Do You Groan At Preachers Now?

[bird28]

My grandma was watching xtian preachers on tv yesterday, and one of them said something like:

 

"Some people say they would not worship a God that would send people to Hell just for not believing. I say that they should be worrying more about where they are going than who they are going to worship"

 

Anyway, he ended it with that, he was preaching a sermon on Revelations and the Lake of Fire. Anyway, just wow at what he said.

 

Any more examples from you guys?

[ebonileigh]

I am an Australian resident and we don't have any tv preachers here, not that I am aware of, I know they used to be on in the early hours of the morning years ago on an old tv channel that doesn't exist anymore. And since I'd never set foot in any church ever again I don't hear their nonsense.

However, if I think back to years ago, I can still hear all the old verbal diahorrea coming from the pulpit, in my head. And it makes me sick, and worse, how could I have been so irrational and stupid to sit and endure all that shit for so long, so many wasted years, precious time.

They are still there brainwashing further generations, perpetuating their lies and destruction. Damaging minds and lives, and even though one heals over time, it never really goes away, as is evidenced over and over again by so many posts in these forums here at ex-c.

 

I love it here, I just wish I had found this site several years ago when I was going through my debunking and deprogramming process, I could have used the support that is given here by so many ex-christians who have walked the same or similar path.

[erehe]

Yep, every time idiotic statements come out from their mouths (which is pretty much all the time).

 

I've deconverted some 7-8 years ago but I still haven't explicitly told my family about it. I still go to church and attend buy-bull studies even if it feels like torture. Sometimes, I struggle to keep myself from laughing out loud on what the pastor is saying because it's just too stupid.

 

What I don't get is how my family, especially my parents, could listen to the crap the pastors are spouting. I think that its safe to say that they (my family) are fairly intelligent people but once the topic of religion (or what they call a "relationship") comes up, they completely throw away all logic and reason down the drain.

[OnceConvinced]

Oh yeah, I do. I'll sit there in disbelief wondering how anyone could preach such crap and even more disbelief that I used to be inspired by that crap. It makes me laugh now. I'll go along to my parent's church sometimes and just pick apart the sermons in my mind. It's one way to entertain yourself while all that drivel is being preached.

[★ Citsonga ★]

Oh yeah, I do. I'll sit there in disbelief wondering how anyone could preach such crap and even more disbelief that I used to be inspired by that crap. It makes me laugh now. I'll go along to my parent's church sometimes and just pick apart the sermons in my mind. It's one way to entertain yourself while all that drivel is being preached.

+1

 

I very rarely go to church anymore, but that pretty much describes when I do go.

[Seeking]

I had to sit through a few Sundays at my parents' church when I last went to visit them. On one particular Sunday, the pastor read Luke 3:1, which says, "Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip was tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene," [....]

 

He gave a brief overview of each of those people listed and how they fit into the history and politics of the time. But when he got to Lysanias, he said that historians have shown that Lysanias was killed by Marc Antony years earlier than this account by Luke! He then said, well, "Lysanias" must either be a dynastic title [even though NONE of the others listed were dynastic titles, and Luke gave no indication that he was switching to dynastic titles] or it must be another guy by the same name in the same position years after the Lysanias who was killed by Marc Antony.

 

His reasoning was that "Luke wouldn't have made an error like this, and besides, he was guided by the Holy Spirit."

 

But, but...history shows that Luke was wrong!!! How can you continue to explain it away and just say, "Well, we know it has to be true, so there must be another explanation, even though we have historical proof that it's wrong, but it can't be wrong, so it must be true...." Ugh.

[★ Citsonga ★]

I read ya loud & clear, Seeking. That kind of shit bugs me too. They wouldn't let someone of another religion get away with such nonsense.

[Carmen]

In church a couple of weeks ago, my pastor was reading from a passage in 1 Timothy 2 that had a couple of extremely sexist verses in it:

 

"11A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. 13For Adam was formed first, then Eve. 14And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. 15But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety."

 

He skimmed over the whole thing, quickly mentioning that it mean that childbearing is just ONE WAY that women can be saved, and that the verse didn't actually mean that all women were meant to have children.

 

Talk about twisting the words. You can bet I groaned.

[★ Citsonga ★]

In church a couple of weeks ago, my pastor was reading from a passage in 1 Timothy 2 that had a couple of extremely sexist verses in it:

 

"11A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. 13For Adam was formed first, then Eve. 14And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. 15But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety."

 

He skimmed over the whole thing, quickly mentioning that it mean that childbearing is just ONE WAY that women can be saved, and that the verse didn't actually mean that all women were meant to have children.

