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Goodbye Jesus

Throwing Tantrums Is The Way Forward


Guest deal r

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Guest deal r

Hope it's not considered arrogant to start a topic as such a new person but this thought occurred to me regarding christians generally of the evangelical kind. When they pray, especially in those crazy big meetings they seem to think that they are more likely to get the required response if they are shouting, screaming, crying, throwing themselves to their knees, begging, punching the air etc. They imagine that they have a personal relationship with God but when they've got something that needs praying for they phone all of their fellow christians to ask them to pray too. Is God more likely to give them what they want because he is being badgered from all angles and just says yes to keep them quiet?

 

I think that we should obviously be learning our parenting skills from God, so from now on when my son is asking me repeatedly for a mobile phone I should initially ignore him if he asks nicely. I should wait until he has got to the point of summoning all his mates to assist him in the begging process. I should only consider giving in once they are lying on the floor screaming and crying, absolutely pleading with me to take pity on them. Then and only then will I consider letting him have it, (but I'll still probably say no). Important though, never let your kids have anything without making them scream for it!

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yes, in an odd twist this reminds me of the very showy type of behavior that the Jesus in the gospels condemned in the pharisees.

 

Its a constant source of amazement that an atheist like me seems to know more about the proper application of bible verses than the people claiming to be religious elite.

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they are shouting, screaming, crying, throwing themselves to their knees, begging, punching the air etc.

This is the same type of behavior that we would expect to see in patients in the psychiatric ward of a mental hospital.

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Fundies believe they are told to do this. They take Luke 11:9, "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you." and interpret it to mean "keep asking, keep seeking, and keep knocking". I've heard them do this dozens of times. It's an excellent way to explain away unanswered prayer, by the way. The side effect of this continual asking, seeking, and knocking is that you become an obnoxious person, but that's okay because that's what Jesus commanded you to do.

 

I've also heard some pastors use Matthew 11:12, "The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force." to try to prove that it's okay to be obnoxious when they pray. Of course, these same pastors were full of bullshit when it came to interpreting other passages, and there's no logical reason to apply this verse to the topic of prayer.

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"Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you." and interpret it to mean "keep asking, keep seeking, and keep knocking".

Yes, ask and it will be given to you, except when it isn't. How many times does a person with a missing arm keep praying before they realize god isn't going to regenerate their arm? :crazy:

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Guest deal r

Just out of interest did anyone witness or experience any apparent healing in a church? Probably a silly question but I'm sure people can come up with some great examples even if you can easily attribute them to hype and hysteria.

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Charismatic churches tended to make me nervous even when I was a fundy, I did go on a mission trip to India one summer where a bunch of the people in my group spoke in tongues.

 

I saw a lot of people praying for healing over the years, but never saw one answered in any dramatic way. It was usually of the type where they asked for prayer for healing because they were sick, and then a few days later after bed rest and taking some medicine they "miraculously" got well and would praise God for it. :P

 

Even at the time I remember wondering how these people could be serious.

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Yes, it's akin to the parable of the persistent widow in Luke 18. And it's also worth mentioning Luke 11:5-8, enhancing the context for Luke 11:9, referenced a couple of posts ago:

 

Then he said to them, "Suppose one of you has a friend, and he goes to him at midnight and says, 'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have nothing to set before him.' "Then the one inside answers, 'Don't bother me. The door is already locked, and my children are with me in bed. I can't get up and give you anything.' I tell you, though he will not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because of the man's boldness he will get up and give him as much as he needs.

 

I've always found this pretty obnoxious.

 

I've seen some doozie "healings" in church. Their one common theme was that they were showy and unverifiable. Leg lengthenings were very popular.

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Yes, ask and it will be given to you, except when it isn't. How many times does a person with a missing arm keep praying before they realize god isn't going to regenerate their arm? :crazy:

 

It's always "just one more prayer, really, just one more!!!11!!!!"... :lmao:

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My fundie ex-girlfriend told me about someone in her family who miraculously got cured of warts on his hands.

 

Now I've heard that warts will go away if you can somehow trick the mind into getting rid of them because the brain knows how to get rid of them but usually doesn't bother. So any kind of 'ritual' device to get rid of the warts will probably work (I dunno if this is true, it's something my Dad told me)

 

I do know this (and I told her at the time) - I had some warts on my fingers once and I went to the doctor about it. He told me they'd probably go away in a few days. Guess what - they did!

 

So if getting rid of warts is a miracle, then it's a miracle that doctors can also perform, merely through the power of words.

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Well, ye olde bible is pretty contrary when you have a verse that says go pray alone in a closet and another talking about praying with 2 more gathered. What else is new right?

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I've seen some doozie "healings" in church. Their one common theme was that they were showy and unverifiable. Leg lengthenings were very popular.

 

Why would leg lengthenings be popular? Do Christians have a theological problem with dwarfism?

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I've seen some doozie "healings" in church. Their one common theme was that they were showy and unverifiable. Leg lengthenings were very popular.

 

Why would leg lengthenings be popular? Do Christians have a theological problem with dwarfism?

 

I would imagine it's not all that hard to fake lengthening a leg.

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I've seen some doozie "healings" in church. Their one common theme was that they were showy and unverifiable. Leg lengthenings were very popular.

 

Why would leg lengthenings be popular? Do Christians have a theological problem with dwarfism?

 

I would imagine it's not all that hard to fake lengthening a leg.

Exactly so. Someone would have back problems and it would be attributed to one leg being a little longer than the other. It easily slips by unrefuted both during and after the "miracle." If the placebo effect doesn't work, it's just that you don't have enough faith.

