the atheist reddit and take a look if you don’t believe me. We’re all over stories painting religion in a bad light. Nothing wrong with that, but we ignore the value of a story or a testimonial when we’re dealing with Christians. We can’t be so proud to argue the semantics of whether atheism is a belief or deconversion is actually proselytization. When we become more interested in defining our terms than in affecting people, we’ve relegated ourselves to irrelevance preferring to be smug in our minority, but semantically correct, nonbelief. Results Determine Reality The thing is when we opt to bury our

So Just How Dumb Were Jesus’ Disciples? The Resurrection, Part VII.

By Robert Conner ~ T he first mention of Jesus’ resurrection comes from a letter written by Paul of Tarsus. Paul appears to have had no interest whatsoever in the “historical” Jesus: “even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, we know him so no longer.” ( 2 Corinthians 5:16 ) Paul’s surviving letters never once mention any of Jesus’ many exorcisms and healings, the raising of Lazarus, or Jesus’ virgin birth, and barely allude to Jesus’ teaching. For Paul, Jesus only gets interesting after he’s dead, but even here Paul’s attention to detail is sketchy at best. For instance, Paul says Jesus “was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” ( 1 Corinthians 15:4 ), but there are no scriptures that foretell the Jewish Messiah would at long last appear only to die at the hands of Gentiles, much less that the Messiah would then be raised from the dead after three days. After his miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus—an event Paul never mentions in his lette

Christian TV presenter reads out Star Wars plot as story of salvation

An email prankster tricked the host of a Christian TV show into reading out the plots of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Star Wars in the belief they were stories of personal salvation. The unsuspecting host read out most of the opening rap to The Fresh Prince, a 1990s US sitcom starring Will Smith , apparently unaware that it was not a genuine testimony of faith. The prankster had slightly adapted the lyrics but the references to a misspent youth playing basketball in West Philadelphia would have been instantly familiar to most viewers. The lines read out by the DJ included: "One day a couple of guys who were up to no good starting making trouble in my living area. I ended up getting into a fight, which terrified my mother." The presenter on Genesis TV , a British Christian channel, eventually realised that he was being pranked and cut the story short – only to move on to another spoof email based on the plot of the Star Wars films. It began: &quo

ACTS OF GOD

By David Andrew Dugle ~   S ettle down now children, here's the story from the Book of David called The Parable of the Bent Cross. In the land Southeast of Eden –  Eden, Minnesota that is – between two rivers called the Big Miami and the Little Miami, in the name of Saint Gertrude there was once built a church. Here next to it was also built a fine parochial school. The congregation thrived and after a multitude of years, a new, bigger church was erected, well made with clean straight lines and a high steeple topped with a tall, thin cross of gold. The faithful felt proud, but now very low was their money. Their Sunday offerings and school fees did not suffice. Anon, they decided to raise money in an unclean way. One fine summer day the faithful erected tents in the chariot lot between the two buildings. In the tents they set up all manner of games – ring toss, bingo, little mechanical racing horses and roulette wheels – then all who lived in the land between the two rivers we

Why I left the Canadian Reformed Church

By Chuck Eelhart ~ I was born into a believing family. The denomination is called Canadian Reformed Church . It is a Dutch Calvinistic Christian Church. My parents were Dutch immigrants to Canada in 1951. They had come from two slightly differing factions of the same Reformed faith in the Netherlands . Arriving unmarried in Canada they joined the slightly more conservative of the factions. It was a small group at first. Being far from Holland and strangers in a new country these young families found a strong bonding point in their church. Deutsch: Heidelberger Katechismus, Druck 1563 (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) I was born in 1955 the third of eventually 9 children. We lived in a small southern Ontario farming community of Fergus. Being young conservative and industrious the community of immigrants prospered. While they did mix and work in the community almost all of the social bonding was within the church group. Being of the first generation born here we had a foot in two

Morality is not a Good Argument for Christianity

By austinrohm ~ I wrote this article as I was deconverting in my own head: I never talked with anyone about it, but it was a letter I wrote as if I was writing to all the Christians in my life who constantly brought up how morality was the best argument for Christianity. No Christian has read this so far, but it is written from the point of view of a frustrated closeted atheist whose only outlet was organizing his thoughts on the keyboard. A common phrase used with non-Christians is: “Well without God, there isn’t a foundation of morality. If God is not real, then you could go around killing and raping.” There are a few things which must be addressed. 1. Show me objective morality. Define it and show me an example. Different Christians have different moral standards depending on how they interpret the Bible. Often times, they will just find what they believe, then go back into scripture and find a way to validate it. Conversely, many feel a particular action is not