HitchWithMe Posted May 12, 2013 Share Posted May 12, 2013 I know lots of Christian believers who “know better” than to behave in the ways outlined in the Bible. They know that God is angry, vengeful, jealous and violent – even while occasionally commanding his people to do or be the opposite. Believers perceive that God is less like a secret santa in the sky than an all powerful toddler who hands out terminal judgment when left without perfunctory praise. And yet this God is still insisted upon to be the living stream from which morality flows. While believers attribute their goodness to God, I attribute it to their humanity despite the brutal, yet childlike behavior Bible exhibited by their God throughout the scriptures. The trend that I see most damaging in Christianity, at least in my own perspective, is in this lack of trust of humanity’s morality. Some of the most moral people I know believe that every good thing they have ever done comes only from God. I think this is a tragedy. When I look at the continuing lives of both my grandfather and my father, I see people who have whole-heartedly tried to be the best person they can be while using every fiber of their being to do so. I have also seen in them a fantastic example of as how to treat all people with dignity and respect. If one was to ask either of them how they have been successful in this or ask them why they have lived ‘good’ lives, they would probably use language that invokes the supernatural elements of Christian deity. And for this I cannot sit idly by and swallow. All good things come from God, the psalmist says. This is a very convenient notion because god becomes the necessary agent due thanks and praise if people take the psalmist at his word. If something is bad, it can therefore not be of god. We cannot call anything good without invoking deity and any good thing we do cannot be attributed to our own sweat, determination, or carefully formed character. But when we read the scriptures, we see plainly the morality of a god that demands child sacrifice, orders genocide of unarmed people, and lays out specific expectations for respectful and loyal behavior of slaves. Believers know that this god is not fit as a moral example, let alone a giver of moral law. When such wealth of immoral material comes directly from the source of what is supposed to be the fount of moral goodness, believers often find themselves in the same corner I did when forced to deal with the obvious. I had a friend who kept a picture of Jesus on the wall of her office. The picture had been left there by a pastor who previously occupied the space. The visual representation of this Nazarene was just as cliché as you would expect from a man leading a sizable church. While still a believer, I would walk in and greet the picture aloud as “Swedish Jesus,” and promptly chuckle. It was funny to me because the Jesus represented in that picture seemed unreal to me, even while still faithful. I had made in my mind, a Jesus I could live with. This was a Jesus who understood people in their twenties and scoffed at my Grandma’s Jesus who was just a product of her upbringing and culture. What I didn’t realize is that my Jesus was just as much a fallacy as the Swedish Jesus that someone had out to canvas and hanged on that office wall. All of Christianity has revealed itself to me as an extension of this idealized notion over the past few months. It’s all one big cheesy, smiling, Swedish Jesus hanging on the wall; a two dimensional inanimate object incapable of breaking into our realm of reality in which actions, motives, goodness, and beauty occur independent of him and without his consent. Swedish Jesus is a freeloader that leeches the humanity out of humanity; he takes credit for all the good anyone has done for his fellow man while piling the blame of evil in the world back onto the shoulders of the creation for whom he supposedly cares for deeply. Jesus is like the celestial equivalent of the bastard Wall Street banker; any good that comes forward he privatizes and claims for himself but the messy stuff of humanity is thrown back to the masses as communal debt. I want to see my family members come to their full potential and I don’t think this is possible if they blame the ills of their own lives on their own perceived “sinfulness” and negate the good done by saying it was not they who did it but God working through them. I think the whole of humanity could come one step closer to its full potential if it would do the same. I have hope that we will have the courage to do so. But if we are to succeed…Swedish Jesus, the whole of him, has to go. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
◊ crazyguy123 ◊ Posted May 12, 2013 Share Posted May 12, 2013 This post reminds me of something that I heard in church today (yes I'm still going and pretending to believe). The pastor was saying that the believers needed to become more like "God" through their faith and when he said it, it almost made me laugh. "Yeah, that's never going to happen, sir. No decent human being could possibly be like your god, regardless of how much faith they have." The Swedish Jesus and the "teddy bears and rainbows" Jesus have both got to go because they are the type of Jesus a lot of people have chosen to believe in. The "real" Bible Jesus was a Lunatic Jesus or a Liar Jesus, but certainly not a nice man, with white skin, who taught only good things about love to everybody, like quite a few believers want to believe. Most of the believers are either ignorant of the crazy things in their Bible or when they read them, they choose to just ignore those things entirely. I was one of those Christians who did that. Even though I knew the nasty stuff was there, I just ignored the stuff I didn't like and was ignorant of some other nasty stuff that I had not read about before. The nasty stuff that I did not ignore, I just thought that it must have been good because "God" could not be anything but good. Actually thinking about this for myself critically and coming to realize that there were things that were wrong in the Bible led me to learn more about the Bible than ever before and it helped me more and more to realize what a load of crap it was. If everyone gave up a belief in the Swedish Jesus or the "teddy bears and rainbows" Jesus, people would finally realize that the good things they do are their responsibility, not some invisible being that keeps itself hidden or the spirit of a Jewish rabbi that died thousands of years ago. It's just sickening that people still give credit for the good things they do to some higher being that has not been proven to exist and accept all of the credit for the bad things they do. When they do this, it makes them appear to be terrible people, in their minds, when they are not, and it places a psychopath of a god on a pedestal as a being that never does anything wrong and only does good. