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Seriously suffering a melodrama overdose here. As if this wasn’t bad enough, the rhetoric keeps screeching higher and higher. Now we have Christians, we are at war. Maybe it’s time we accept that fact. It’s a very long screed, replete with bible passages, exhortations, charts, and graphs, all delivered at a fevered pitch over Christianity quavering at the cliff edge of extinction. No more of this Mr. Nice Jesus, no sir. It’s time for I’ll fry your ass and toss you burning into hell Jesus. Yep.
It’s not fun to think about, I realize, but war is not supposed to be fun. Especially not this kind of war. A war where the casualties are lost in the fires of Hell. A war where the enemy plots to rip your soul out of your chest and drag it into the darkness forever. A war that cannot be escaped. A war that conscripts every human on the planet into combat, on one side or the other, whether they like it or not. A war that we must train our children to fight. A war that could claim their souls, too, if we do not train them well. A war that will not be over until the end of the world. A war that God will ultimately win, but many human beings – maybe even including you, personally, and me – will lose if we die fighting for the wrong side.
These are not enjoyable thoughts. They are downright terrifying, in fact. But we cannot make the reality of our situation disappear any more than we could have wished away WWII by closing our eyes and hiding under our bed while the Germans dropped explosives on London. We can think all the nice thoughts and sing all the happy songs we want, but optimism never saves anyone when the bombs start falling. And it won’t save us from Hell. Indeed, it’s much more likely to send us there.
[…]
Christ came to separate us from our sin – a violent, painful process that requires a sword, and leads straight to the cross. And He doesn’t stop there. He enlists all of us to join Him in His ancient war against evil. A war that, even if it does not get us physically killed (although, depending on where you live, it may), it’s a war that will cause deep divisions and strife in our communities and even our families. There is nothing particularly peaceful about that.
The peace comes later, and only to his good and faithful soldiers. Those who will not take up their cross – that is, embrace the suffering and sacrifice required to gain holiness – will be deemed unworthy of Him in the end. Whoever finds his life and his peace and his happiness in worldly pursuits and worldly pleasures will lose it eternally. But whoever is willing to lay down his life – not a peaceful process, by any means – will be given life in Heaven.
Christ is not calling us to an earthly existence of endless fun and decadent luxury. He is calling us to die. And in the meantime, He is cordially inviting us to be despised by the whole world. “You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved” (Matthew 10:22).
[…]
Therefore, despite my valued reader’s claims, I am not trying to “bring us back to the days of Christian holy wars.” We never left those days. I cannot “bring us back” to conditions that have already existed since the dawn of time. All I can do, all anyone can do, is acknowledge that the war is on, and then choose a side. But no matter what we choose, the holy war is happening. God and the Devil and angels and demons are fighting, right now, as we speak, and the battlefield is the heart of man, to paraphrase Dostoevsky.
And so to the first statement – that “militant Christianity” is “driving people away from the church” – I say, good. The church is by its nature a militant organization of faithful soldiers waging a never-ending assault against the powers of darkness. The more it takes on that tone and that appearance, the better. And the more we weed out the bored, insincere and feckless, the better. If a person is “driven away” because the truth scares them, let them leave. Better they join the enemy outright than stay as infiltrators in our ranks, attempting to entice more believers into their cowardly, wicked way of thinking.
[…]
There is no room anymore to try and appease and cajole and compromise with the world. The Devil has cut great, wide roads through our culture, and for decades he has encountered almost no resistance. The signs of his enormous success are all around us. I don’t need to provide examples, but here are a few anyway:
- There’s an abortion clinic in nearly every city, murdering children and selling their parts.
- The vast majority of women who get abortions are Christian.
- Gay marriage is now enshrined as a “human right.”
- A majority of American Christians reject the Bible’s teachings on sexuality and abortion.
- A majority of American Christians can’t be bothered to go to church once a month, let alone once a week.
- Atheism is surging.
- Cohabitation is becoming more popular than marriage.
- Porn is one of the most profitable industries in America, especially in the Bible Belt.
- All of our most powerful institutions – government, media, Hollywood, academia – are propagators of far-left ideology.
- What should be our most powerful institution, the family, is crumbling. At least 43 percent of kids in the United States live without fathers in the home.
- Half of my generation believes women can have penises and men can have vaginas.
- This election season.
And so on.
And so on indeed. The dramatic glurge continues here, from a self-titled professional truth sayer. Seems to me that someone in such dire need of being seen as persecuted, there are plenty of places in this world they could go where that would actually happen. It’s interesting how they never manage to do that, but they do find plenty of time to wax dramatic over how all people having basic human rights is going to affect them so terribly, oh yes, when the truth of the matter is that it won’t affect them in the least.
This is me, playing the world’s smallest violin.
Also: The American Democrats are “far-left”? *snort*
Some women are lucky if there is an abortion clinic in their state.
Maybe because the vast majority of women in this country are christian. Or possibly because they are denied proper access to birth control due to christian influence.
Why the scare quotes? Marriage has been determined to be a human right, and gay people are humans.
Perhaps they don’t think a 2000 year old text should determine how they live their lives today.
