12. April 2008 by Frank.

It’s one thing to hint around at something.

It’s quite another to come right out and say it.

I’ve done that before and brought down righteous indignation and condemnation on myself. I’ve had people who were my friends and supporters turn on me so viciously you would think I raped their wives and daughters and pissed on their mother’s graves. I’ve been thrown out of church because of it.

No, not what I said yesterday. I announced I was more pentecostal than baptist. Up until I said that these good people were 100% behind me. But I got backed into a corner and had to stand up for my belief in the actually “spiritual” spiritual gifts, not the watered down, non-supernatural spiritual gifts the baptists approve of. One deacon shunned me and never spoke to me again, he was a very good friend. Unfortunately, he’s only a very good friend to those who share his beliefs. The pastor had told me a couple of weeks earlier that he approved of my teaching 100% and he wanted me to continue full force. After I declared my completely biblical beliefs in spiritual gifts he told me I would never be allowed to speak in his church again and that I should leave and never come back.

I still believed in the same god, the same bible, the same basic doctrines but I was no longer acceptable.

It was devastating and pathetic. Later on I got condemned by another pastor who was initially 100% behind me. This time it wasn’t my beliefs, it was because I didn’t use the correct translation of the bible. Somehow he had convinced himself to become a “King James Only” fanatic. I used the New International Version. Somehow that became akin to blasphemy in his mind. He got up and preached a tirade against me that made it clear I was going to hell and that no one should listen to anything I said ever again. He later wound up in a mental institute but that’s beside the point.

I’ve been condemned for believing the bible literally means exactly what it says by people who call themselves christians.

Now I get condemned if I say I don’t believe it anymore by people who call themselves christians.

So no matter what I say I am condemned for saying it. WOW. This isn’t just a personal thing. Did you catch the news this week where a very bigoted politician told an atheist he had no right to speak to his government? That his lack of religious belief was harmful for children to even know that viewpoint existed?

You don’t believe in my god? Well, screw you.

Did I know I was going to get myself condemned again if I came right out and said what’s on my mind? Of course I did. And I have no intention of shutting up. I’m tired of pretending. I’m tired of people refusing to allow me to believe what I believe if it doesn’t suit them. I was talking to my SDA friend last night relating my experiences with the stroke that led me to being unafraid of anything. I never once mentioned god as helping me through any of it. But all he heard was god is great for working so much in my life. I don’t know if you realize how bizarre this is.

This is more like it. I like controversy. I like discussing different ideas. Not too many are willing to discuss major religious differences, however, but I’m still going to try.

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8. April 2008 by Frank.

Bizarre skin breakout a message from god. It’s time to call it quits after some kind of severe rash confirms what you were thinking all along. So says the email from the suddenly retiring pastor.

God sure has mysterious ways of telling his people what he wants them to do.

And therein lies the problem. How do you know if that’s god, an allergy, psychosomatic wish fulfillment, a mutant strain of poison ivy, etc.? Over the years I’ve used this same sort of reasoning to explain things in such a way that they fit my religious worldview. Bizarre events must be god trying to get your attention, to lead you in his direction because you may make the wrong decision based on the evidence you have.

I’m not putting the pastor down, I did the exact same thing for many years. I tried to interpret everything as being from god. Particularly at times when I had an important decision to make. I tried to rationalize everything I could to make the decision I already made seem as if god were leading me to decide what I had already decided. What better than some unexpected physical phenomenon to confirm your choice as being from god?

Please don’t try to deny that everyone does this to some extent.

What you eventually need to do is ask yourself why god has to be so vague? Why doesn’t he just come right out and tell you what his will is? Week after week after week we’re told that christianity isn’t a religion, it’s a relationship with Jesus Christ. Relationships have to be two way, we not only have to talk to god (pray), we have to also “listen” to him. Oh, but here’s the kicker; if you claim you actually hear god talking to you, you’re a nutcase and need to be on some heavy duty narcotics. But it’s perfectly OK to get your godly guidance through feelings, coincidences, random events, and signs. Because, after all, that’s how god speaks to us today. Tell me you haven’t heard this before.

So god has limited his communication with us to things which may or may not mean anything but which we can spin to mean whatever we need them to mean. When I was first married my wife was driving and had a seizure while going 70 miles an hour. This quite nearly killed both of us before I managed to get control of the car and get it stopped. Desperate to make this near fatal tragedy fit our belief that god loved us and was watching over us we rationalized the explanation that god was teaching my wife that he was her freedom, not her new found ability to drive a car. So he allowed a deadly attack by satan to bring us to our senses.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. But full of “faith”.

