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Goodbye Jesus

Gah! My Mom Likes Evil Ot God!


VacuumFlux

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I'm in a little too much shock to properly express how I feel right now, so I'm going to tell y'all what happened because I know you'll understand.

 

My mom was complaining today that her Sunday School class has way too much of a NT-god mentality. She doesn't like how they don't understand how special it was that NT god let gentiles join the club. She greatly respects the OT guys who upheld the purity laws. The loves the story about how the Jewish men got rid of their foreign wives and children. She respects them for doing so! She's not even being oblivious to the plight of the women and children; she's curious about them and feels kinda bad for them, but that only seems to make her respect the men who "got rid of them" more. Then she went on about how other peoples knew that OT god was a powerful god, but even other people who knew weren't allowed to be jews for lots of generations. The Jews were CHOSEN. And that's why it's so special that gentiles can now get saved and join in on the party.

 

So... purity is good, xenophobia is good, divorcing wives who aren't good enough for you is respectable...

 

I can't come up with enough words to express my disgust.

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Does she wear garments of mixed fabrics? If so, there is obvious cherry-picking going on. How about stoning rebellious children? Seriously, the OT view of God is about the most disgusting, morally reprehensible deity there is out there. If she thinks the OT God is the one she prefers than why not just become an Orthodox Jew?

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Most Christians have too much of a NT mentality, especially the younger ones (at least in my experience). Trying to sell the Old Testament God is very unpalatable. I wish all Christians were required to read the Bible chronologically.

 

I'm surprised at the Christians who actually attempt to defend the Old Testament God or say his actions are "justified", including the purity laws (and all the extensions of them). When we start comparing the morals of God, Christians love to whip out a whole arsenal apologetics...and it's kind of funny to watch. It's almost like watching someone defending Dahmer -- you know he is guilty as hell, but the justifications are oh-so creative.

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It's hard to imagine what might be attracting your Mom to the hardcore OT version when she's hanging out with NT God-Lite folks. Something about wanting to feel special and elevated above others? (She's complaining, but secretly enjoying fancying herself as the special one at church who really "gets it.") Does that fit her personality? If so, kudos to you, you must have had a rough go growing up.

 

It's a very fundy church, YEC and hates gays and all. But it's one of the happiest/friendliest fundy churches I've ever been to, because the pastor truly is a nice guy so there's not the power struggles and drama I've seen in most other churches. It's almost cute to see him take some of the horrible passages in the bible and make positive life lessons out of 'em. This seems to work out because most of the people there really are sheep. I'm not sure I mean that in a bad way, just... lots of non-confrontational personalities. Which is creepy when there's that many of them in a large group.

 

So they're YEC and think gayness is a horrible sin, but are also pretty strong on the "God loves everybody, so we should be nice to 'em". They've had a lot of evangelism training that's all about treating non-Christians as humans, because when you act like an arrogant jerk people don't listen to you. Which is a step up from training people to be door to door annoyances, but creepy that it needs taught at all.

 

So it's not NT God-Lite folks at all, according to the doctrinal stance of the church. I think my mom mostly wants to feel part of an in-group, to vent with likeminded people about how horrible the world is and how amazing it is that God lets us get saved at all. She's very much the us vs them sort of christian, and is confused when her "tribe" isn't just like her. She also likes to gossip, but at least she manages to channel her gossiping into mostly being about strangers (like reality TV shows, how evil modern day society is, etc). So she tries to gossip with her in group about the evils of the world so they can all look down on non-christians together, and they're all about "but jesus loves us, let's go love everyone into not believing in evolution!"

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I'm surprised at the Christians who actually attempt to defend the Old Testament God or say his actions are "justified", including the purity laws (and all the extensions of them). When we start comparing the morals of God, Christians love to whip out a whole arsenal apologetics...and it's kind of funny to watch. It's almost like watching someone defending Dahmer -- you know he is guilty as hell, but the justifications are oh-so creative.

 

Yeah. I had issues for forever about trying to figure out morality; morality was always "what someone told you to do". Supposedly there were guiding principles that informed all these rules, but I was never able to figure them out.

 

My mom's defense of OT god are just creepy. She doesn't try to pretend like the text says something it doesn't. She figures that since god did it, it must have been right. And the morals she derives from this? Ritual purity is crazy important. That's why the stuff in the NT about "unequally yoked" is so important; see how much it mattered in the OT. I suppose she also decided that unquestioning obedience to god is vital, and if you think what he says isn't quite right, well, that's your problem. It's also allowed her to believe that every unsaved human deserves hell, even infants and people who never heard the gospel. They weren't obeying or ritually pure, and that stuff matters. (She even believes that it is likely that every aborted fetus goes to hell.)

 

Sorry for the misreading of your post! Now I remember reading your "How Long Does It Take to Heal?" post. I pictured your Mom squeezing the family in a great big group hug and not noticing that you were being suffocated in the middle. (What? You need air as well as love? Who knew?)So sad that your Mom can't be as insightful and compassionate toward you as you are toward her. It sounds really difficult, while living at home, to keep your true self from peeking out, and to avoid being provoked into spilling the beans. I hope your prospects for moving out on your own are improving.

 

Thanks. Since that other post (I should probably add an update to it), things have... stabilized. So I'll be ok to stay at home for little longer while I figure out finances. I do have local friends to lean on, and of course everyone one the boards here, to help me stay sane until I get my own place.

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