They have heard the message ad nauseum and are getting tired of it?
Yay! That is a good thing!
Two consenting adults living together? The horror!
I get the feeling that he is most disappointed that people in the “bible belt” actually have sexual urges. Sex is fun and natural, and my sex life is none of his business.
Laughable about the government comment. Actually laughable that he thinks anything to the left of Genghis Khan is “far-left”.
The mass incarceration in our country has contributed immensely to this problem. Also, why does he oppose families of LGBT people, which could help the problem (if you substitute “second parent” for “father”).
That shows that half of your generation are not closed-minded theocratic assholes.
We have something we agree on! This election season has brought out the worst that the US has to offer. Now if we can just get rid of the majorities that republicans hold in a lot of places, things may start to get better.
As an atheist I spent some years reading philosophy to gain an understanding of the secular foundations of ethics, and reached an understanding that satisfied me. (for those interested, see http://atheistnexus.org/profiles/blogs/atheist-foundations-of-ethics … ). Then I heard a Christian declare that the Absolute Truth about ethics was the teachings of Jesus. So I asked “What DOES Jesus teach about ethics?” I went through the four Gospels and collected everything Jesus is reported to have said about what his followers should DO. I found that there actually IS an underlying logic to it. The Jesus of the first three (“synoptic”) gospels believed that the world was ending soon, certainly within the lifetime of those hearing him speak, Judgment Day was coming when everyone would be sorted into the saved and the damned, and sent to Heaven or a fiery Hell respectively. Very few would be saved; almost everyone would be going to Hell. He told his followers to take drastic measures to rack up as much credit as they could in the limited time remaining, and AFTER they had done all that he commanded, they should count themselves as unworthy servants and hope that Yahveh would be gracious. Jesus commanded his followers to follow the entire Law of Moses down to the last Iota (punctuation mark), except for the dietary laws. He told them to sell everything they owned and distribute the money to the poor, to practice strict nonviolent pacifism, to abstain from all sin even in their thoughts, even to the point of self-castration to avoid thoughts of lust, which were spiritually equivalent to adultery. He told them not to judge others, that was not their job, Judgment Day was coming soon enough, focus on purifying their own character, doing good works, and spreading the news.
The fourth gospel, of “John”, was written more than 70 years after the time of Jesus, and it is starkly different from the others. His warnings of Judgment Day, and his instructions of what to do to prepare for it, have all been deleted. There is no mention of Hell, no mention of helping the poor, no mention of following the Law. According to “John”, one can be saved by “believing in Jesus” and taking Communion. Modern Christianity has chosen to ignore Matthew, Mark, and Luke and place all their faith in John.
Chapter and verse on all this at http://atheistnexus.org/profiles/blogs/the-ethics-of-jesus
This line:
had me sputtering with laughter. Jehovah and his baby Jesus are latecomers in the god business, and definitely don’t qualify for “the dawn of time”. Christians like this have a serious case of navel gazing.
johnhodges@#4:
So I asked “What DOES Jesus teach about ethics?”
Nothing. Not because he is silent on the topic, but because he simply asserts precepts based on divine authority. That’s not “teaching” it’s “telling you stuff.” If jesus was actually engaging in philosophy, he’d have tackled the is/ought problem, blown a big hole through Socrates’ paradox from Euthypho, rounded third by smashing Epicurus’ arguments to bits and slid into home by pre-refuting Sextus Empiricus.
Jesus doesn’t teach anything, he’s just a cardboard cut-out stand-in positioned where religion wished it had game to respond to philosophy. FWIW I wrote a longer bit about this topic, once. If jesus were actually trying to teach about ethics, and were actually divine, he’d have had the inside track on explaining a lot of things you’d expect god to know. Instead, if he existed at all, he thrashed about like a preacher: all authority and hand-waving, no substance at all. Not the kind of performance I’d expect from a supreme being.
Caine@#5:
Jehovah and his baby Jesus are latecomers in the god business
Yeah, I always enjoyed asking christians: “If god gave you your moral system, how is it that Hammurabi wrote down a moral system centuries before the jews were even talking about yahweh? Did yahweh spoiler himself, did the Babylonians have an inside track, did yahweh learn his morals from bel, or … uh, wait -- it’s your theory: you tell me!”
Cohabitation is becoming more popular than marriage.
Look on the bright side, christians!!! Fewer divorces!
Marcus, #7
It was a false flag leak by the Elamites :(
Christian leaders have been at war for the last 1950 years or so.
Uh, for a federally recognized USAmerican political party, umm, yes?
If the vast majority of women who get abortions are Christian, then Christians are at war with.. what exactly? It can’t be abortion clinics.
rq:
No. Democrats might be considered somewhat left when compared with repubs, but they sure as hell aren’t far left.
Though I admit that women can have penises, a vast majority of them do have vaginas, and many of women who don’t, couldn’t get one if Matt Walsh had his way.
About that. About the only thing that the Christian Bible does say explicitly about abortion is to condone it, and to set forward a particular situation and particular rules for how abortions shall be carried out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordeal_of_the_bitter_water