Heathen Dawn

I’ve had Christians evangelise me, if only in cyberspace and not in real life, and my reaction to this has changed through the times. I used to direct hate at the Christians themselves, telling them they were bad people and unloving, and that their Christian love was a false love. I now no longer hold to that view. I don’t hate the missionaries themselves, and I don’t think they’re unloving. This is not to say I view Christian evangelism favourably—it’s just that I see the Christians acting in good faith according to the premises, and I direct my opposition only to the premises themselves.

The premises are: we are all, by default, skydiving off a plane without a parachute. The end of this skydive without a parachute is a bad one. Christians are called to give people the one and only parachute that can save them. There are other things that look like parachutes, but the premises are that only the Christian model will open and save the skydiver. You believe everyone is on a skydive without a parachute, and you have the parachute that will rescue them from an ominous fate, so the natural thing to do is to give people parachutes. Under the premises, this is the most loving thing you can do. Christian evangelists are, in and of themselves, doing a loving thing.

Of course, the problem is the premises. First is the factual doubt: who says we’re all skydiving off a plane without a parachute? Second is the religious question: how do you know only your type of parachute is going to open in the end? Third is the hypothetical pondering: what did we do to deserve it that the Pilot should have us all kicked out of the plane onto a skydive without a parachute? These are the pertinent questions, and they all pertain to the premises. And that’s my point: I no longer have complaints or hatred or misgivings towards Christian evangelists (as long as they don’t interfere with my freedom, that is). Whatever complaints and hatred and misgivings I have are towards the Christian religion—the premises. Christian people are loving, but the Christian religion itself is not loving. I’ve long ceased to attack Christians as people, but my attacks, whenever they share the gospel with me, are always directed towards their religion, their belief system.

Discuss.

kelsos

You certainly have a good point there.

But your description does not fit even the majority of Christians. I have found many Christians to be the most unloving people I could ever imagine (not that I met all of those in person).

I see a problem in that the words used by Christians can have a totally different meaning than the commonly given one. For example, Martin Luther once described that beating, cutting throats and the like can be an act of Christian love. In fact sometimes I am under the impression that whatever Christians say, you can bet the exact opposite is true.

For example what Christians (the pope and conservative ones at least) point out as acting responsibility, meaning the use of contraceptives, turns out to be that using no contraceptives is considered the default, responsible Christian way of acting. I call that irresponsible!

Sure, in their own belief system all these things are still consistent. It is just cutting throats is not the idea of love shared by most other people, including most Christians, including those who think Martin Luther was a great theologian while ignoring this darker side.

Moreover, history and present observation has shown that many Christians, do bad things immediately after leaving the church service, because there they learnt their sins were forgiven and they were righteous people again.

There is a certain hypocrisy in being Christian IMO, whether you are aware of it or not.

Eric H

Hello Kelsos and Heathen Dawn,

I agree with what you have said and I am a Catholic, I would count myself as a hypocrite, along with the majority of other Christians.

We may think we know the right thing to do, but actually doing it is often more difficult, and that is where the problem is.

The huge amount of denominations clearly spell out that Christians cannot agree on the one true way to find salvation, yet each of us may claim our own unique truth!!

Would the solution be for all Christians to agree with each other?

I would have to say no, because then we would all become non thinking and mindless.

I feel that the answer lies in actions more than beliefs, Christ’s last commandment was; love one another as I have loved you, by this all men will know that you are my disciples.

Christian love should be more visible than the need to evangelise, but often it seems that evangelisation is more visible than Christian love so it seems to fail.

As to evangelisation I like the story I heard about Ghandi, he was going through town and heard a man preaching on the street, and people were walking past him.
Ghandi said to the man you may have more success doing what you are preaching

I feel sad hearing about people feeling harassed by Christians.

Peace

Eric

Fisher

Wow Dawn,

Good to hear that you don't hate me just because I am a Christian. I admire your post, and I think that many atheists and Christians could learn from it.

Hating people is just wrong no matter how you look at it. I believe in universal love, not athiest love nor Christian love.

If I knew for sure that my parachute would save your life, I would be more than happy to give it to you, but as it stands now, I can only say that I think, and have faith, that my chute might save your life. If any of us could prove for sure that it would, you would be foolish to not accept it. I do not believe either of us to be foolish at this point in life.

I believe that if we all love each other, then we all have wings and there is no need for the parachute anyway.

Fisher

Eric,
All Christians should agree with each other, and live to obey the two greatest commandments given by Christ:
1. Love God
2. Love your neighbor as yourself

It does not matter if you are Catholic, Baptist, or Non-Denominational. Christians should love selflessly as Jesus loved -- end of story. Daily it amazes me how we "Christians" cannot seem to grasp such a simple and unifying concept.

