Over the weekend I had a lengthy conversation on Facebook with a Christian who was making the typical Christian responses regarding homosexuality and other related topics. (I want to note here that the original post was made by a friend of mine at my church who is a pretty popular Facebook celebrity within my church, so lots of people were following the comments section once I got going with this guy) Invariably, this person ended up starting into the whole "Truth comes from the Bible" crap that Christians typically spew out. I started challenging him on this by bringing up the facts regarding no original copies of any book in the bible are around to confirm these "truths" and that he could be no more sure about the "truth" than someone who believes in any other religion. He challenged me in regards to the truth that science has all the answers and he argued that since science seems to always be changing its mind about things, then how can it be trusted.

We talked back and forth about this for a short while and then he brought out the whole "Jesus fixes everything wrong with us" argument. He talked about how he led someone to Christ who was struggling with depression and having family issues and was on the verge of suicide and that now that he has Jesus, this new convert's life has totally been changed and he is now doing great and has a new job and his relationship with the family is doing great, blah, blah, blah.

At this point I decided to bring up the ugly side of christianity. I made the comment that for every "success" story that you hear about Jesus changing someone's life, someone else is being let down by god. I went on to say that god doesn't answer prayers, he doesn't heal people, he doesn't make situations better in the lives of some of his followers, despite how much and how hard they try to have faith and be a genuine Christian. This really struck a chord, not with that guy in particular, but with another person who later contacted me and asked me if I could get together with him and discuss some of the questions he has been having about the same things. I agreed and we will be meeting sometime in the next week or so.

But this really got me thinking about the ugly side of christianity. About the failed prayers and the failed expectations that we placed on the god we chose to serve and devote our lives to. This ugly side is something that most, if not all, Christians have to face at sometime in their lives. But I find that most of them never really talk about it. They just accept so blindly that it just must not have been "god's will" and they just move on with their lives without processing it. What a travesty.

To me, this just speaks to how powerful Christianity is and how helpless its people are over its power. I just see this as so unhealthy. Why cant they question god? Is god so weak that he cant handle criticism and scrutiny? Christians are so afraid to offend god that they subject themselves to more harm by failing to process failures by that god they have placed so much faith in. They see these failed events as bumps in the road on the journey towards a heavenly reward. But they fail to realize that they do more harm to themselves by failing to process these anomalies by god. They think that they cant challenge god, even though several bible characters did so. Our society has produced so many weak Christian minds because I think the call to serve god by these people makes them think that god demands absolute obedience and to question it would bring death. Just another ugly side of christianity.

Christians also fail to see how the distortion of their Christian reality doesn't mesh with actual reality. These failures of god to heal loved ones or to fix a particular problem doesn't diminish their faith in god. They fail to see that time after time, it was really them doing the work to fix a problem, or that the reason that the person wasn't healed was because there is no god. They fail to see that sometimes, things just heal themselves for no known reason. That life has an uncanny way of working itself out in the long run. Without god.

Confirmation Bias. I would bet that most Christians have never heard the term. If they understood it and how it plays such a huge role in their lives, it might change the way they see things. Probably not. But I can hope.

I wish I could say that my words of truth and showing the reality of life made an impact in the Facebook conversation, but they fell on deaf ears. No argument I made was going to change the belief of someone who is so deeply entrenched in what he believes is the truth. Its sad really.

I am happy to be free from the tyranny of christianity. To be able to face life with an open mind and to be able to make of it whatever I choose is a truly freeing experience.