If I Hear Jesus Loves You One More Time...

[Hierophant]

The statement "Jesus and/or God loves you" absolutely makes me mental. I say this because I hear it or I read it from Christians all the time. This phrase gets tossed at those "in the game" when they are struggling with theological issues such as hell, suffering on earth, or many other reasons when believers are having doubts. It is an emotional appeal to prevent people from doubting too much. I also see it get thrown to unbelievers when they are being proselytized. In general I think it is well intended, but some people out there may have no one in their life and really think this is a chance to be loved deeply, and for reasons I will get into, they are going to be seriously disappointed.

 

When I was a believer (I would definitely identify myself now as a agnostic, but I lean more towards Deistic Agnostic than Atheistic Agnostic), I attended a few community churches and there was a lot of talk about how much Jesus wanted to help you, to maximize your potential (in a godly way, i.e, full submission to God's will), or really to become the wholesome person God created you to be. It sounds really good and I was drawn to it. Not only was it about fully submitting to Christ for healing, mental or physical, it was also taught to extend love to others. To really love and view others as Jesus loves them. Strangely enough, it was this line of thought that started to make me really question what was going on.

 

Hell was always a bothersome concept to me. Just the idea of eternal suffering leaves a foul taste in my mouth. When I first got into Christianity, I was in Iraq in 2003. It was the wild west and death was presented to me as it had never been before. The reality of death had hit me. I am not sure of everyone's experience, but growing up, people know about death, but it seemed surreal in many ways, i.e, it happens, but to other people....that kind of idea. Well, when really faced with the reality that death is for everyone and it is never far away, I panicked. Growing up in America, all I knew was Christianity, and so the only idea I had of the afterlife was of course, hell or heaven. In my desperation to avoid hell should I be killed, I converted and went all in. I was baptized in a pool in Iraq, the whole nine yards. At this time though, I only cared I personally was not going to hell, where everybody else went was not my problem.

 

Instead of feeling totally at peace related to that experience, I instantly started to have psychological problems. Consider this, my religious experience was based on fear, or the fear of hell, so now, anytime I would think the wrong thing or commit a sin, I would freak. It was completely unhealthy and I just attributed it to demonic attacks since I now had Satan's attention because I was seeking God. There is a form of PTSD that deals with intrusive thoughts. This is a fairly broad category and I can tell you I started to have issues with the religious aspect as well as others I will not get into because quite frankly, it is not something I want to talk about, ever, with anyone. The stress from these intrusive thoughts was overwhelming and borderline crippling when it started.

 

After we returned from the deployment, these intrusive thoughts continued. Over the years it eased up, but damn, it was just a drain on my psyche.

 

I mention this because it plays a part in the idea that Jesus loves us so much. I mean really, he loved me so much that he let me go through 14 years of psychological anguish.....thanks, I am feeling the love. The thoughts themselves were awful, but behind it, I kept questioning my salvation and whether or not I was in good standing, and so on, ad infinitum. Another aspect worthy of mention would be the constant questioning I went through. Am I believing the right thing? Is Jesus a pacifist - should I leave the Army? Calvinism vs. Arminianism, who has it right, what exactly is God all about? Should we keep the Sabbath? Is Christmas and Easter pagan; not to be observed? Was Paul a false apostle? You get the idea, the questions were endless and everyone thought they had the truth because the Holy Spirit taught them and that was the end of it.....hubris extraordinaire. I never had that confidence, I did for a while when I was Calvinistic and naive, but then I started to read more and things got off track.

 

After years of the back and forth, I never really settled a particular denomination. If you asked me my thoughts, I would have some basic apologetic lines I could throw out, but I questioned everything I thought to be true and could never settle on any one thing. How could I? I have no idea what God wants.

 

One of my breaking points was early in 2017. Prior to that, I started to embrace the idea of loving your neighbor as yourself. I did some good deeds in the past, but I only did them to avoid hell. Shoot, that was my whole theological makeup, do stuff that will not get you sent to hell, whether you like it or not. Over time, I was getting worn down with the idea of just avoiding hell. I wanted to be like Jesus, where he enjoyed doing the right thing. I did not want to live a struggle to be righteous, I wanted to enjoy it. When I really started to embrace loving your neighbor as yourself, the idea of hell was just repulsive. Instead of only thinking of my eternal future, I considered everyone else as well and I could not stand it. On a few occasions, I started to dry heave because the idea was just too much to stomach. This is when the doubts really started to rise up.

