Terrorism Of Love

[Kurari]

I decided to go to my roomate's 1st Baptist church today. I got invited to their 4th of July picnic yesterday which was very nice, and then decided I wanted to come to a service today just to check it out since I don't know anything about Baptists.

 

And a quick disclaimer, I was raised in an atheist/agnostic household with religion geeks, briefly converted when I was 7, got WAAAAAY too confused, tried becoming everything from Pagan to Buddhist, was a devout general god follower, eventually realized my parents were right with the help of this website, and now I'm simply an atheist religion geek myself. So since church wasn't part of my life growing up, I'm doing my geek thing and visiting church services now and again to learn a bit more about the world I live in.

 

Anyway, things were rolling right along, when they started asking for prayers for a family that goes to the church. Seems the son of a couple of members, Matt, met a girl he's been seeing almost a year now in college named Nadja...who's from a devout Muslim family. Seems Nadja decided two weeks ago to do a lateral move and become a Christian.

 

You can imagine how well this is going over with her family. Apparently they've threatened to kill Matt, commit violence against his family, and do horrible things to Nadja in order to "cleanse" her for her transgressions.

 

Then came the prayers, which seemed to be a moment of silence and anybody who wanted to speak, could. What do I hear? A lot of:

 

"Thank you for bringing Nadja to the One True God, please bless her and Matt in this time of need"

 

"God, thank you for making us as White as Snow, and showing us your love, please protect Matt and Nadja from the Devil's influence..."

 

"Dear Lord, help show Nadja's family the path to Jesus, and bring them to the light."

 

I felt literally sick to my stomach. I'm sure this is basically what's being said in Nadja's family mosque. I felt horrible for these two poor kids who can't even enjoy something so basic as falling in love without a hell of a lot of the Hatred of God piled on them in the name of Love.

 

Go seeking the truth, you find some ugly, ugly shit.