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HitchWithMe Posted May 12, 2013 Author Share Posted May 12, 2013 This post reminds me of something that I heard in church today (yes I'm still going and pretending to believe). The pastor was saying that the believers needed to become more like "God" through their faith and when he said it, it almost made me laugh. "Yeah, that's never going to happen, sir. No decent human being could possibly be like your god, regardless of how much faith they have." The Swedish Jesus and the "teddy bears and rainbows" Jesus have both got to go because they are the type of Jesus a lot of people have chosen to believe in. The "real" Bible Jesus was a Lunatic Jesus or a Liar Jesus, but certainly not a nice man, with white skin, who taught only good things about love to everybody, like quite a few believers want to believe. Most of the believers are either ignorant of the crazy things in their Bible or when they read them, they choose to just ignore those things entirely. I was one of those Christians who did that. Even though I knew the nasty stuff was there, I just ignored the stuff I didn't like and was ignorant of some other nasty stuff that I had not read about before. The nasty stuff that I did not ignore, I just thought that it must have been good because "God" could not be anything but good. Actually thinking about this for myself critically and coming to realize that there were things that were wrong in the Bible led me to learn more about the Bible than ever before and it helped me more and more to realize what a load of crap it was. If everyone gave up a belief in the Swedish Jesus or the "teddy bears and rainbows" Jesus, people would finally realize that the good things they do are their responsibility, not some invisible being that keeps itself hidden or the spirit of a Jewish rabbi that died thousands of years ago. It's just sickening that people still give credit for the good things they do to some higher being that has not been proven to exist and accept all of the credit for the bad things they do. When they do this, it makes them appear to be terrible people, in their minds, when they are not, and it places a psychopath of a god on a pedestal as a being that never does anything wrong and only does good. Or by his nature makes something we know to be bad and immoral "good" because it was done by him. I was watching a youtube video of the athiest experience when a theist backed himself into a corner with this kind of thinking. When it was all said and done the theist was asked, if god had ordered you to kill a 4 year old girl would you do it. His first response was to say no but when he realized that an answer like that negated his own belief system - he changed and said he would. Apparently he was more willing to negate his own morality rather than his clearly broken belief pattern. When they pressed him further asking how he could say such a thing he responded by saying that a 4 year-old girl was just as sinful as any adult and might very well deserve to die. And this is when faith moves beyond harmful and adds a dash of tragic. Believers are so willing to save face for an immoral god that they would tarnish the innocence of a child to maintain their point. This is a sad sad thing. By the way, the host of the show called this person a piece of shit before promptly hanging up on him...I doubt it will cause any pause for refelction on the theist's part. Thanks for your thoughts! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
◊ crazyguy123 ◊ Posted May 13, 2013 Share Posted May 13, 2013 This post reminds me of something that I heard in church today (yes I'm still going and pretending to believe). The pastor was saying that the believers needed to become more like "God" through their faith and when he said it, it almost made me laugh. "Yeah, that's never going to happen, sir. No decent human being could possibly be like your god, regardless of how much faith they have." The Swedish Jesus and the "teddy bears and rainbows" Jesus have both got to go because they are the type of Jesus a lot of people have chosen to believe in. The "real" Bible Jesus was a Lunatic Jesus or a Liar Jesus, but certainly not a nice man, with white skin, who taught only good things about love to everybody, like quite a few believers want to believe. Most of the believers are either ignorant of the crazy things in their Bible or when they read them, they choose to just ignore those things entirely. I was one of those Christians who did that. Even though I knew the nasty stuff was there, I just ignored the stuff I didn't like and was ignorant of some other nasty stuff that I had not read about before. The nasty stuff that I did not ignore, I just thought that it must have been good because "God" could not be anything but good. Actually thinking about this for myself critically and coming to realize that there were things that were wrong in the Bible led me to learn more about the Bible than ever before and it helped me more and more to realize what a load of crap it was. If everyone gave up a belief in the Swedish Jesus or the "teddy bears and rainbows" Jesus, people would finally realize that the good things they do are their responsibility, not some invisible being that keeps itself hidden or the spirit of a Jewish rabbi that died thousands of years ago. It's just sickening that people still give credit for the good things they do to some higher being that has not been proven to exist and accept all of the credit for the bad things they do. When they do this, it makes them appear to be terrible people, in their minds, when they are not, and it places a psychopath of a god on a pedestal as a being that never does anything wrong and only does good. Or by his nature makes something we know to be bad and immoral "good" because it was done by him. I was watching a youtube video of the athiest experience when a theist backed himself into a corner with this kind of thinking. When it was all said and done the theist was asked, if god had ordered you to kill a 4 year old girl would you do it. His first response was to say no but when he realized that an answer like that negated his own belief system - he changed and said he would. Apparently he was more willing to negate his own morality rather than his clearly broken belief pattern. When they pressed him further asking how he could say such a thing he responded by saying that a 4 year-old girl was just as sinful as any adult and might very well deserve to die. And this is when faith moves beyond harmful and adds a dash of tragic. Believers are so willing to save face for an immoral god that they would tarnish the innocence of a child to maintain their point. This is a sad sad thing. By the way, the host of the show called this person a piece of shit before promptly hanging up on him...I doubt it will cause any pause for refelction on the theist's part. Thanks for your thoughts! Was it Matt Dillahunty who called the caller a piece of shit? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HitchWithMe Posted May 13, 2013 Author Share Posted May 13, 2013 As with all true artists - you can recognize them just by the fruits of work. Yes it was indeed Matt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesG Posted May 13, 2013 Share Posted May 13, 2013 LoL I love it when matt does that. Although I think he walks just the right balance between being an asshole and a swell guy As in the above video he keeps giving the caller all the outs in the world to save face but the caller just couldn't do it had to go with the ugh ugh ugh must kill 4 year olds I mean for heavens sake the caller could have just said I don't think god would ask that of me because god knows I don't have the will to do such a thing. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RipVanWinkle Posted May 14, 2013 Share Posted May 14, 2013 No disrespect intended, but I don't care where a person thinks the good things she/he does come from as long as they are truly good. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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