I Thought About Going To Church This Morning, And Then I Opened Up The Bible, And I Remembered Why I Am No Longer A Christian.

[Johnny Smith]

I woke up this morning feeling particularly downtrodden, for lack of a better word.

 

In my Christian past, I would let "God" be my solace, and church would become the place to escape. I found myself almost in that old pattern again this morning.

 

I even muttered a brief prayer. "Ok, God. If the Bible is your word, I am going to open a passage in the Old Testament. Let your word calm me."

 

I opened up the JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh to Jeremiah 6:6 -

 

And raise a siegemound against Jerusalem

She is the city destined for punishment;

Only fraud is found in her midst.

As a well flows with water,

So she flows with wickedness.

Lawlessness and rapine are heard in her;

Before Me constantly are sickness and wounds.

Accept rebuke, O Jerusalem,

Lest I come to loathe you,

Lest I make you a desolation,

An uninhabited land.

 

Thus said the Lord of Hosts:

Let them glean over and over, as a vine,

The remnant of Israel.

Pass your hand again,

Like a vintager,

Over its branches.

 

To whom shall I speak,

Give warning that they may hear?

Their ears are blocked

And they cannot listen.

See, the word of the Lord has become for them

An object of scorn; they will have none of it.

But I am filled with wrath of the Lord,

I cannot hold it in.

 

Pour it on the infant in the street,

And on the company of youths gathered together!

 

So much for being calmed! Reading this passage was like reading hate-filled propoganda from fundementalist Muslim clerics in the Middle East! I was paricularly offended by the last two verses:

 

Pour it on the infant in the street,

And on the company of youths gathered together!

Wait, is this Osama Bin Laden speaking on behalf of Allah, or Jeremiah speaking on behalf of the God (Jehovah) that I once thought was filled with such compassion and mercy?

 

In order to snap myself into reality and compare what I had just read with other scripture, I opened a copy of the Qur'an and read a verse in the book, Al-Baqarah, Section 24, vs. 191:

 

And kill them wherever you find them, and drive them out from where they drove you out, and persecution is worse than slaughter. And fight not with them at the Sacred Mosque until they fight with you in it; so if they fight you (in it, slay them. Such is the recompense of the disbelievers.

 

So, in my devotional this morning I learned the following from the Bible and the Qur'an:

 

1) Kill infants, youth, and elderly people because of the wickedness of the city they live in.

2) Kill disbelievers.

 

Oh, what a glorious day...

 

Johnny Smith

[Knightley]

Yeah it takes a while to get out of your xian mindset and xian habits, since I decoverted in late 2004, it took most of 2005 to get rid of them. It really amazes me how fast change can happen and how much I've changed within a year. Give yourself time. One of these days it'll be nothing but a distant memory.

[KT45]

Hey!!! Maybe god is real and he/she was speaking to you and saying "Don't read that crap! It's not even me! See all that crap in it. I wouldn't do any of that!" Praise God!! He saved you from believing the babble!!!

[Thurisaz]

Yup, that was just Loki pointing you to the truth - that he wrote that fucking book as part of his greatest prank ever

 

(Lurking fundies: Go ahead, prove me wrong! )

[BlueGiant]

There are reasons why I love Bibliomancy. If nothing else, it does tend to give you a new perspective on what you are thinking about.

[Trancelation]

I know the feeling. Sometimes, the 'calling' is overwhelming. But then I read the Bible. Sometimes, I land on something great that Jesus says. But then I remind myself that I'm capable of being good without Jesus' help, so there's no reason for me to become Christian. Sometimes, I land on something bad Jesus says. But then I remind myself that Jesus proved incapable of proving his own claims, becoming angry and childish when others questioned him. So again, there's no reason to become Christian. Why bother being a member of the organization if the president cannot follow his own rules?

[Curtdude]

This knee jerk reaction takes time to heal. Don't worry. I always remind myself that the world can be a great place, far from the misery that my years in christianity taught me was in store for most of the human race.

[Amethyst]

I think that if most Christians actually read their Bibles from cover to cover, word for word, and not just the bits that the church tells them to read, they'd deconvert. Of course, most people are lazy and want to be spoonfed.

[OnceConvinced]

I read through the bible once as a kid, just so I could say I had read the whole thing. A lot I would never have understood or even attempted to understand. Since then I have only ever read NT and any scriptures given as part of a bible study, sermon.. that sort of thing. I totally agree that the majority of Christians never fully study the complete bible and that most only read what they are encouraged to read by church leaders and other Christians. They completely miss out all the controversial stuff. I can't believe how much of that there is now that I look at the bible with an open mind.

[Lorena Rodriguez]

II totally agree that the majority of Christians never fully study the complete bible and that most only read what they are encouraged to read by church leaders and other Christians.

 

I will add that, nowadays, people don't even read their bibles in church, at megachurches anyway.

 

The 2 or 3 bible passages the preacher uses are Powerpointed on large screens, so the holy people don't even have to bother flipping through the pages.

 

Yes, it is very comfortable to believe nowadays.

[Toxic]

I totally agree that the majority of Christians never fully study the complete bible and that most only read what they are encouraged to read by church leaders and other Christians. They completely miss out all the controversial stuff. I can't believe how much of that there is now that I look at the bible with an open mind.

 

Exactly, although I'd been brought up as a christian I never read (or was enouraged to read) the Bible from cover to cover. When I pointed out some of the inconsistensies and absurdities to my mother she said I was just "nit picking"

[OnceConvinced]

I will add that, nowadays, people don't even read their bibles in church, at megachurches anyway.

 

The 2 or 3 bible passages the preacher uses are Powerpointed on large screens, so the holy people don't even have to bother flipping through the pages.

 

True. People tend to get irritated having to flick from one scripture to the other. And not only that, but chances are the speaker will have a totally different version of the bible than you, so you can't actually read along with it. PowerPoint is great, because you don't have to turn to anything.