Ever notice how Christians have no problem telling the rest of us that we are wrong? Abortion? Wrong. Pre-marital sex? Wrong! Contraception? Wrong! Masturbation? Wrong! Not accepting Jesus as your person savior? Wrong! Etc. Etc. Etc. And according to Christian Nationalist, the secular democracy that men and women have fought and died for is wrong; the U.S. should be a Christian nation governed by Christians. We are on God’s side, so if you disagree with us, you must be working for the other guy.
OK. That’s their right. Freedom of speech and all that. Some of them even publicly thank their God for dead U.S. Armed Forces men and women.
I’d say that’s freedom of speech taken to the nth degree.
Christians have no problem telling all of us what they think of us and our beliefs. In some college right now, a fundamentalist Christian is probably telling some Jewish or even Catholic student that all their dead relatives are burning in hell and that they will burn, too, unless they accept Jesus as their personal savior. Sure, it’s hurtful hearing your deceased mother, father, brother, sister, grandfather, and/or grandmother is being tortured in hell this very second and will be for all eternity, but that’s the truth. Or, at least, their indoctrination.
Maybe it’s time Christians got a dose of their own medicine. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander (whatever that means). If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. In other words, once you use your religion to attack others, it shouldn’t surprise you if they reply in kind.
Christianity originated in the ancient Roman Empire. The Roman Emperor Constantine changed the sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. The founder of Christianity’s name was changed from Jewish (Yeshua) to Roman (Jesus is a Roman name, as is Marcus, Brutus, Aurelius, Boethius, etc.) Christianity became the official religion of the empire; it became the Roman Catholic Church, where “catholic” has meanings of universal and world-wide. And, indeed, for many centuries in many Christian countries, with some exceptions, you were a member of Rome’s universal church or you were dead.
As you would expect, any religion approved by Roman Emperors would have an easy acceptance of war. St. Augustine devised the “Just War” doctrine. Since that time, no major Christian denomination has ever declared a war unjust and forbidden its followers from participating. In the Second World War, Italian-American Catholics fought and killed Italian Catholic. German-Americans Lutherans fought and killed German Lutherans. Can both sides of a war be just? Could all the (literally) thousands of wars fought on both sides by Christians have been just? Or is acceptance of war in Christianity’s DNA? Is it a just war? Or just a war?
And then there’s the super-duper so-called “Word of God” that tells enormous lies about God. God, it says, regretted making humanity. God REGRETTED? “Well, gosh, if I had only known humanity was going to turn out like that, I never would have created it,” said God? I don’t think so. In that fairy-tale, God decides to drown the entire world slowly. Children, infants, pregnant women, the elderly, puppies, kittens, and little bunny rabbits drown. Except for all the polar bears from the Artic and kangaroos from Australia that Noah manages to get on his boat. This is a fairy tale. A stupid fairy tale that scientists know never happened.
And there’s the Passover story where God repeatedly warps the Pharoah’s free will so that Pharoah won’t free the Hebrews, giving God an excuse to torture the entire Egyptian nation with one plague after another. This particular fairy tale appears in Exodus, which has the following gem in its seventh chapter.
20 Moses and Aaron did just as the Lord had commanded. He raised his staff in the presence of Pharaoh and his officials and struck the water of the Nile, and all the water was changed into blood. 21 The fish in the Nile died, and the river smelled so bad that the Egyptians could not drink its water. Blood was everywhere in Egypt. 22 But the Egyptian magicians did the same things by their secret arts, and Pharaoh’s heart became hard; he would not listen to Moses and Aaron . . .
Moses and Aaron turn the waters of the Nile to blood and all the fish die. But the Egyptian magicians DID THE SAME THINGS. How they kill fishes that are already dead or turn the Nile’s waters to blood which are already turned to blood is never explained. But things like that happen. In fairy tales.
But all of this doesn’t matter because Christians don’t follow the Bible says. They follow what their preachers and priests tell them the Bible says. God’s super-duper book says “serpent” but the preacher says God really meant to say “Satan” and believers say “Amen.” They follow their preacher, not the Bible. As another example, Jesus plainly condemns taking oaths in the fifth chapter of Matthew.
33 “Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but fulfill to the Lord the vows you have made.’ 34 But I tell you, do not swear an oath at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; 35 or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. 36 And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. 37 All you need to say is simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.