 

At the end of the day, you know who could have ended all my anxiety and just told me exactly what was expected? God. He could have, but apparently I am not worth the time. Months ago I pleaded with God just to come down and tell me exactly what I was supposed to believe and what behavior was expected....just an hour of his time was all I asked (I even offered to take care of the catering). Naturally, I got nothing.

 

This idea of love is just a bizarre to me. Most people reading this have likely heard this in their life, "Jesus loves you more than any other human could possibly love you." I find that to be absolutely bogus and hearing it makes my blood boil. Whenever I talk with people about this I always use this example to help them see my position:

 

"If you were in a position to where you were going to judge someone's life, and your decision would determine where they were going to spend eternity, whether that be external bliss or eternal punishment, would you not explicitly state what was on the line and EXACTLY what they were to believe and do?"

 

Normally I make it personal and I will use their spouse or child as the one they are going to judge; every time, the individual(s) agree they would all do the aforementioned. Okay, so tell me how God loves me more than any human could. That example alone shuts that argument down. I love my son more than God supposedly does and I know it.

 

Look at all of the suffering in the world, people are really hurting - emotionally, physically, holistically. You name it, it is going on somewhere. I have often thought to myself, if Jesus is up there, he could be the superhero everyone longs for. Imagine if Jesus showed up every time there was about to be a murder, rape, child abuse, or any other number of travesties that occur in our world. People would go nuts for him. "Jesus saves seven children from drowning" (this happened a few years ago, seven children did drown after a tornado hit Oklahoma, but a Bible landed in the back of a pickup opened to Isaiah....so, win there*), "Jesus stopped parents from raping three year old", et cetera. Who would not love Jesus? Only those who were really dedicated to wickedness would be put off, but the majority of humanity would be going crazy over this guy.

 

Now I will say this, perhaps we in the 21st century have a skewed view of what biblical love is. I know agape love is self-sacrificing love, which I get. I can understand that to a degree, but when I look behind that idea, I see this:

 

 

JP Holding runs a site called tektonics.org. He would argue that most people (and he is right) have no idea how the ancients would have understood the message at their time. He makes a valid point, but if you look at the early church, they did some really compassionate things that I would liken to our idea of love (taking in abandoned babies for example). Along with that, there are multiple times in the OT and NT where is says God is love (self-sacrificing), full of mercy and compassion, loving-kindness. It does not take a scholar of ancient societies to pin down what those words mean. They are all trying to sell an idea and I think most people get it.

 

JP further states that Jesus is not your friend or your buddy. I agree, most ancients would not have understood that to be true. He argues that a relationship with God is likened to a patron-client. We are the clients and God is our patron; this idea would portray God as more aloof and not easily accessible by the average Joe. Again, I understand that idea and it makes sense, until you start reading in the Bible how God has personally counted the hairs on your head, and you are of more value than two sparrows. It has to be one or the other. If God is mostly aloof and uncaring, fine, I am okay with that. No kidding, if he flat out said "I am God and anything you have, good or bad, is because of me," I can respect that and I would actually be okay being in the game so to speak.

 

If God was completely involved and loving as we are led to believe, then I have to be frank, I would expect to see a lot more involvement in making sure we humans knew what was expected. I was talking to a friend the other day and I mentioned that it is difficult to believe the claims of Christianity because it has human hands all over it, just like every other religious claim out there. Humans have made up stories about other gods, dying and rising saviors, the list goes on. While none of them may be exact parallels, let's call a cat a cat, there are plenty that are fairly similar. It becomes a case of special pleading where the claim is, "yes, all the other religions are bogus and lies, but this one is true." Well, based on what? The Bible was written by men, we cannot prove the Holy Spirit was behind it. We hear stories passed onto us by men. It becomes a matter of subjective feelings experienced by men (Will Lane Craig always defaults to the inner witness whenever he debates on the veracity of Christianity).

 

I went on to tell him that if God would send a talking deer or fish, then I would definitely be inclined to hear what this deer or fish had to say. God being God, this should be a fairly easy task (Balaam had a discussion with his donkey). I have to restate it because it seems unavoidable and important to the topic at hand: I suppose I am not worth the time or effort to do such a thing. In theory, God knew the position we would be in within the 21st century. Why did he not accommodate to ensure we could make sense of it all if God truly wants all to come to repentance? Think about it, God could have set up a system where no matter what angle we chose to investigate Christianity or aspects of it, everyone always came to the same answer. Now that is an indication of divine influence. What if even unbelievers investigated and even if they did not believe, were still inclined to concede that is indeed where the evidence points. That would be something I could sink my teeth into.

 

This has rambled on long enough. If you happened to make it this far in the writing, the next time someone tells you Jesus or God loves you maximally, feel free to roll your eyes.