 

Talk about twisting the words. You can bet I groaned.

 

Another thing that gets me about this passage is the way it says that Adam wasn't deceived but Eve was. From a logical standpoint, then, that would make Adam MORE responsible, since he would have been the one REBELLIOUSLY disobeying, while Eve was simply TRICKED into disobeying. Yet the passage still wants to pin the blame on Eve. Talk about twisted!

 

Of course, in the original story in Genesis 3 it's actually gawd who lies to Adam & Eve, not the serpent, but that's another issue.

[nightflight]

Another thing that gets me about this passage is the way it says that Adam wasn't deceived but Eve was. From a logical standpoint, then, that would make Adam MORE responsible, since he would have been the one REBELLIOUSLY disobeying, while Eve was simply TRICKED into disobeying. Yet the passage still wants to pin the blame on Eve. Talk about twisted!

 

Adam was a hero; he didn't want Eve to be banished alone.

[oddbird1963]

Whenever I hear a fundie preacher preach it usually makes me groan.

 

Stories? None that I really want to make the effort to re-tell.

 

I think it all stems from the fact that all these cocksure podium strutters think they can actually tell people what God is going to do. Yet the level of their discourse is so populist and crowd-pleasing.

 

They take a book (collection of books) from which you might be able to glean a few good insights about the human experience of bronze age and iron age people and torture it and force it to be a contemporary authority on everything from personal growth to marriage to potty training. Ok. I was exaggerating on the potty training bit.

 

The whole reach of the fundamentalist enterprise is so impossibly ludicrous that I can't help but groan. Frankly, I'm sick of the whole thing and desperately crave a higher level of discourse on truly important matters than what fundies or even many progressive Christians can offer.

[bird28]

I can't listen to it more, I had to leave the room today, grandma is listening to xtian tv again:

 

Some random guy told a parable about how a guy broke a sheep's leg to make it obey him. The moral of the story: God sometimes inflicts us so we obey.

 

Charles Stanley: Something to the effect of "It is a weak religion that relies upon armies and frightening people into obedience." So umm... what about the Crusades and umm... Hell???

[Guest Valk0010]

On the phone with a preacher, he told me that there is roman documentation of declaration taxes by the government to be collected of the people that rose in Matthew 27:52's mass resurrection.

 

This was almost a year ago. Have yet to found that mentioned anywhere

 

Even William Lane Craig, says that he thinks that the passage could be apocalyptic in nature(read didn't actually happen).

 

The entire conversation in hindsight was a bit idiotic. The arguments he had sucked, but I was so green as to not call the bullshit.

[oddbird1963]

Charles Stanley: Something to the effect of "It is a weak religion that relies upon armies and frightening people into obedience." So umm... what about the Crusades and umm... Hell???

 

That is what the US Military is doing to it's own members: Commanders coercing underlings into church attendance. And fundamentalist religion is nothing but frightening people into obedience. Pot calling kettle black? Much?

[Autonomous]

Yep. Went today and heard the same old "We don't expect enough, we should expect miracles and God to do amazing things, revival is coming" crap that basically destroyed my old church a few years ago (no one sticks around after years of hearing that preached and the church staying as tiny as ever). Yawn.....

[Llwellyn]

"Some people say they would not worship a God that would send people to Hell just for not believing. I say that they should be worrying more about where they are going than who they are going to worship"

 

This is exactly backwards. You should choose what you will worship first and then face the consequences -- whatever they may be -- later. Supposing Yahweh is omnipotent -- if His ideas of good are at all different from ours, what He calls “Heaven” might well be what we should call Hell, and vice versa. On the other hand, if you choose to worship Goodness, no hell that others can inflict upon you can take the idea of Goodness out of your heart.

 

Viktor Frankl: "In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way – an honorable way – in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. "

[Llwellyn]

That is what the US Military is doing to it's own members: Commanders coercing underlings into church attendance.

 

Not really. Of all places I've experienced, the US Military is perhaps the easiest place to be a non-believer. No Superior of mind has ever even asked me my religion, much less tried to coerce church attendance. Christians here are in the minority and do not talk about their religion in the work/training/battlefield environment. Yes, I have heard about allegations from the Air Force Academy, but I think that was an isolated case and not representative of the broader military.

[Galien]

I used to groan when I was in church. I grew sick and tired of the bullshit from the pulpit I heard over and over again. Pack of snake oil salesmen, lucky to be one genuine one out of every hundred. I have ptsd now from my church experiences. Sometimes when I hear tv preaching I am fine, sometimes I am crying and shaking before I know it. I hate what churches have done to christianity, and if there is a god I suspect he does too.