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I experienced a "healing" back when I was a Christian.

 

When I was about 10, I developed really bad stomach problems. Couldn't eat lots of different kinds of foods. Basically, if it had grease, it would make me sick. Not just a little tummy ache, but major pain, to the point where I'd be up for hours and hours of the night, unable to sleep it hurt so bad, and I'd sometimes get so exhausted that I'd just collapse, unable to sleep or writhe anymore.

The doctors thought it was kidney stones or gallstones. I had sooooo many tests done, but they could never actually get anything to show up. It got to the point that when I was 14, my doctors decided that if I had one more of these attacks, they were going to start getting me prepared to have my gallbladder out. I was terrified.

Then there was one of those youth meetings. I went to them all the time anyway, so I didn't expect this one to be anything different. But the speaker focused on physical healing, and got anyone who desired healing to come to the altar (this was a Pentecostal church). He got us to pray, and others to pray with us. He told up to put one hand on our afflicted part, and the other hand was to stretch out to God, asking him for healing.

I've never had an attack since, not even once. I was 14 then, now I'm almost 23.

 

So that's my healing experience.

 

I don't actually know what it really was, but obviously I don't believe it was a supernatural healing, as I'm an ex-Christian atheist. And God doesn't seem to mind, as He hasn't sent the sick back to me, even though I left the faith more than four years ago.

Anyway... ramble.... :D

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Guest deal r

Hi, I asked actually cause I've got a bit of a strange story like that. When I was 11 I got pulled up to the front of a large tent meeting to have my eyes prayed for. I had really weak eyes and had had to wear glasses since about a year old. Being a well-versed fundie kid I took it all in my stride and let them get on with their praying. After they had finished I didn't give it another thought for the rest of the evening.

 

The next morning as I got up I accidentally stood on my glasses and broke them (due to sleeping on the floor of a tent at the time). I had to go straight to an emergency optician appointment as I couldn't usually manage very long without them without getting really bad headaches. It was the same optician that had seen me about a month before to prescribe me stronger glasses (yet again). He said at that appointment that I no longer needed to wear glasses and I have not worn them from that day to this. (19 years).

 

Now, what's going on there? If we are to proclaim this as evidence of God's healing power, I'm pretty disappointed in him. I'd much rather he sorted out cancer or AIDS (preferably both). The only benefit was that I no longer had to wear glasses and in any case I had to have braces on my teeth about a month later, I'd much rather have kept the glasses and not had the braces.

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Now, what's going on there? If we are to proclaim this as evidence of God's healing power, I'm pretty disappointed in him. I'd much rather he sorted out cancer or AIDS (preferably both). The only benefit was that I no longer had to wear glasses and in any case I had to have braces on my teeth about a month later, I'd much rather have kept the glasses and not had the braces.

 

deal r

 

Your posts contain uncommonly fresh ideas and your eximony was incredible (yes I read it all - welcome BTW).

 

I loved your opening analogy to this thread. Certainly I wouldn't raise my child in that way... but it makes for a good cult doesn't it?

 

Also, I would never have dreamed that someone who was healed of bad eyesight would have that kind of take on it.

 

Do you have a 'natural' explanation or perhaps a theory as to how you were 'healed'? Did you ever ask the optomitrist about it?

 

All the healings and miracles I have ever been close to were each and all numarically probable over repeated requests or subjective like leg lengthing or healing a headache.

 

However, other brethern did claim miraculous events that according to their testamony would not be numarically possible or subjective. Rarely ever did this kind of story come out of the mouth of a person who was not either given to regular exaggeration / exuberance or someone with a regular tendancy to mis-interpret events.

 

It never ceased to amaze me that when there is a church picnic and a few clouds show up, the next Sunday the story is about a huge Cumulo-Nimbus that disappates just after the Pastor wriggles and intensely squeeses out the name of "JeeeEEEsus" like he were dropping an expecially large log.

 

The real miracle is the transformation of a coincidence into a healing.

 

Mongo

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Guest deal r

Hi, sorry but really don't have a very good theory as to how this happened. All I know is that God is no better an explanation (logically) than any other of umpteen explanations that we might think up, so I'm not going to jump to that conclusion.

 

The fact that I was in a Christian meeting would make a lot of people think this way but it is contradictory to an eternally loving God who loves us all equally to think that he would consider me more deserving than any number of AIDS sufferers in Uganda, also in a church meeting singing his praises.

 

My husband said that maybe we all have the power to heal within ourselves and accessing it is just the issue since we are all God really. This doesn't really hang together either since as I recall I was just letting them carry on praying and pressing their hands on my head and I wasn't taking much notice. So, presumably it can't be the result of my positive attitude. To be honest I wasn't that bothered about wearing glasses although I am quite glad that I don't have to wear them now.

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Is God more likely to give them what they want because he is being badgered from all angles and just says yes to keep them quiet?

There's a passage in the Gospels where Jesus supposedly tell the story about 'whoever' was knocking on a judges door something like that, and kept on insisting and nagging, and Jesus made the parable to be that if you nag God in prayer, eventually he will answer. So yes, that's what some of them believe, even if they wouldn't put it the way you did, but I think you stated it very accurately though. It's prayer-answer-through-tantrums. Very good point.

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I would imagine it's not all that hard to fake lengthening a leg.

Curved spine can cause different length of the legs, and just by relaxing and adjusting the back the short leg can be stretched out. My dad suffered scoliosis and had different lengths on his legs. I had a slight scoliosis too, and slightly observable difference in lengths, until I went to a therapist. Thank Blob the Therapist healed me!

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