What it really was, was stupidity on our part because we knew her seizures were not under control. (They have been well controlled for over 25 years now.) But we had faith. We knew god wanted her to be able to drive. We were wrong.

I’ve actually heard preachers preach that god will give you cancer or some horrible accident or tragedy to get your attention to get you saved because he loves you so much. All you have to do is add some wishful thinking to make that true. What I want to know is why is god so inept at communicating? You can interpret events like this any way you want. They could mean anything or nothing. Or they could mean everything.

Personally, that sounds more like random chance than any intervention or communication from god.

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7. April 2008 by Frank.

I occasionally go to church to keep peace in the family. A couple of weeks ago for easter was practically a no option, you’re going kind of affair. Back in the day I could find some joy in any worship service no matter how dreary the music or the message. Indeed this church has gotten away from a lot of the old hymns (but not entirely.) They are rather contemporary in musical tastes now although the vast majority of music was contemporary in 1980 in charismatic churches. Now the baptists have discovered it. They even have drums. Unfortunately the drummer doesn’t know how to set the beat. That’s like a major shortcoming in a drummer. You also have older German ladies trying to sing very high notes with that peculiar German inflection that frequently renders such notes flatter than a board. The music often seems designed to rub my nerves raw.

The sermon was “Dialogue with God” which I was pointing out the other day. Obviously this dialogue doesn’t involve actually hearing god speak in any manner that makes coherent sense. If you claim god actually speaks to you in words you can understand good christians everywhere will look at you like you are some deranged psychopath. But if you relate some bizarre event as some kind of sign which you received guidance from, then that’s perfectly understandable and acceptable. Unless you are a practicing pentecostal.

You get words of wisdom and knowledge as well as interpretations of tongues all the time. Never mind that these are almost always exactly what you want to hear for any given situation. Never mind that they are usually so vague and general they could apply to anyone or anything or if they are personally relevant they should be taken with a grain of salt. Never mind that these thing only seem to happen when everybody wants them to happen. Never mind that they also sound suspiciously like something the person speaking would say normally if given the opportunity.

I once listened to a woman speak for an hour and a half, supposedly prophesying. We were informed she was a true prophetess of god. I had never heard of her before or after this appearance (I can’t remember her name for the life of me). Her most prominent characteristic was her pronunciation of “almighty gawwwwd.” She must have said it several dozen times. Anyway, she spoke for a long time supposedly moved by the holy spirit to reveal gods plan for his church that coming year. She droned on and on and on with absolutely no indication of inspiration of any kind. An hour and a half of pure mindless drivel. This was greeted with loud applause and amens and other rites of approval.

Funny thing is, however, the bible says that to be a true prophet of god you have to be 100% accurate. Nothing the woman said ever happened that year or any year thereafter. Now how is it that our spiritually enlightened leadership had no idea she wasn’t really a prophet? Why couldn’t anyone in the congregation get clued in besides me? If this is god speaking, he’s a horrible public speaker.

I spent twenty years of my life trying to listen to god speaking.

I finally realized he wasn’t saying anything.

Posted in listen, prophet, signs, easter, hearing | Print | 1 Comment »

7. April 2008 by Frank.

My SDA friend was actually trying to convince me there’s two kinds of wine in the bible, fermented and unfermented. Essentially wine and grape juice. The same word but different meaning in different contexts. He wisely didn’t use the most glaring example in John 2 vs 1 - 11. Jesus turned the water into wine and from the context it’s quite clear he didn’t turn the water into fine grape juice. Did Paul really suggest to Timothy that a little grape juice would be good for his stomach ailments? Does grape juice really make merry the hearts of men and god? I was rather bemused because my friend was trying to make these verses say what he wanted them to say. I used to do that all the time, too.

I still have my Greek and Hebrew dictionaries and muliple translations of the bible. It’s very easy to find ways of interpreting the meanings of words to fit your preconceived notions. That word doesn’t mean what it says, they used it differently back then. In that culture those words carry different connotations. That actually may be true in many cases. But the big problem with that is simply that the average christian doesn’t have Greek and Hebrew dictionaries and a love of studying the meanings of words. Most christians don’t have a love of even reading their bibles. Think I’m exaggerating? Do a survey of the older long term members of any church and see how many of them have actually read the bible from cover to cover.

Since god by definition must have known of the ambiguities of language over a period of time why would he have chosen to use words that can be misinterpreted? Look at the changes in English in just 400 short years. Show me someone who doesn’t stumble over the word choices in the King James version occasionally. Oh yes, I almost forgot that there are people who actually believe the King James version is the only acceptable translation, the only one that’s accurate, the only one that got the original meanings correct. Don’t you find it somewhat arrogant that we assume English is god’s chosen language?