Koyaanisqatsi

You have no idea how refreshing an admission that is. I applaud you, but fear something worse, which I'll get to in a minute.

I disagree and here's why. You couldn't possibly know the "right" thing to do; nothing in your dogma (other than "believe Jesus is your salvation," which ultimately provides you with nothing) gives you the ability to have any clue at all about what the "right" thing to do is, primarily because it's so contradictory in so many ways and outright ridiculous in other ways (such as just looking lustfully at another woman means you're committing adultery).

I've often asked my Fristian friends just exactly what it is their cults tell them are the "right" things to do and they all answer with basic, common sense humanism; the number one answer is always the golden rule (which Jesus didn't originate, btw), "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." The problem with that is that Christianity also teaches that mankind is inherently sinful; basically, worthless form the git go. Different sects preach this in different ways, of course, but you're a Catholic so you presumably are familiar with your formative inculcation years in this regard.

See where I'm going? On the one hand, you're told that (over and over) that you are an inherently sinful creature, unworthy of your God's/Father's (note the psychological impact) grace at the same time that you are told that your God/Father is nothing but love and that he loves all his creatures.

So, onto the other hand, you are then instructed to "do unto others as you would have them do unto you," and "love your neighbors/enemies as you love yourself," but how do you balance that equation with the inculcation that you (everybody) is fundamentally sinful? If part of the indoctrination process is that you are almost literally brow-beaten (as a child, no less) into thinking that you are, in essence, inherently worthless simply because you were born, then how do worthless people treat each other? See what I mean? What would a sinner do to someone else that they would want done to them, if not sin? It's cognitive dissonance, causing a sort of burnt light bulb effect; a push-me/pull-you inaction and confusion. Then you are told that it's something you have to work out!

Your church/scripture/dogma creates a false positive in your mind (again, typically throughout your formative years, when you are mentally most vulnerable to such inculcation) and then tells you that you'd better do something about this situation, or face eternal damnation (I'll leave it to revisionists to debate whether that's self-inflicted or, as the scriptures say, God inflicted). But when you ask what it is you're supposed to do to account for the sins you haven't actually committed (being born could not possibly be a sin; that's ludicrous), the answer is "pray." Spin your wheels. Hope. Have "faith."

And then, if that weren't vague enough, certain sections say good works will do it and other sections say no amount of good works will do it. Other sections say all you need is faith and still others say that only by the grace of God can you be saved. The OT, of course, mentions nothing about belief in an incarnate god/messiah as your salvation, but the NT says that only through the Son can you be granted salvation by the Father.

The Son, however, offers even further confusion to the list by saying none of the laws will change in the same breath that he changes all the laws (and in radically different ways, in some instances). He tells you that love is the only salvation and then says things like, to be his disciple, you must hate your father, mother, sister, brother, and own life, etc.

Then, of course, there are numerous "tests" that God puts his creatures to that are even more confusing, such as telling you to sacrifice your own child and only when you are actually going to do it does he stay your hand. Global genocide and other horrific acts of unimaginable cruelty are permissable by God and when questioned about these acts, cult leaders say that it is all a part of a larger plan motivated out of pure love for all and that anything God does can not, by definition, be evil, yet there are so many acts attributed to this God in the Bible that we could not possibly consider anything other than evil, or, at the very least, unspeakably cruel; actions that contradict the commandment to accept that God can do no evil.

And, of course, the way women are treated in the Bible and how homosexuals are to be put to death and children are to suffer the sins of their fathers and so on and so on and so on that there literally is no single morality to follow at all in the Bible.

Again, when anyone questions any of this, the answer is always in the form of a commandment; just have faith that the ends will justify the means.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but that kind of backwards thinking is precisely what has led Bush, Inc. to justify the maiming/murder of over 20,000 innocent men, women and children in just Iraq alone (and still counting), not to mention millenia of similar "justifiable" wars and killing in God's name.

I know, I know, all those millions of people throughout history weren't "true" Christians and they were all just cloaking themselves in the Bible, right? Well, isn't that precisely what you just argued about the evangelists? They think that they are "right" in what they are doing just as our soldiers all think that they are "right" in what they're doing and Bush, Inc., thinks that they are "right" in what they are doing and just like the Crusades and Witch Hunters and the Jihadists and the Saudis who slammed two airliners into the Towers, etc., etc., etc., all the way back through recorded history.

And the reason they think they're all right is because there is more than enough justification for any attrocity found right smack dab in the Bible.

