FreeThinkerNZ Posted September 4, 2014 Share Posted September 4, 2014 A family member shared this on FB. She's a pastor's wife. Why bother listing 99 reasons, when it can be summed up in fewer: 1. Your offering will go towards the pastor's salary. 2. Your offering will go towards missionaries' income and expenses. 3. Your unpaid work will go towards running the business that ensures money is acquired for the above. 4. Your children will be more likely to contribute money and unpaid work in the future for the above. 5. Your vote can be influenced by what you hear. http://hillsong.com/blogs/collected/2014/september/99-reasons-you-should-go-to-church-this-weekend#.VAe8_sWSxUl BTW, Hillsong Church based in Sydney, Australia is a cultish megachurch and large commercial enterprise that makes millions worldwide from selling praise and worship music. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seven77 Posted September 4, 2014 Share Posted September 4, 2014 Oooh....I want to make up some bs reasons for fun! Because sleeping at home is for the heathens. Because pews and church chairs are the best place to hide nosecrusts, ninja-style. Because it's the only place that you can get closer to God by taking a "holy" shit. Because sometimes you just wonder if everyone around you is just that desperate... 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sybaris Posted September 4, 2014 Share Posted September 4, 2014 My wife goes to church (Quaker) about once a month so I go with her cause Lowes is around the corner. Even though we're there maybe a dozen times a year it always seems like the primary message is about emptying your pockets into the offering plate. This last time the pastor even said the sermon wasn't about money but giving money as a form of worship. All the while there was this picture of an offering plate with money in it being projected on the wall behind him. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedStar Posted September 4, 2014 Share Posted September 4, 2014 Yuck, I hate Hillsong! I used to go to Planetshakers in Melbourne which is similar. We had Brian Houston preach there once. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pratt Posted September 4, 2014 Share Posted September 4, 2014 i just need ONE reason not to go to church,,,, i cannot find a talking snake 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leo Posted September 4, 2014 Share Posted September 4, 2014 RE: Finding out what we believe: This is in part why the Evangelicals found me unconvincing. I didn't know this then, but they were starting from the position of belief, and I was starting from the position of "convince me." Even after baptism, even after being committed to the Faith, and even after on some level (minus the patriarchal constructs) being committed to the duties of a Christian father and husband. Even as I read Scripture daily, and read through several commentaries to go with it: I was always looking to find evidence under every rock. Sort of how some of the dancing bear Pentecostals look for spirits under every rock, only I was looking for the sorts of evidence that could not be refuted by basic deductive and reductive logical thought flow. When they said, "Learn what you believe," if I'm honest about it, I always took it as, "I'll learn what you believe and see if it makes any sense to me." RE: hillsong, I know about these, because of some of their music. When we lived in a southern state, I was part of the worship team for awhile, on keyboards. I didn't make the cut, on some of their spirituality things. Didn't make rational sense to me for the guy to go on and on and on ... for 20 minutes .. . using spiritual jargon, to say he wanted a transition to the key of E flat between two songs. Stuff like that, couldn't hack it. They weeded me out, or rather, we mutually found incompatibility. No regrets. But, I did find one Hillsong track could be rearranged into a classical / new age fusion using the Kitaro "sound wall" style. But most of that music is quite repetitive. Other than that, and one of the college girls from a church up here went to study at Hillsong, I have known nothing of them or their movement. I didn't realize they were a sect unto themselves, as it were. The herd mentality is quite terrifying. And ironically, Christians know exactly the problems with it, because they can be quite rational and skeptical of the exact same problems which come up with Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses and others. They can talk like us, re: what happens when the person leaves, what happens if beliefs change, and so forth. To blasphemously misquote King Agrippa from the book of Acts, many of these Christians are "almost persuaded" atheist, ... almost. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seven77 Posted September 4, 2014 Share Posted September 4, 2014 RE: Finding out what we believe: This is in part why the Evangelicals found me unconvincing. I didn't know this then, but they were starting from the position of belief, and I was starting from the position of "convince me." Even after baptism, even after being committed to the Faith, and even after on some level (minus the patriarchal constructs) being committed to the duties of a Christian father and husband. Even as I read Scripture daily, and read through several commentaries to go with it: I was always looking to find evidence under every rock. Sort of how some of the dancing bear Pentecostals look for spirits under every rock, only I was looking for the sorts of evidence that could not be refuted by basic deductive and reductive logical thought flow. When they said, "Learn what you believe," if I'm honest about it, I always took it as, "I'll learn what you believe and see if it makes any sense to me." YES! That is exactly what my struggle was as well! So many of my discussions with believing friends fall under this category. I was pretty blunt in the year leading up to my deconversion. If anyone asked, I told them "I'm looking for reasons to believe. I want to know HOW and WHY, not WHAT and WHEN and WHERE." All I ever got was "Surrender to the Lord and you will see." Or some bullshit apologetics about knocking and seeking and opening doors. I've also heard "If you can be talked into faith, then you can be talked out of it." That's a common line amongst many in my old church. They are obsessed with the heart, with your intentions, with relationships above all else. Everyone has to be authentically seeking the Lord or else you are accused of being lukewarm, listening to the Enemy, etc. My thing was "I am authentically seeking; I'm just not finding anything of value here." No one argued the faith, they all just nod along like little lemmings and blame you for not "opening your heart" or some other such nonsense. I can't accept things on faith. Bottom line is, nobody really does. Not even so-called good Christians. They are suspicious and weary. They are greedy and legalistic. I remember one time I was in a financial strait and asked an older friend in the church for some help. She was nice and said she'd pray about it. A few days later, she told me that she would lend me the money but only if I signed a contract that said I was legally obligated to pay her and her husband back and that they could sue me if I violated their terms! Granted, it was a large sum of money but the point still stands: If you have faith and want to help the least of these, why the contractual legally-binding bullshit with a fellow believer? If they can't part with their precious money without doing hemming and hawing and shoving legalese in your face, that only proves my point that no one takes people at their word these days. Otherwise, we wouldn't have a legal system. We'd just trust each other to do the right thing and live like Jesus did. The herd mentality is quite terrifying. And ironically, Christians know exactly the problems with it, because they can be quite rational and skeptical of the exact same problems which come up with Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses and others. They can talk like us, re: what happens when the person leaves, what happens if beliefs change, and so forth. To blasphemously misquote King Agrippa from the book of Acts, many of these Christians are "almost persuaded" atheist, ... almost. Ba-ba, go the sheeple. Yes, Christians can be skeptical about a lot of things. Such as: socialism, vaccination, public education, environmentalism, the theory of evolution, birth control...the list could get long and messy. Rational? Rarely, in my experience. Only when you mess with their money, land, guns or livelihoods. I went to a church where modern medicine was mostly shunned, but everyone in there had an iPhone and most of them ate special gluten-free, all-organic diets. They were always panicking about something, mostly the "establishment and how it was trying to kill us". Yet a lot of them were educated people with degrees and successful businesses who were more than capable of rationally dismissing a lot of the shit they believed. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BendyLine Posted September 4, 2014 Share Posted September 4, 2014 "61. It will help develop your children’s self-confidence." Bullshit. It killed mine. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Casey Posted September 4, 2014 Share Posted September 4, 2014 It keeps our parish priest in beer. No one person could ever do that; it's got to be a community effort! Casey Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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