The bible doesn’t condemn slavery. It gives instructions about how it is to be carried out. Jesus doesn’t condemn it. Paul doesn’t condemn it. Slaves obey your earthly masters (Ephesians 6 vs 5 - 9). I’ve heard it preached that this means workers obey your employers. No, it doesn’t. It means slaves. It means obey the one who owns you. According to the bible, you are either a slave to sin (satan) or a slave to righteousness (god). Did god allow slavery all through the bible, old and new testament both, just so we would understand that we’re supposed to be his loving obedient slaves? Why is it then that almost every civilized nation of men on earth today condemns slavery as an abomination? Is this just a misunderstanding of the culture? If people the world over know slavery is bad why doesn’t god? Why is it that writings from a society that not only allowed but practiced slavery don’t see anything wrong with slavery? Why would they choose the word slavery to refer to their relationship with god? The meaning of slavery hasn’t changed.

Neither has the meaning of wine.

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5. April 2008 by Frank.

I have a Seventh Day Adventist friend who assured me last night that there are no true atheists. His reasoning is that god made us with a need to worship something so even if we claim we don’t believe in god we still worship something else; cars, money, sex, power, etc.

You worship because you have to, there is no other option.

I wasn’t in the mood for arguing so I didn’t point out the simple fact that god should have made us only have a desire to worship him and him alone instead of worshiping anything that caught our attention. Another brilliant design flaw.

I’m sure that would have brought up free will. The ever popular christian phrase, “god doesn’t want robots,” was mentioned so I knew exactly what I would get if I tried to point out the error of his logic. So we have a god who creates human beings that must by design worship something but he didn’t want robots so he gave them free will so they could choose to worship him or not. If they choose not then he burns them in fire for all of eternity for making the wrong choice. What a great choice that is!

My SDA friend invites me over as part of his sabbath ritual. I go because he is my best friend and I still enjoy talking about religion. It helps that he has some fantastic stories about situations he has been in; last night, for example, he told me about his year as the GED instructor at the local jail.

During our discussions he has denounced atheists several times. Oh, what a miserable, wretched lot we are. My wife does the same thing. They cannot conceive how anyone could be happy or moral without god in their lives. An atheist has no hope. Why, atheists are barely human. Straight religious propaganda right down the line.

Since my wife tends to get hysterical if I try to reveal that I’m an atheist now, I’ve been going very slow and treading very softly with her. She was born and raised in church and holds all the dogma to be the absolute truth and the way things truly are. She doesn’t believe any of these things because she studied it, she believes because that’s what she was always told.

I, on the other hand, was exposed to christianity at an early age but never really indoctrinated into it. Then I was pushed toward it as a teenager but never accepted it. I jumped in of my own free will in my mid twenties but I never went by what I was being told, I studied it myself relentlessly. I avoided a lot of these stereotypes. I could see clearly that there are people all over the place who are perfectly happy, moral, fine upstanding folks without any help from any god belief.

Since I came to the conclusion that there is no god all by myself, I see these religious assumptions as the foolishness they really are. And I can’t help but wonder how I indulged in it for so long.

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4. April 2008 by Frank.

I spent twenty years of my life willingly trapped by my religion. Most of the time I loved it. But my relationship with god was always stormy. It seems he wasn’t much help in my resisting all that sin that sought to ensnare me. In some areas he was absolutely no help at all. In other matters, he drove me crazy with guilt and condemnation. I even felt guilty for things I didn’t do.

The problem was simple; all this guilt, condemnation, and control was either self inflicted or external. External because I allowed pastors, preachers, televangelists, books, and peer pressure to influence me unduly. Once you swallow someone else’s bullshit, it becomes your own.

At the time, of course, I did not know that the reason god wasn’t helping me overcome these things was because there was no god.

Now that I have come to be free of my delusions, I rarely feel guilt. I rarely feel it because I rarely have any desire to do things that I find immoral, things that go against my nature. And I even more rarely listen to or pay heed to what anyone else says I should feel bad about.

Religion takes you prisoner and then attempts to make you suffer for not being a good prisoner. Just look at the basic premise of christianity: you’re a sinner, you must be forgiven of your sins, Jesus is the only one who can do that, but even after he does it you’re still inclined to sin, so you constantly need more forgiveness, and there’s only one place to get it. You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.

For me, the first step away from faith was getting out of the influence of guilt. Once that happened I was able to start questioning what I believed.

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