 

*I got this from Seth Andrews on YouTube. I can relate to that guy.

[mymistake]

Nice essay.  I completely agree.  Though I do not recommend arguing with believers unless you are trying to stop them from discriminating against a minority.  I just don't see the point in talking to believers for the sake of changing their mind.  However if one was getting in my face about the love of Jesus my go to comeback would be:

 

"If Jesus/God loves me then he would not have literaly built a raw sewage factory inside my body.  That kind of curse is something you do to people you hate."

 

 

 

 

Edit: typo

 

[Hierophant]

@mymistake I generally do not argue with believers. The friend I mention is just a good friend of mine and we talk about religion for the sake of discussing the various aspects of different religions. He used to be in the church, converted to Islam, left that, went Universalist Unitarian for awhile and I am not exactly sure I could describe what he believes now. Something along the lines of natural theology or close to it if I had to define it. Of all the discussions I had regarding my topic, I only share it with others who are seeking and have questions themselves or are open to what I have to say. Never would I bring it up to be combative, mainly because I know individuals who want to argue it are not in a place where they are actually open to the idea, they just want to argue a position.

[Astreja]

My usual response to "Jesus loves you" is something to the effect of "If you don't mind, mortal, your god is at liberty to tell me that in person and doesn't need you as its middleman."

[readyforchange]

6 hours ago, TinMan said:

 

I went on to tell him that if God would send a talking deer or fish, then I would definitely be inclined to hear what this deer or fish had to say. God being God, this should be a fairly easy task (Balaam had a discussion with his donkey). I have to restate it because it seems unavoidable and important to the topic at hand: I suppose I am not worth the time or effort to do such a thing. In theory, God knew the position we would be in within the 21st century. Why did he not accommodate to ensure we could make sense of it all if God truly wants all to come to repentance? Think about it, God could have set up a system where no matter what angle we chose to investigate Christianity or aspects of it, everyone always came to the same answer. Now that is an indication of divine influence. What if even unbelievers investigated and even if they did not believe, were still inclined to concede that is indeed where the evidence points. That would be something I could sink my teeth into.

 

 

 

Hi TinMan.  Great post, I can relate to much of what you say here.  This is a scenario I thought of for the 21st century that, to me, would be more consistent with an all-powerful God that is truly concerned about reaching those who doubt or question whether Christianity is true, versus the status quo:  What if, on January 1st each year, God automatically adds a new chapter at the end of every Bible everywhere in the word - print or electronic - to answer the top 20 questions or topics people around the world have prayed about over the past year?  So everyone wakes up that day and sees a new chapter automatically added to their Bibles.  Each year, the chapter changes with the next year's answers to the top 20 prayers.  Non-Christians would have some direct evidence of a supernatural occurrence that gets repeated and is not found in other religious texts.  It would be a leading story on the news for days into the new year, and you could have pastors spending Sundays for several weeks into the new year giving sermons on these new answers from God.  And from Christians' standpoint, It still does not take away anyone's supposed "free will". 

[Hierophant]

Interesting thought @readyforchange. That would be a game changer.

[readyforchange]

1 minute ago, TinMan said:

Interesting thought @readyforchange. That would be a game changer.

Thanks.  It's like why would a supernatural deity NOT do something like that, if it cares so much about saving those that question Christianity. 

[Hierophant]

18 minutes ago, readyforchange said:

Thanks.  It's like why would a supernatural deity NOT do something like that, if it cares so much about saving those that question Christianity. 

 

Even more so to clarify the expectations of those who were already in it.

[mymistake]

This is one situation where a Bible story works against Christianity.  Saint Thomas did not believe the resurrection happened and declared he would not believe unless Jesus showed up and allowed physical examination of the wounds.  And in the story Jesus was totally cool with that and stepped up.  Now Thomas gets to be a saint and spend eternity in heaven.  It simply isn't fair unless we all get our personal visitation.  Thomas got to see evidence so we should too.

 

Now the guy who wrote the Thomas story was clever but he was looking for a way to entice gullible yet proud people.  See, you can be better than a saint if you will just believe without asking to see evidence.  And if you do that your reward in heaven will be even greater that the one Thomas got so hand over your money without questioning it.  Expect Christians to play that card if you mention it to them.

[LostinParis]

On 28/01/2018 at 2:26 AM, mymistake said:

Now the guy who wrote the Thomas story was clever but he was looking for a way to entice gullible yet proud people.  See, you can be better than a saint if you will just believe without asking to see evidence.  

 

@mymistake This is exactly why we were taught that it is virtuous to be satisfied with not understanding "the divine mysteries". Brainwashing.