The preacher says that Jesus really means that it’s OK to take an oath when assuming political office, joining the military, in a court of law, and when becoming a naturalized citizen. And believers say “Amen.” In fact, many believers are entirely unaware of much of what Jesus taught. As an extreme case, a man I know once asked a priest why the priest allowed himself to be called “father” when Jesus said “call no man your father upon the earth.” The priest at first denied Jesus said that. When the man found the verse, the priest proceeded to tell the man what Jesus “really meant.”
By now I expect some Christians reading this are outraged. Outraged! How dare anyone speak so plainly and frankly about their religion! Well, it’s going to get worse, so buckle up.
As the priest demonstrates, many Christians take Jesus as their Lord and Savior, but they don’t even know much of what he said. If I had a dime for every Christian who is entirely unaware of what Jesus says in Matthew 15:1-4, I’d be wealthy.
So, let’s turn to Jesus, shall we? First of all, there is Jesus as a character in New Testament stories and there is the private Jesus that people create in their imaginations. Private Jesus is much like Santa Claus—everyone can have their own idea of who he is and what he looks like. Each person’s private, personal Jesus is just as they have created him.
The Jesus of the New Testament is another character entirely. When he’s 12 years old, he stays behind in Jerusalem without telling his parents, who travel a day, finally notice he’s missing, travel back to Jerusalem, spend three days anxiously searching the city for him, finally finding him in the Temple. As the second chapter of Luke tells it.
48 . . . His mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.” 49 “Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” 50 But they did not understand what he was saying to them.
Abandoning your parents without notice, causing them days of worry, is not the act of a loving son. I’d call it a sin.
The Jesus of someone's imagination is usually perfect and God. I find the Jesus character in the New Testament to be neither. Some of what that Jesus teaches is indeed good and true. Forgiveness. Concern for others. Care of the unfortunate. Peace. They are all good things, even if they are too “woke” for many Christians today, especially Christian Nationalists.
On the other hand, some of what that New Testament Jesus teaches is wrong and injures, even kills, people today, usually children. The Jesus of the New Testament teaches that sin and demons are the cause of disease. They are not. Based on that false teaching, believers deny a sick child medical treatment and instead use prayer and casting out of demons. Search the Internet for “child dies parents religious deny treatment.” Here’s the first story I happened to see when I searched today.
A Pennsylvania couple who told police their faith forbids any kind of medical treatment were charged Wednesday in the pneumonia death of their 2-year-old daughter, becoming the latest members of their sect to be prosecuted for failing to take a dying child to a doctor.
Unfortunately, this type of thing is so common that believers have had laws enacted in many states protecting the PARENT from criminal prosecution. Apparently, Pennsylvania is not one of those states.
Thank God for Dead Soldiers? Sure, we have freedom of speech, so Christians can say that. But I don’t agree. The Bible is mostly fairy tales and the Jesus character in the New Testament is imperfect and not God. Christians don’t agree? That’s your right.
By this time, any Christian who hasn’t entirely blown a gasket is probably ready with bald assertions (“Jesus IS Lord!”), threats about the afterlife (“A God who loves you will send you to burn in a lake of fire. Forever!”), and condemnations of atheism.
Bald assertions and threats aren’t worth a response. That accusation of atheism is worth a response.
Over time, humanity has worshiped literally thousands of gods and goddesses: the Greek gods, the Egyptian gods, the Roman gods, the Chinese gods, the gods of India, of North and South America, etc., etc. Two likely conclusions follow from this fact.
- It is likely that the gods and goddesses of today’s religions are as fictitious as all the invented gods of the past which are no longer worshiped.
- It is likely that some obscure intuition motivates those inventions, an obscure intuition of Someone or Something that really exists and deserves to be called “God.”
I’m a seeker, not an atheist. Like other religions, Christianity does indeed have something good to offer. It gives people a sense of morality, a sense of God. It promotes love and offers hope. But Christianity also contains fairy tales and enormous lies about God, too. And that’s not alright. But it shouldn’t surprise. The religion that the Roman Empire devised is a man-made invention. Seen this way, Christian Nationalism IS Christianity, the dark side of Christianity, which at this moment is threatening to take over and basically dismantle our democracy.
We can’t let that happen.
