Taphophilia Posted September 10, 2006 Share Posted September 10, 2006 Open Minded, Literalist Christians also subscribe degrees of humanness to each other. Liberal Christians are lumped in the same non-human catagory of non-believers. Catholics view Protestants as non-human and vice versa. The degree of humanness is related to how much the other Christian faction believes the same way they do. The closer the beliefs match their own, the more humanness is ascribed. The more the beliefs vary, the less human they become. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Open_Minded Posted September 11, 2006 Author Share Posted September 11, 2006 Literalist Christians also subscribe degrees of humanness to each other. Liberal Christians are lumped in the same non-human catagory of non-believers. Yes... I became aware of this quite early in my life ... as my parents were leaving the Catholic church and then later in my own years as a liberal Christian. (sigh) The work I do with interfaith/interspiritual dialog does create a few waves in the small suburban community we live in. My pastor loves to tease me that I have a scarlet letter on my back. After awhile - those of us involved in this work have found it most productive - when dealing with the occassional fundy outburst - to take the attitude that: Shit Happens Or..... Does the devil make them do it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antlerman Posted September 11, 2006 Share Posted September 11, 2006 Does the devil make them do it? Honestly, if I became convinced of a God and a devil, then my vote would definitely be on that option. They are the least spritual of Christians. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Open_Minded Posted September 11, 2006 Author Share Posted September 11, 2006 Does the devil make them do it? Honestly, if I became convinced of a God and a devil, then my vote would definitely be on that option. They are the least spritual of Christians. Well.... then me thinks.... Ex-C should come up with an exorcism ritual... Oh... stop ... hold the horses...... Ex-C IS an exorcism ritual. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NotBlinded Posted September 11, 2006 Share Posted September 11, 2006 How can a person think (and I use the word "think" intentionally) like that? They don't know that there is another way to think. I didn't, but when it hit me, I was laughing and crying at the same time. I was so happy that there was another way to think, I laughed out loud. I was so saddened that I never realized it, I cried. P.S. I loved that post by Alice. It was awesome. I never have knee jerk reactions. I am Mr. Calm. I really agree though...it does take alot for you to go You're usually more like Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sithprincess Posted September 17, 2006 Share Posted September 17, 2006 I always loved the way people changed the reason WHY things happened: If you were in "God's Will" (never did fully grasp how to get there) and bad things happened, then God was testing you. If you were "backslidden" then he he was punishing you and getting your attention to bring you back to him. My fear was always that he would hurt someone close to me. As a teenager, the Sunday School teacher I had instructed us all that if we strayed too far away from God for too long, he would try to get our attention, and if it didn't work, in the end he would "take us out". And, if we put someone higher on our list than God, then he would "take them out". This stuck with me for a VERY long time, until I realized there had never been any scriptural backing for that statement. And indeed, I have never seen a verse of Scripture saying that. I can't believe I never questioned this stuff for years..! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xrayman7040 Posted September 18, 2006 Share Posted September 18, 2006 If you ever want to come to the vast realization that SHIT HAPPENS at random, just spend 12 years as I have working at a level one trauma center with a children"s cancer ward. You see people praying everywhere, and a steady stream of clergy people coming in and out of the hospital. If there is a God he doesn't give a rat's ass about the sick and wounded whether young or old. Last year about this time just outside my little town in Michigan, a house blew up and killed six children. The parents were visiting friends when the house blew up. They are a very devout family. One year later they had an artile in our paper on how the family is coping today. The father stated he trusted fully in God, that this happened for a far greater purpose. I am very jealous of someone who could deal with such a tragedy and remain sane, but that type of thinking is just totally fucked up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bluescreen Posted September 18, 2006 Share Posted September 18, 2006 Ugh... the whole literalist view of ascribing everything to God or Satan is one of the things that drove me to a series of nervous breakdowns. It takes so much energy to look at life that way, scrutinizing every tiny event to discover who's behind it. Everything's a coded message from some invisible entity or another. I found that, while it's comforting at first to think that everything that happens is God's will, in the end it's the cruelest knife in the heart. When my life went to shit, I spent two damn years trying to figure out WHY, what purpose lay behind it, why God was doing it - was it to test me, like Job? Did I have some horrid unconfessed sin? Had I not surrendered my life to Him (despite repeatedly offering myself as His instrument)? Had I misinterpreted His path for me? Was the Devil attacking me? Had I strayed and He was trying to call me back? I wound up like the pitiful schizophrenic who scours thousands of pages of newspapers every day looking for the secret messages from the aliens. Eventually, I had to say enough was enough. Now, I'm more of the mind of "shit happens." It's not ideal, but it's far less painful than thinking I'm being tormented by supernatural entities for reasons that I can't seem to understand no matter how hard I try. I think it's scary to a lot of people just to say "shit happens," since there's no guarantee of a happy ending for them then. They have to admit that, at a certain cosmic level, they (or their omnipotent divine proxy) have no real control. No safety net. I've noticed a lot of people can't seem to handle that, so for them, imagining an invisible hand behind every event is less traumatic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OnceConvinced Posted September 18, 2006 Share Posted September 18, 2006 Shit happens. God leaves us to our own devices and we have to cope with the shit that happens. The continuous excuses for God were one of the things that made me start to reject the Christian faith. If you're good and bad things happen = God is testing you. If you're good and good things happen = God is blessing you. If you're bad and bad things happen = God is punishing you If you're bad and good things happen = God's grace is upon you. There's always a bloody excuse for everything. I could never understand why my non christian sister was getting all the breaks in life, travelling the world and getting high paying jobs and here me and my other sister were begin good faithful Christians and getting no where and never seeing our dreams fulfilled....... Shit happens. Bad luck and Good luck. That's all it was. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xrayman7040 Posted September 18, 2006 Share Posted September 18, 2006 I think what the two about posts also illistrate is the fact that life just isn't fair. Good people will have very shitty things happen to them whether Chrisian or not, and sometimes total assholes will get all the breaks. Sometimes the bad shit that happens to us is the result of our own bad decisions and sometimes it's totally out of our control, but one thing for sure is that there is not God running the show. My wife has a cousin who is a devout Catholic in her 40's. She lost her beloved husband a couple years ago to a rare lung disease and the poor bastard didn't even smoke. Now she herself is having very severe health problems. She just thinks God is testing her. I want to grab her by the scruff of the neck and say to her, "WHAT MORE FUCKING PROOF DO YOU NEED THAT THERE IS NO GOD?" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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