Precisely, leaving all of you with none.

Forgive me, but that is largely the case and all too often, innocently so (as with you and your evangelists). "Faith" is necessarily non-thinking and mindless and if you throw Paul into the mix (god made wisdom foolish and all that tripe) then, ultimately, all testaments of faith are non-thinking and mindless as a necessary condition; indeed, the more non-thinking and the more mindless it is, the more "pure" it is purported to be and therefore, as some sects think, the better chance of being one of the chosen ones. Of which, by the way, there are only supposed to be a select and comparatively miniscule few.

It's a competition with no clearcut guidelines, built on the false premise that we're all inherently worthless to begin with.

Yes, well, he also said that to be his disciple, you had to hate everyone, including yourself. How can you love others as you love yourself if you're can't be his disciple without hating yourself? Doesn't that translate into hating others? I know the spin on that, by the way, so you needn't go into it. The point is that the words and the actions don't add up.

But isn't the argument that "Christian love" necessarily entails evangelizing? Catch-22 that you (and many others) have simply avoided through denial; through selective reading and selective interpretation that often paints a radically different picture of the Jesus character others see portrayed. Don't get me started on the Sermon on the Mount, for example .

To an unbiased eye, it is nothing more than an instruction to remain a slave and be blissful in your suffering, because it means you're blessed and will win anything off the top shelf after you die, where it no longer matters (and, worse, when you can do nothing to help others stop their suffering in life).

There is a fundamental construct that anything mankind does is evil and anything good that happens is the glory of God. Again, think of the psychological impact that has and then apply the humanist ideal of treating others as you would have them treat you; of loving others as you love yourself. If your cult indoctrinates you into self-hatred, then the translation of "love others as you love yourself" is "hate others, since you hate yourself;" at least on a subconscious level, certainly, as, again, history has demonstrated time and time again.

Bluring the line between "hate" and "love" so much so that most Christians simply equate the two (so that Luke 14 becomes "you must love your father, mother, sister" etc.) is a fundamentally incongruent mandate that causes nothing but inaction, confusion and cognitive dissonance.

Yes, and he caught an assassin's bullet for such actions and now India has the bomb. Was he wrong? You and I certainly don't think so, but the guy who shot him probably did (and millions of others, no doubt). The point is, no one should be praying or preaching; we should all just be doing and not spending inordinate amounts of time teaching our children that they are worthless and full of pride and disobedient to the point of eternal damnation for not believing as they are told to believe.

Yes, but in the same breath, you do not consider yourself to be "like" those "other" Christians, right? And that's where it all falls down. Consider this fact; 90% of the entire Western world's population follows a religion that is essentially identical in its moral dogma (all springing from the same, original Jewish dogma) and has been for thousands of years and yet nothing has changed in re: man's inhumanity to man.

At what point do you finally say, "This doesn't work; this is not true; this has failed repeatedly and horrifically for thousands of generations?" But no one seems to do that; instead they roll out the apologetics and claim that it's not the dogma's fault, it's the people's fault for not following the dogma!

Mankind is evil, God is good, which means that everything mankind does is always at fault and the dogma (the beliefs) are never to blame. That's simply erased from the cult member's mind as a necessary condition. So much so that any time any of us come along and say, "Look at all of the attrocious things that are in this book," the cult member automatically responds with, "That's all man's fault; not God's."

It's a poisoned well and anyone who drinks from it (from just a sip to a full on gallon a day) gets poisoned from it. The only solution is to open your eyes and see that, ultimately, nothing good can ever come from it. Sure, occasionally the poison (like all poisons) can cure some other ailments, but judged on its merits and in its totality, history judges that cult mentality is divisive, detrimental and poisonous to mankind.

Gawen

I think this belongs with your other hypothetical pondering as well.

Heathen Dawn

What do you mean?

Don Alhambra

Beautiful post, Koyaanisqatsi! :notworthy

Gawen

I mean that I don't consider myself, by default, jumping out of an airplane without a parachute. It's the default part that's hypothetical. An assertion. The statement also renders a meaning that, by default, we consciously volunteer to jump into a one way fall to our death.

If I had to pick an analogy, I'd say I was a stone that picked myself up once and skipped myself a trillion times over a very large lake (the world). Every time I skim the water it's a new place. But there's a trillion other stones (people) skipping over the lake too. And I bump into them. Some I skip along with. Others I never see. Eventually I grow tired and sink to the bottom of the lake, never to skip again...lying on top of trillions of other stones that skipped before me.

By default (since birth), we all skipped ourselves. But many of the other stones I see think they have been skipped by unseen supernatural forces.